(first posted 9/22/2015) Get yourselves ready for a trip back in time. I will be doing a series of weekly posts featuring (mostly) ads from issues of Road & Track, spanning roughly a decade from the late seventies to the late eighties. My older brother purchased the early issues and I continued buying the later ones. I had the idea of sharing these with you, so here we go, starting with the oldest issue.
As the headline suggests, this will mostly be ads from R&Ts issues, but I couldn’t help myself and inserted a few “period” articles. going through the pages, makes you realize how the world has changed… or have we just grown old? Both, I suppose.
Most of these are pretty self-exploratory, but you’ll forgive me if I might add some commentary in-between images. Naturally, click on the images for better resolution. So lets begin:
I tell you, looking at this Zephyr does not conger up any European brands in my mind, despite the best efforts of Fords’ marketing.
Funny how Alfa Romeo is about to make a comeback to the U.S. with its recently announced Giulia, another rear wheel drive Sport Sedan.
Yeah, it’s not cars but come on- did YOU look this cool back in the seventies?
“At Ford, better ideas keep coming”. Catchy.
Remember how Mazda used to have all its ads printed on silver colored paper?
Honda Magic? Hondamatic!
Would you believe Gillette still makes this product? I guess hair needs to look dry whether it’s the seventies or the present. As for the rest of this ad- no comment.
Now you know what to do with that old VW Beetle laying around.
This ad spreads over two pages of the issue, above and below the text. It does catch the eye.
And now see a great Comics published in this issue:
I’ve scanned some classifieds, so that we can all cry at the low low prices.
That’s it for this issue; see you next week in the next one.
Ah, 1978 when I was 14 and just starting high school. A totally different world to the one in which we live today and a lot more innocent. The VW ad really struck me – “VW does it again!” yep they really have with a huge diesel emissions scandal.
I remember this cover! I also remember that R&T included the Fiat X1/9 in one of its “Ten Best” lists, which may call the entire series into question in terms of judgement.
What a great time that was to be a young car guy. I remember the issue vividly and also the one from about 1975 titled 10 Best Cars for a Changing World. For me those were rough bookends for the so-called Malaise Era, though I think it started in 1972.
Looks like there were three VAG products on the 1978 list and I remember the Rabbit making the 1975 list. Very different headlines than the ones VW has today. 11M diesel cars worldwide with software designed to cheat emission testing. To quote the ad with the “automatic” seat belts, Volkswagen does it again.
I remember reading this very issue, and I loved the “Cyclops’ Night Out” cartoon.
Faire du camping dans Le Car? That’s really funny. Did Renault actually offer a tent that ties in with the hatch? If they did I can’t imagine that found many buyers. I think if I had to pick any of these vehicles to do some camping in, I’d choose the Dodge Street Van, even if the ground effects might scrape the back roads a bit. Gotta love old ads!
IIRC Renault did offer a tent for the LeCar.
I remember Road & Track of this vintage. I would read this, Car and Driver, and Motor Trend frequently. They were my favourite car magazines.
A low mile plum crazy 440 six pack 70 Challenger R/T for $4,000. Wow. 2015 sucks sooooooo much! I need to remember to steal the time machine when Marty comes here to save his kid lol
It is wild to think back then they were just “used cars” to most people. My Mom bought her first car, a 1969 Road Runner 440+6 in Jamaica Blue, from a previous teacher she had in 1977. Price? $1,000. According to her, she would constantly get pulled over in that car, and every time the officer would approach, they would be dumbfounded to find a young woman behind the wheel. As a result, she never got a ticket. Sadly, she grew tired of the car being being broken into, and moved on to Honda motorcycles for a time after that (yes, my Mom was different).
Too true, my brother bought a green 1970 Road Runner with a 440 / 727 in 1977 for $800 because of the gas mileage. (This became my hand-me-down first car in 1978 when he bought a new Camaro Berlinetta), I bought a 1969 Road Runner with a 383 4spd (gold with tan vinyl top)in 1981 for $1200 and a 69 Barracuda 318 auto (Dark blue with black interior, super nice) a couple of months later from same guy for $1100. Sigh…..
Just a used gas-guzzler that was gonna be up on blocks in the back yard. Could be worse. You could have been that guy who sold it for $4,000 in 1979. I imagine he might be kicking himself today.
Love this article. More like it please. I want one of (almost) everything shown in those ads. The only exclusions would be the Volare, the Hondamatic, and the Fairmount -sedan*- *I’d rock the brown Fairmount wagon all day long.
I especially want the…the… Oh Hell, I want em all.
That takes me back to when I was 13 and actually reading that magazine (my parents subscribed). I can also name most of the cover cars, There is an Audi 5000 quarter window. Porsche 928 tail light and VW Scirocco front turn signal, plus a Mazda RX-7, what looks like a BMW 7 series (by the 928 tail light) and I think the silver car at top right is an Alfa GTV coupe and the red car with fender vents and pinstripes by the bar code seems like a K-car.
Top left is a blue Honda Accord. Below it is a red BMW 633CSi and a white Porsche 928. Below that is an orange BMW 530i and a bluish Porsche 911S/C. The Alfetta GT was a good identification, as horrible as it was a car to recommend. Then it was Audi 5000, Mazda RX-7, VW Scirocco and the car with the fender vents is a Mercury Zephyr.
Yes, I noticed the Scirocco turn signal as well…I owned one (1978 Scirocco that is), a Champagne Edition with a medium brown vinyl interior. Bought (used) in 1981, it was start of my VW phase, which still continues (Though I no longer have the Scirocco, I’ve owned no other brand car in 34 years…only on my 3rd one though, I tend to keep cars a long time).
I still have that June 1978 issue of R&T in my collection. I remember all of those ads like it was yesterday.
No, I never looked like that in the 1970s – I certainly didn’t look like Robert Redford! I don’t look like him now – and that’s a good thing!
I didn’t read R&T – mostly European stuff, but that’s because they generally handled a lot better than 95% of US cars because of the road system over there.
Besides the Autobahn, many of the roads were twisty, meaning you had to steer your car more often than here, and I can’t imagine taking a mid-70s Impala winding through narrow streets in some of the town centers!
I suppose Diana Rigg with her Mercury Cougar could do OK!
I don’t know, they seemed to clip quite a few snow banks trying to lose the fintail Mercedes pursuing them lol
Yeah, but she sure looked gorgeous doing it!
American cars really arent very big, Trucks have 8ft 2 inches wide since forever and they fit amongst traffic with ease.
Old cars just look so much wider since they were only 54″ high. Not that newer cars are necessarily taller (they usually are, but not necessarily), but the ratio of width to height back then was so much more because they were wider.
’75 Caprice: 79.5″ W / 54″ H =1.474
’15 Impala: 73″ W / 58.9″ H= 1.24
Zackman, you look like Dean Stockwell from Quantum Leap, wearing a Panama Jack hat. Lol
Remember when Dad showed you how to palm a pair of loaded dice?
VOLKSWAGEN DOES IT AGAIN!
First a seat belt that sneaks up and strangles you, now pollution that sneaks up and strangles you!
” looking at this Zephyr does not conger up any European brands in my mind, despite the best efforts of Fords’ marketing.” Hmmmm…. I can – just – detect a slight air of a German mid 80s Granada about it.
Well, do you really want to go there (and say the Zephyr was the inspiration to the Granada…)?
Yes a Ford Zephyr, Euro-Version.
Wow, what a wimpy looking car, that is.
I’d rather have my 79 Mercury Zephyr, than that thing… And that’s not saying much.
The Mk4 not their best effort yeah it had a V6, four wheel independant suspension and four wheel disc brakes in 1966 but it wasnt a great car despite the advanced spec.
Here….
See the Zephyr from another angle, similar to your photo- I still don’t see it.
But the interior with the plaid seats is bitchin’!
I seriously considered purchasing a Zephyr (or its Fairmont cousin) in early 1978. I thought the idea of the 302 V8 in the relatively small and light body shell was intriguing. Unfortunately the 302 only came with an automatic and I was very much in shift it myself mode back then. I ended up buying a VW Rabbit and drove it for over 7 years and over 120k miles.
Well if you had the Euro nose on the US car it may make sense – both share that square-sholdered styling. The blacked out window frames and lower quarters are also very “Granada-” or “Cortina-ish”. The LTD was even more like the Granada in that sense.
… and if you consider the Aussie LTD (itself a derivative of the Euro Granada styling-wise) it is even clearer-)
Isn’t the cream car a Taunus or Cortina?
UK Granada.
Unless I missed it, none of these ads mention horsepower. Not Volvo GT, which seems to offer no more power at all, did they really think it had enough? Not Saab Turbo, not Grand Am. The Zephyr did quote the torque of the Lima. None of the British sports cars nor the Alfa sport sedan, nor the RX7, not even Maserati. Between net numbers and pollution contols even the good for the day numbers would seem bad. Oh yea, my new Saab turbo has only 10 less hp than my 71 Slant 6.
Is it just me or do those tiny Dunlop sports tires seem awfully expensive?
When I started uploading old car and tech ads to my Pinterest page back in 2012 it took a while for people to notice and appreciate them.
Those Road and Tracks ads look great and I never saw some of them in other mags.
I was skimming down the photos, and immediately knew the seatbelt ad was for a VW Rabbit before I even saw the VW logo! Oh, that brown… my brother had a Rabbit that exact color, and I can still recall the smell even today (very different from the smell of a vintage Beetle).
Can you post the Diesel Rabbit story? I want to compare what they said then to what we know now.
Out of all the car ads posted, I’d take the Fairmont with the 200 Six and three speed standard. Or the 302. The 2.3 with the auto would be the equivalent of an automotive hair shirt.
Did the slant six really get that kind of mileage (20/28) if you drove it carefully?
Those diesel Rabbits were dreadful. Indestructible, but loud, rough, smelly and barely capable of getting out of their own way.
A friend drove one of that vintage, and riding in it was like a Medieval form of torture. At idle, it ran so rough the antenna on the front fender whipped back & forth violently.
Indeed. But they were ideal student cars…
For a split second the BMW ad(below the Honda and above the Pontiac) reminded me of a SAAB! Sorry, I’m a little Cartistic today!
It’s to see these old ads. In some old tv guide from newspapers besides old cars ads, these old cigarette ads like this Peter Jackson cigarette ad from 1971 from the January 2, 1971 edition from the Montreal Gazette. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7o4zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=l6EFAAAAIBAJ&hl=fr&pg=1662%2C394618
I remember spotting our next-door neighbour’s 300SL Gullwing in the R&T classified ads in the early 1970s – they were asking $6000.
The last time I bought a car built in 1978 was because it was cheap and I needed wheels it sure wasnt new or featured here in fact most of you have never even seen one except on these pages, it was a KC Chrysler Centura with nearly every option box checked( the order form was in the glove box) 245 hemi 6, 4 speed manual, mag wheels, vinyl top, velour, fake wood grain, heavy duty towbar and large alloy bullbar up front $700 it went great handled not so great. But compared to the 98 diesel hatch I drive now it was rubbish except for off the line acceleration and high speed acceleration the Xsara has it beaten everywhere, cars fortunately have come a long way since the offerings of the late 70s
Why not? I’ll try to identify those Mystery 10…
No particular order… Some of those photos show just a metal panel… Not a whole fender or quarter panel, either.
Pretty LAME clues.
1)Porsche 928
2)BMW 6 series
3) Bricklin or Plymouth Arrow… The pic of the car with side louvers
4)BMW 320i
5)VW Scirocco
6) Blue Car… Who the heck knows? Renault Alpine or MGB
7) Mazda RX7
8)Mercury Zephyr
9)Audi 5000
10) Honda Accord hatchback
Cars were ALOT better looking back then, and had more character than the CRAPPY blobs of plastic nowadays.
Yada, yada “Oh, but cars nowadays are safer, yack, yack…” Oh, please. If you want safe… Go lock yourself up in a bank vault.
At least back than, you could TELL an import from a domestic, or a Japanese car from a European.
Car with the side louvres is not a Bricklin. Hint: logo features a serpent eating a man.
The blue car on the bottom is a Porsche 911S/C. I’m pretty sure the orange BMW is a 530i, because of the protruding side marker light and because it was in vogue to bash the 320i.
“Cars were ALOT better looking back then…”
Back then, middle aged people complained that new [1978] cars were “too boxy”, and pined for ’57 Chevys, or 32 Fords.
They’re not wrong either. I think the more undisputible statement would be that cars were ALOT more distinctive back then.
This… for damn sure. At 100 paces who can tell a Camry from a Sonata from a Fusion???
I can.
Looking at the classifieds, $5000 for a Corvair; if you kept it up and only drove it on sunny weekends all these years, you’d have…a $5000 Corvair. If you had given the $4000 Challenger the same treatment, you could retire on the proceeds of the Barrett-Jackson auction. But you’d have to take the custom wheels (chrome Cragars? polished five-slot mags?) off and put on the “day one” steelies and dog dishes.
Exactly!
Loving this blast from the past. Has it really been 37 years?
It really struck me how many dead brands are represented in these ads, either because they’re defunct or because they’re no longer sold in the U.S.
– Mercury
– Triumph
– Renault
– MG
– Alfa Romeo (for now, anyway)
– Pontiac
– Saab
– Peugeot
– Plymouth
– Datsun (not dead, but renamed)
And The Dry Look, that’s probably a dead brand, too.
Peugeot is alive and well so is MG & Renault, they just dont bother with the US market.
I remember those “wet head is dead” ads for The Dry Look. I’d dearly like the Grand Am now. That ad for the Volk’s seatbelts reminds me that a lot of GM’s had the same sort of system but you could unbuckle the belt and let it retract into the door-no one kept the belt connected. The worse was renting a 89 Cougar in Florida with those power shoulder belts–you still had to connect the lap belt, those were not mandated in Canada.
Had a Honda Hawk like that. Same color, same year. Not with the automatic, though. This was around ’97-’98.
1978, i remember renting first a volare and later a fairmount to drive to new jersey for the weekend from boston. the fairmount was easier to handle, but felt like a thin metal sedan.
bother better than a pinto, or roommates beat up 69 mustang for 250 miles each way i think it was, id go the taconic to 90 then over to boston on the pike.
but i didnt then, connecticuit, till we figured out the longer country roads thru berkshires was more comfortable scenic ride.
also in the ad for 79 rx7…u could get one 4 what a stripper glc was 2 years later.
Great post – I still have my copy upstairs somewhere. Time does add some perspective on things – a few additions to the ad copy with the advantage of 37 years…….
– Mercury Zephyr ES – Think German (overpriced), Italian (rust), British (reliability). Then think again……..
– The classically British Triumph Spitfire Roadster…..classic drip pans included…..
– Le Weekend car – i.e.,it only starts once every 5 days…..
– Alfa Romeo Sports Sedan – for those that consider driving an art – and a tow truck a second vehicle…….
– Peugeot – No one builds cars like we build cars – Dieu merci……….
– Plymouth Volare – Definitely don’t give up on buying the rust proofing……..
No offense to anyone who owns or is a fan of these cars, I just remember how crappy cars were in general during this period.
I love Fairmonts… but I not-so-fondly remember their issues 🙂 .
Don’t give up–buy a Plymouth. Then give up. You have now hit rock bottom.
In light of recent discussion here about the different size classes of American cars, how they have changed over time, and how certain models did or didn’t fit into them, I’m struck at how the Fairmont ad touts it as a “mid-size” car. I’d call it a “compact”, filling in the slot in Ford’s lineup previously occupied by the Falcon and Maverick and later occupied by the Tempo and Contour. If anything, I’d think that the Fairmont was actually a little bit smaller than older competing compact models (GM RWD X-bodies, Chrysler F-bodies), forget about mid-sizes.
Of course, classifying a smaller car as as a mid-size undoubtedly gives it an advantage over “true” mid-sizes in some of the categories Ford mentions in the ad (gas mileage, sticker price). And to be fair to Ford, this was during a period when the size classifications were very much in flux, with the Big Three handling downsizing in various segments in different ways, and not always selling models that lined up directly with each other. By 1978, each of the Big Three were marketing cars as mid-sizes that had exterior dimensions similar to what had traditionally been considered compacts (downsized GM RWD A-bodies, Chrysler M-bodies, even FoMoCo’s own Granada/Monarch, which had been designed as compacts but were more-or-less being marketed as midsizes by this point). The Fairmont was probably fairly close in size to them. The Fairmont was also very space-efficient for an American car of this era and may have had interior dimensions that compared favorably with cars that were larger on the outside. Meanwhile, new compacts under development (GM FWD X-bodies, Chrysler K-bodies) were clearly smaller than the Fairmont. And the midrange Japanese sedans that seemed to become more popular in the U.S. with each passing year (e.g., Toyota Corona, Honda Accord) were more-or-less in the same price range as American mid-sizes but were much smaller cars in terms of exterior dimensions. Taking all that into account, I can see how Ford could straightfacedly call the Fairmont a mid-size.
IIRC, the Fairmont & Zephyr had the same interior space (per the EPA) as a mid sized car. I can say this with some authority, as my parents still owned a 1974 Mercury Montego when my brother brought home his 1978 Mercury Zephyr. In terms of hip and shoulder room there was definitely more. The leg room was similar in back and a little less in front, however.
That’s probably where they started using the term mid size attached to the F/Z.
In Europe the Escort/Focus is considered midsized.
Remember how hard denim was in the 70’s? An all denim outfit was like walking around in a hazmat suit. Must have been the #1 cause of adult rashes.
Yea, but look at the bright side… you could be dragged 10 miles behind a pickup and not have a scratch…
How about the top 10 automotive magazine covers? I’ll vote for the September ’68 Car and Driver.
AWESOME POST, YOHAI!!! Thank you for the blast-from-the-past. Can’t wait for your next installment.
Really fun.
Great post. The ad copy for the Honda Civic touts the “simplicity” of its controls and the ad itself uses the tagline, “We make it simple.”
Would anyone say that today when looking at a 2015 Honda?
Good point. I looked at one recently and my answer would be yes, as long as you only use the basic functions and ignore everything else.
What a trip (back in time)! That pic of the Mercury Zephyr is almost exactly like my brother’s car. Except his was that weird beige color instead. And it had the “chamois” (orange) interior.
I mostly remember 1974-1982 as the height of the Malaise Era, and the vast majority of these cars a Malaise Sleds to me.
I’d love that Pontiac Grand Am, or the Kelmark GT or that Saab turbo! Most everything else there just reminds me of how crappy the late 70’s was for cars. It was great for a lot of other things, but we still had a number of 60’s cars running around reminding us how far we’d fallen…
I recall all of these ads – some not so fondly. one thing that I do vividly remember from those days of motoring journalism is a particular LTTE that ran one month in R&T – it read, as follows: “More Stan Mott!”.
The one less than obvious thing that jumps out at me is how you inquire about the Kelmark GT. Like a million other products back then, you filled out the little form, or often a matchbook cover, cut it out and mailed it in and then waited for them to send it to you. I spent the summer of 78 learning to walk again after invasive knee surgery. The same operation is done today through an arthroscope and it’s more of an inconvenience than a surgery. As to the Lee Jeans ad, no I never looked that cool, but I thought I did.
I think I still have that one in the basement.
Hard to believe a DB5 lived at this humble address, per the advert for $25k.
I loved those Stan Mott cartoons as a kid…
1978 was the beginning of many cars designed with CAD/CAM, improved quality and better design. It was the end of floaty domestic barges filled with velour padding.
In 1978, I no longer sported that Farrah hair – Peter Frampton’s curly lion mane – that’s what I had and the girls fighting over who got to use my back pocket pick comb. God was I skinny.
I love those used car prices: Maserati for $6,600? Dodge Challenger for $4,000?
Which cars from today will make us droll 40 years from now?