Here’s a car I totally forgot existed, never knew existed, or purposely deleted from my memory banks. But then it’s no wonder: exactly 2,326 of these 1978 Monza ‘S’ Coupes were ever made. And good luck finding one still in existence via a Google search: zilch.
But it’s clearly the best “Vega” ever, thanks to its proudly proclaimed “cast iron muscle under the hood”, which of course refers to the 2.5 L “Iron Duke”, which of course was nothing more than a “remodeled” and considerably smoother Chevy II 153 four, and is what the Vega should have had from the get-go, if not something even better. Oh well…But it’s nice to know that some 2,326 folks got the Vega hatchback that about a million or so Vega buyers didn’t get.
Having made the questionable dive into the 1978-1980 Monza rabbit hole, I finally found my way out, but discovered some other oddities I had long forgotten, or never knew.
I did know that there was a Monza wagon available in 1978, which of course was nothing more than the Vega Kammback, with a Monza-style front end. I say “Monza-style”, because the actual front end on the Monzas that didn’t have the sleek Endura front ends were different, as were the fenders and hood and the rest of it.
Here’s the “plain” Monza front end, as typically seen on the Town Coupe variants.
But did you know that there was also a version of the 2+2 that had that front end? I’d long repressed that, if I did.
And that the notchback coupe could be had with the Endura front end? Never seen one. No wonder; only 6,823 were ever made. Or is that the number for the one above it? The nomenclature gets confusing.
Here’s the 1978, if it helps clarify the confusion. Either body style was available with either front end. But where’s the wagon? It’s not in here at all.
One has to go to the 1978 Chevy Wagons brochure to find it. “The sporty wagon with cast-iron muscle under the hood”. Now why would they make a point of that?
And hang on there, where’s the featured Monza ‘S’ (Vega) coupe in that 1978 Monza brochure? It’s not there!
That’s because they issued a second 1978 Monza brochure, dated February 1978. And here it is, along with the wagon too. But that raises a serious question: why wasn’t the Vega-body ‘S’ coupe and the wagon in the original brochure? Some conspiracy theorists claim it’s because Chevy found itself with a slew of unused Vega bodies at the end of the 1976 model year, a year when Vega sales fell off a cliff. And so they decided to put a slightly altered grille on them and sell them as Monzas.
I’m skeptical. They don’t build bodies and then store them. And although only 2,326 of these ‘S’ coupes were made in 1978, over 27,000 of the wagons were built. No, they didn’t have a pile of 30,000 Vega bodies sitting out back…
Yes, the wagon sold in higher numbers. But the other unicorn is the woody Estate Wagon, of which only 2,478 were ever built. Another one we’re not likely to find on the streets. In fact, a Google search shows zero results for the estate wagon and the ‘S’ Coupe.
For that matter, this one was the only result I got for a (non-Sport) hatchback coupe.
Now there’s one more oddity, in these brochures and such. The 1979 brochure re-uses much of the first 1978 brochure, including the back page which shows the models and has the July 1977 date on it. Which means once again, the wagon is missing (the ‘S’ Coupe didn’t survive into 1979).
So Chevrolet issued a separate Monza Wagon flier for 1979. Kinda’ looks like someone effed that up. The wagon was selling pretty well, and was carried over, but got left out of the brochure….
In case any of you ever see one of these out in the real world, do make a point to document it. I’d like to know for sure that it really did exist.
More Monza goodness:
CC 1979 Chevrolet Monza Town Coupe: Vega II or Mustang Too? JPC
Why a Monza “S”? By 1976 Vega sales had collapsed because of all the quality problems associated with it. So they simply attached a Monza front clip to the Vega and renamed it Monza. Chevrolet marketing probably assumed the average dweb out there would think with a new name is was not the sorry old Vega, and they could continue production for a few more years, at least until the Cavalier arrived.
It’s not a Monza clip attached to the Vega. The Monza front end has different lines, and the wheel opening is different. They just cobbled up a new Monza-ish front end to the Vega front clip.
I haven’t compared parts numbers, but it does look like Chevy managed to work the real Monza grille insert, headlamp bezels, and maybe even the bumpers into the Wagon/S front clip. The body-colored section of course has to be shaped differently to mate with the different Vega sheetmetal.
That sounds about right.
Price point? MSRP would be a good addition to the data in the article.
The J-bodies (Cavalier) were in the wings at this point (introduced in May, 1981), plus the Chevette had shown up for 1976, so this could also be last-gasp scrambling with H-body offerings to keep sales going.
The dollar was in free-fall during the era, but the 2/77 issue of CandD gives the Iron Duke-powered Pontiac Astre hatchback coupe’s base price as $3,430 and as-tested price as $5,263. A 53% upcharge in options might even raise eyebrows in a German car showroom today, but such was the time when everything was optional on a Detroit car. The price as-tested was well above the price of a Celica, which came with most things standard. It was also higher than a loaded Pinto.
I was just looking at Car and Driver’s 1977 review of the Pontiac Astre hatchback coupe, which was basically an Iron Duke powered Vega. It says the Iron Duke weighed twenty pounds more than the Vega 2300, or Durabilt 140, or whatever that travesty was called by 1977. The “2.5 litre(sic) L4” as they called the Iron Duke, produced about the same horsepower as a two-barrel carburetor Vega engine while making considerably more torque at much lower engine speeds. The Astre was tested with a three-speed automatic, air conditioning, power steering and a curb weight of 2,648 pounds, which made for a car that couldn’t break twenty seconds in the quarter mile at a diesel-like 66.5 mph trap speed.
I’m surprised to learn that there were so few of the Vega-bodied Monzas, as Monzas and Astres were the only Vegas that were still on the road in the ’80s.
I don’t recall having ever seen a Monza “S” coupe, though I have seen the Monza sales brochure that featured it. However, I swear there were also a handful of 1978 Pontiac Sunbird hatchbacks that used the Vega/Astre Hatchback body. They must be even more rare than the 1978 Chevrolet Monza “S.” The Sunbird hatchbacks used the same front end clip as the 1978 Sunbird Safari wagons (a slightly modified version of the front end clip from the previous year’s Pontiac Astres). I can’t find any documentation about the car and I’ve only ever seen one. It was at my local Pontiac dealer in either late 1977 or sometime in 1978.
I’ve never seen or heard of a Vega/Astre body Sunbird, but was amused at the time that Pontiac was too cheap to even tool up for a Sunbird-style front clip for the “Sunbird” wagons, unlike Chevrolet which did make a Monza-style front clip for the Monza wagons (which by necessity was shaped differently to mate with the Vega body).
Johnster, I think you mentioned this not too long ago (or I was reading an older article you commented on) and I did some digging and I simply can’t find any reference to an Astre-based ’78 Sunbird. I mean, such a car sounds plausible and it’s not like there’s much out there on the ’78 Monza S hatch but there’s just nothing on the internet about it.
Are you absolutely sure the Sunbird you saw back then wasn’t just an Astre?
When I saw the car it was new. I initially assumed it was a ’77 Astre, but it had chrome “Sunbird” logos on it.
Did another trawl through Google last night and could find only one reference to it on a Pontiac fan site, but the page didn’t load.
It’s not in the ’78 brochures although, as Paul pointed out, even the Monza S appeared inconsistently in promotional material.
I believe to have a monza s
Any photos you could share?
I had a 1978 Monza S with a Buick odd fire V6 and a 4 speed manual. In 1988 the little woman was set on a S10 Blazer. So I traded thinking I’d just get another, Never saw one again.
Paul: I think the photo of the notchback coupe with the Endura front end is a Buick Skyhawk coupe.
I see bow ties on the hubcaps and a Monza badge, don’t think that is a Skyhawk
The Skyhawk and Olds Starfire H bodies were both hatchback-only.
Correct. Which always seemed a bit odd, you’d think a Skyhawk or Starfire Towne Coupe would have been more appealing to the type of people that would wander into a Buick or Oldsmobile dealer.
And then Buick and Oldsmobile got the weird Slantback intermediate body for ’78…
They did look almost identical… badge engineering at its best (or worst).
Here’s another Monza ad that shows that car:
Very nice Monza ad that your show here. The advertisement itself adds to the marketing confusion. These 2 cars are specifically known as “Monza Sport” (coupe and / or Towne coupe, and “2+2” – i.e. the hatchback body). Sport referred to the quad headlights and lower pointy-nose with the Endura front end. I like the very rare and elusive Monza Sport Towne Coupe. The brochure states that the “landau vinyl roof” was available on this model, but I have yet to find an image of one!
I ORDERED AND OWNED A 1978 CHEVY MONZA SPORT COUPE WITH A V8, 4SP, LIMITED SLIP POSI REAR END. (METALIC RE) COULD NOT GET A/C WITH THAT DRIVE LINE PACKAGE. OH HOW I WISH I STILL HAD IT. OWNED IT FOR 4 YEARS, THEN STARTED A FAMILY AND GOT A FAMILY CAR. THE DEALER I PURCHASED IT FROM TOLD ME A COUPLE MONTHS AFTER I BOUGHT IT. HE DID SOME CHECKING AND THE MONZA SPYDER BEAT THE CORVET IN THE 1/4 MILE THAT YEAR, AND MY MONZA THE WAY I HAD IT SET UP WAS 200 LB.S LIGHTER THAN THE SPYDER. I STILL HAVE THE OWNERS MANUAL AND THE BROCHER I ORDERED IT BY.
Never realised these were so rare one Monza turned up on race tracks in NZ and was quite successful I must look it up and see exactly which one it began as.
Avid builder of 1/25 scale models when I was young. I built a MPC Monza S making me perhaps the only reader who has “owned” one.
This one?
Yes!
Interesting that it’s identified as just a “Chevy Sportback” – it’s like that way they can sell the kit to both Vega fans and Monza fans. Does make me wonder what the process is regarding which cars to make kits for. A low-production (if it even exists) leftover body style in its 8th year? Sure, let’s build it!
I’m guessing it was a simple update to one mold from the existing Vega kit. MPC wasnt sure what Chevy would call it in time for production so they went with something generic like Sportback. Pure speculation of course!
As I was reading the article this model car immediately popped into my head because I built one too.
I own a 1978 Monza S It is an 1/8th mile car.. They are 1977 left-over Vega’s
The 1978 Monza line expanded to include rebadged holdovers from the Vega line, which ended production after the 1977 model year. Chevy grafted a new Monza front end onto the previous Vega hatchback and wagon body-styles. The Monza “S”, marketed as the Monza price leader, used the Vega hatchback body. With production of only 2,000 units, it was speculated that this was simply an effort to use up a stock of leftover 1977 Vega bodies. The Monza wagon was also offered in an estate wood-trimmed version, using the Vega wagon body
Count me amongst the ranks too. Mine’s the drag version
I knew about the mix-and-match front ends (and rear bumpers on the hatchbacks), and also about the Monza S although I have doubts about that 3,000 production figure as I’ve never seen one (I looked for one at a Chevy dealer in late 77) nor read about one online. What I didn’t know about was that the Monza wagon could be fitted with a Buick 3.8L V6, something that was never available in a Vega. Even though it was not yet the awesome engine it would later become, I’d take it in a heartbeat over an Iron Duke.
A factory V6 Monza wagon would be a terrific CC. Were there any road tests and any idea how many were built?
I don’t know, and also don’t know if the V6 was offered on ’79 wagons too. The 78 brochure doesn’t rule out that both the V6 and V8 could be ordered on the S hatchback – it shows them as available on coupes and hatchbacks. I’d be amazed just to find a 4-cylinder Monza S.
The 2.5 Litre “Iron Duke” isn not the same engine as the old 153ci Chevy 4 used in the Novas in the 1960s. The Iron Duke was designed by Pontiac in the 1970s. The Vega which came out in 1970 was upgraded with a lot of Monza parts in 1975. The Monza was based on the Vega chassis but was upgraded a lot when it came out in 1975. It was supposed to be a good handling car. Those “improvements” were incorporated into the 1975 to 1977 Vegas and Pontiac Astres. The Monza was also supposed to use a rotary or wankel engine. The 1973-1974 energy crisis put an end to the wankel engine due to poor fuel economy. AMC, I believe was also supposed to use the GM Wankel in the 1975 Pacer. AMC sold the old Buick V-6 tooling back to GM in 1974 or so. Kaiser-Jeep used this V-6 in Jeeps up until 1970s or 1971 when it was bought out by AMC. AMC put their own engines in the Jeeps including their straight 6. Buick started building the V-6 engine again in 1975 and it found its way into many GM cars in the 1970s including the Monza and the other GM H-Body cars. AMC squeezed their straight 6 into the Pacer. The 1975 and later Vegas and Monza were a lot alike underneath so the 1978 Monza S was easy to create from the Vega.
I didn’t say it was “the same engine as the old 153ci Chevy II engine”. Chevrolet Brazil had modified the Chevy 153 by increasing its bore and reducing its stroke to make a 151, which made it run much smoother (relatively). Pontiac used that same approach, and made other changes (like the cylinder head) to make it meet emissions. It’s a direct evolution from the Chevy 153. You can drop in a 153 crankshaft into an Iron Duke.
One of these days I’ll have to do a full post on it. Sure, Pontiac’s PR emphasized how it was a “new” engine. And it used a few minor bits from the Pontiac 301 V8, like lifters or something like that. But fundamentally, it was an improved 153, and one that Chevy could have done for the Vega from the get-go.
Paul, I did not read closely enough what you wrote. My apologizes. I would love to see an article on the “Iron Duke” and how it was developed. I had a couple of them in some S-10s I had in the 1980s. They were a good engine with fuel injection added to them.
I don’t know about how “good” the Iron Duke was. It was good in the way it did not blow up the Vega engine.
Admittedly, if one tootled along at 3000 RPM or less, the Iron Duke was not so bad.
Here’s an extensive article about the Iron Duke published by SAE which describes the evolution from Chevy II 153 to GM Brazil 151 to Pontiac Iron Duke. Although the lineage is clear, it seems few original 1962 Chevy parts, or even parts from the Brazilian engine, survived intact by the time it evolved into the Iron Duke. As noted, “the majority of the pieces [of the GM do Brazil 151 4] are not interchangeable with the new Pontiac L-4. For example, such basic parts as the intake manifold, the cylinder head, the exhaust manifold, the rocker cover, the oil pan, the connecting rod, and the piston cannot be mixed between the engines.” Bolt patterns are also different.
https://gafiero.akroncdnr.com/docs/IronDuke.pdf
As I said, it was an evolution of the 153. My point is: It’s NOT essentially “half a 301 V8”, or a clean sheet design, as is commonly claimed.
Yes, very few parts actually interchange, but key architectural hard points are the same, which allows the 153 crank to be dropped in.
Pontiac used the opportunity to learn from Chevy Brazil how to make it smoother, and then updated many elements including a new head, manifolds, certain changes to the block, etc. to update it for a world where emissions and fuel efficiency were paramount.
According to my February 1977 Car and Driver, the Iron Duke shares its pistons, connecting rods, wrist pins, and piston rings with the 301. That’s certainly not to say that the heads are common or that the block shares the same sort of relationship with a Pontiac V8 that the 194 ci Tempest I4 had. The article does mention that a head designed for the SBC was “almost a bolt on” for the Iron Duke according to a CHEVROLET engineer.
Duke had a crossflow head, Chevy ll had “U-turn” flow. So of course there’d be no interchange of top-end parts
Not initially. It did get one after 1979.
Was there a u-turn iron Duke head?
I don’t doubt you, probably so.
I stand corrected.
Regardless, it probably doesn’t share the old Chevy ll ports etc.
Here’s a gen 1 Iron Duke. Alongside a Chevy 153. Any resemblances are strictly coincidental.
I’m going to bet that at least the block lifter cover is interchangeable. 🙂
Here the two fraternal twins from the other side. No similarities, eh?
Crankshafts may share dimensions as to main bearing locations. Thus cranks possibilly could have shared manufaturing tooling. However, Chev ll used a V8-like rear flange and 2-piece seal; while Duke was without flange to accommodate one-piece seal.
Crankshafts obviously would not be interchangeable. It’s unlikely that cranks would even “saddle” the other blocks for even a test fit.
The 153 crankshaft will fit in the ID, with a minor codification at the rear seal.
I did a deep dive on this a while back, got into some forums. That’s where I got this.
There’s no need to keep this silly argument going. The ID is a direct evolution of the 153. No, Pontiac did not start with a clean sheet, or with its 301. They made a significant number of changes, but the basic block architecture is the same as the 153. And they used 301 parts where they would work for obvious cost benefits.
This is like arguing with the Mustang II fanboys: they can’t bear to hear that the Pinto was the starting point for the MII.
Or the Seville fanbois: they can’t bear to hear that the Nova was the starting point.
It’s like in houses: it’s always much easier and cheaper to remodel than tear down and design and build from scratch. The ID is a remodeled 153. End of story. Let’s drop it, please.
Among the many Buicks to receive the 105-ish horsepower 231 cu. in. V6 was the pre-downsized LeSabre.
I have no problem with underpowered cars, but yikes.
Ahh Paul, you’ve posted one of my favourite obscure American cars. So obscure, in fact, that that brochure photo appears to be the only photo of the ’78 S hatch that I can find on the internet.
Even on Monza fan pages, there’s just little information to be found on these. But yes, I’ve heard that “leftover bodies” story too and it does sound rather dubious.
Count me as another reader who’s never heard of this. Also count me as a person who thought the Iron Duke was half a 301 Pontiac V-8, the spiritual descendant of the Tempest’s “Trophy Four”.
It’s just amazing how often the words, “cast iron” appear in those ads!
I’ve long assumed the Iron Duke was so named to emphasize the material it was built with, so everyone would know it wasn’t the aluminum Vega engine they’d heard all sorts of nasty things about by 1977, but can’t find any proof. But the brochure here adds to the evidence.
I’ve also never seen GM or Pontiac call it the Iron Duke after its first year in 1977. I think GM freaked out about giving engines names after the Chevy-engines-in-Oldsmobiles debacle that year. Later GM would call it the Tech 4 (Car and Driver quipped it was more like the “Low-Tech 4”), but nonetheless “Iron Duke” stuck. It’s certainly a cool name for an uncool engine.
To be fair, the “Tech IV” was a pretty big improvement over the Iron Duke. It had roller lifters and Terribly Bad Injection (TBI).
It even got balance shafts late in its life.
I used to drive an ’82 Phoenix with the TBI Tech IV (I had never heard GM or Pontiac calling it that at the time) and even if throttle-body FI was weak compared to proper multi-port FI, it was a huge leap over a carburetor. We had that car for about 15 years and the TBI never caused trouble or needed service, and the engine always started easily and never stalled. The EPA fuel economy figures were also up by a few MPG over the earlier carbureted version. By contrast, the carbs in a 81 Citation and 82 J2000 were always needing adjustment, and the cars frequently stalled upon starting and sometimes just when stopped at a red light.
GM could have engineered a multiport FI system that would have been much better than TBI. They went with TBI because it was cheap. Existing manifolds and air cleaner assemblies could be used.
A fairly comprehensive list of changes to the Iron Duke/Tech 4 can be found in a couple of engine-rebuilding trade magazines.
You’d be looking for the November 1986, and September 1991 issues of Automotive Rebuilder magazine.
I have scans of the articles; but I don’t have permission to post the copyrighted work. The magazine isn’t published any more. I don’t know where to begin looking for the rights to distribute.
Suffice to say that GM made over 200 different versions of this engine during it’s production life. They changed EVERYTHING at least once, and lots of stuff more than that. Some castings could be machined more than one way, so a correct casting number might not be the correct part number for a given application.
And NONE of those 200 versions made any power.
I’m sure after the widespread negative press about the “innovative” aluminum block in the early Vega, Chevy had to emphasize the fact that this wasn’t THAT engine. Playing up the cast iron construction was probably done very purposely.
The Iron Duke is not the same engine as the Chevy II four which is more closely related to the post 62 Chevy Six, it would have been nice if they had grafted a shortened version of the OHC Pontiac Sprint Six head on it though. You can still get the Chevy II four as an industrial engine from GM.
When almost all Japanese engines had overhead cams, GM’s (and Ford’s) ‘new’ pushrod fours seemed curiously low-tech. An OHC Iron Duke could have gone a long way to restoring GM’s credibility after the Vega fiasco.
Wonder if they could’ve cast the Vega block in iron? Or would it still have been troublesome?
What they should have done was cast the Vega head in aluminum from the start. That would have solved just about all of the problems.
Just taking a blind guess here, but perhaps that Monza “S” (Vega) hatchback was some sort of low-price come-on that the dealers could locally advertise and use to build sales room traffic. The point was not to sell them a competitively cheap “S” hatchback (“we, can, er, order you one, but it will take a bit of time…”), but to upsell them to whatever it was that they actually had in stock.
This seems like some marketing guy’s idea to keep selling Vegas with a different front end so they could say it wasn’t a Vega. I guess it was worth a shot but the low sales numbers seem to indicate it wasn’t much of a success.
Was this the same Chevy Monza that featured a V-8 engine where you had to jack the car up, remove the front wheel to change the spark plugs through a wheel well access panel?
Not the whole car; just the engine!
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/01/10/archives/problem-is-reported-in-replacing-a-plug-of-chevrolet-monza.html
Thanks for the info. Must have been a different car I was thinking of.
Well, I guess the Monza wasn’t designed for that 262 V-8 and it was shoehorned into the engine compartment with serviceability an afterthought.
Having to loosen the engine mount and jacking the engine up to change the spark plugs reminds me of another car.
Around circa 1988 or 89 I was at a Ford dealer servicing my then new 1988 Ford Taurus. I saw a Ford Tempo on a hoist and engine dropped. I queried about it and the technician said they were changing the serpentine belt. Wasn’t enough clearance between the belt pulley and the fender wall to remove and install the belt while the engine was in the engine compartment, so they had to remove the engine.
I was tempted to ask how much that was going to cost, but decided it was best I didn’t know and also not to continue going to that dealership for non-warranty work.
Today’s cars seems to be more tightly packed
Best Vega Ever is equivalent to Best Public Housing Ever.
I think it’s “just” a regular Monza-based Pontiac rather than a Vega mash-up, but this this car has been listed on my local Facebook Marketplace for quite some time now. It feels like I’ve only seen a handful of these cars in my lifetime, and I’m 41 and grew up in the south.
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/725267128070082/
The Monza notchbacks always looked strange to me. They look as though the rear wheels ought to be about four inches further back.
I had an 81 Sunbird with an Iron Duke. That engine hurt itself badly halfway between Fort Knox andNashville. An Army buddy had a brother with a Buick Skyhawk up in Flint, MI, so I bought that engine and put it in, badly, I survived a good six months. Later, I found myself with a vega-engined 77 Astre. When that mill quit, I got a chevy 283 from a ’62 pickup, and a a motor mount kit from JC Whitney. That project fell through when I found out that without an engine, the body would sag when you opened a door! Never had a Pontiac again. When I got my grandmother Maude’s Cutlass Ciera wagon, though, that had an Iron Duke.
I’ll take a 1979 Sunbird Safari with the 3.8 V-6…..
GM really mastered “cut-and-paste” with the H-bodies.
The first few years of the 151 iron duke, shared pistons and conn rods with the 301. Later years, both piston and rod changed/evolved.
I vaguely recall the mish mash of names and parts bin styling when the Vega and Monza eras overlapped.
The genius that allowed this mess must have been promoted to product planning in the ’80s for all the GM divisions where few cars ever really died and new product rarely fully overtook old product – creating a monstrous and confusing line of products where management seemed to lack confidence in the new product.
So true, it made no sense for the Vega body to continue with the Monza in the showrooms, and by this point blending the base Monza nose into the old body and renaming it its just pure confusion. carrying over the wagon makes some sense I suppose, but the hatch body is thoroughly redundant
Really says something about GMs lack of confidence in new product that the old Vega was their safety net!
If the Vega was nothing else, it at least ‘looked’ good and, more importantly for GM, it ‘was’ a money-maker. The Monza 2+2 became GM’s de facto Mustang fighter when the Ford went off the Pinto platform. In that regard, it would have been akin to Ford making some kind of lineage to the Pinto from the Mustang, say, giving the Pinto some sort of ersatz Mustang front end and call it the Mustang ‘classic’ or some such nonsense.
In effect, the Vega/Monza ‘S’ with a front end that was also available on the lowest trim Monza 2+2 was an effort to offer a ‘sporty’ Monza on the cheap. Someone else had commented it was a marketing ploy to offer a loss-leader to get people into the showroom, and that sounds about right. They could run ads offering a dirt-cheap Monza, and when the customer showed up and realized what was being advertised was really a Vega, the salemen would move them up to a ‘real’ Monza.
It’s worth noting that the Chevette had also been introduced by 1976, so the Vega was no longer GM’s economy car, even if they’d fixed most of the problems by the time it became the Monza ‘S’.
To echo Paul’s comment in the Camaro article yesterday the Vega already was kind of a Mustang competitor in many respects, it had style handling performance and a GT package, it was basically a Camaro II before the Mustang II. The Monza should have just replaced the Vega outright rather than add another stylish compact 2 door with identical mechanicals to the lineup. The Pinto wasn’t really the Vegas equal, you could have a fun Pinto if you checked the right boxes but that’s not really the same, and it’s not nearly as inherently pretty. It was like the Corvair/Falcon all over again
With the notoriety of the Vega, which I presume was well known by the time the Monza S came out, I don’t believe many buyers saw a stylish body as much as the shape of the notorious piece of junk they had or knew someone had.
I never knew the notchback could be had with the endura facia, that’s quite striking, it reminds me a lot of the early fox Mustang notchbacks.
As for the Monza S I vaguely knew it existed but its a really sad car, the front end is really dumpy looking, and the iron duke while reliable is one of the best examples of GMs surrendering of daring engineering. As bad as the original aluminum Vega 4 turned out to be it was ambitious, and combined with that excellent styling it came with it was the last of its kind, but by 78 it was nothing more than a shell of a notorious car, half assedly disguised not only in aesthetics but by name.
Every year or so, I’ll do an internet search for a ’78 Monza S hatchback, and have only come up with one… in one guy’s garage, awaiting some work to it, IIRC. I didn’t check again before posting this, but that was after a pretty exhaustive search, before.
The notchback with the Endura front always looked a bit odd to me. Not ugly, but the aero-style front end combined with the semi-formal looking roofline is an unusual juxtaposition. Then there is the fact that the body-colored front bumper doesn’t “rhyme” with what is presumably a chrome bumper out back.
I found this pic online – it looks like it was cut from a magazine, but it does imply there was at least one Monza S built besides the dark red brochure car.
I never said or implied none were made. 2,326 were built, according to the records. None seem to have survived though.
Omg, excellent find, la673. I hadn’t seen that one yet.
Now I’m really wondering if there were any changes to the tail lights.
Doesn’t that brick wall and shrubbery look familiar?
Is this another “factory” shot at Warren?
In fairness that rear bumper mismatch plagued a lot of GM Endura nose cars in the 70s – Grand am, Laguna, GTO, 70-73 Firebird. I don’t mind the notchback roofline with that nose, I now think the regular front end made the formal body dumpy and sad by association
My second car, the first bought with my own money, was a then 8 year old Monza Town Coupe’ with a vinyl “landau” roof and a whore house red interior. This is a picture of the actual car taken onboard Naval Station Norfolk about 1984.
That’s over by what’s now called “Iowa Point.”
Looking over the list of GM’s deadly sins of the 60s from Corvair to Vega by way of “rope drive”, aluminum V8s and so on I think GM originated Top Gear’s slogan “Ambitious but rubbish”
Found some pics of an Estate Wagon at least. No Monza S though
I think Cosworth put some life into the Vega. I wish I still had mine.
If only Chevrolet had the 4.3 V-6 back then to put into the Monza
Oh wait, they almost did with the same 90 degree 3.3L 200 cubic inch V-6 block that was in the ’78 Malibu that later was bored to 3.9 and then the famous 4.3L.
That yellow wagon in the brochure picture is a dead ringer to one a friend bought new, right down to the color keyed wheel covers. She had just gotten married and it was her first brand new car. Oddly enough her mother had a 74 Vega Kammback, which became her sisters first car. I too, never saw a Monza S coupe, other than in the brochures and the MPC model, and I worked as a lot attendant at a Chevy dealership at the time. I did have experience with what has to be a real oddball Monza though. My older sister bought a brand new 76 Monza Towne Coupe, with the Spyder option. Motor Trend tested one very similar to my sister’s car but, my sister’s had the v8 and was a manual. The thing that made it odd was that it was the Spyder, which was more of a sporty option but it had the cabriolet roof with opera windows. It was black with white interior and black cabriolet roof. I’ve never seen another like it. She never had trouble with it and traded it in on a 78 Malibu wagon when she had her second child, because it was too small for getting the kids in and out of.
I found a picture of the Motor Trend 76 Monza Spyder test car. My sisters was identical except for having the cabriolet roof.
Just funny in a way that this many body styles and front ends and by the 2000s they couldn’t find a way to profitably do a Cobalt or Malibu in anything but a 4-door.
The Cobalt was available as a 2-door coupe.
Still, good point. The 76 Vega was available as a 2-door (you choose sedan or coupe), 2-door hatchback, 2-door wagon, and the Monza was a 2-door “coupe” and a two-door hatchback with different rooflines.
And we had the Pontiac Astre/Sunbird, and Olds Starfire, Buick Skyhawk variants.
By comparison, Honda that year offered an Accord hatchback. Four years later, they came out with a 4-door sedan variant. Two variants.
One reason the Japanese had higher quality was less variation.
Also, since 1976, auto manufacturing has become much more automated. Every variation drives up-front capital costs, so there is a built-in bias to reduce variations.
CAFE and crash standards also greatly affect what kinds of cars are offered. Manufacturers can only economically certify so many different powertrains in so many different bodies, weighted against sales. Crash standards change from time to time forcing them to focus the engineering efforts mostly on high volume sellers, to recoup their costs.
I’ve long said that what killed AMC (as the last independent) was CAFE and crash standards. With their relatively tiny budgets, there was no way they could keep up.
The light-truck carveout including SUVs was written specifically with going easy on AMC in mind, since Jeep was their money maker even then.
My now-wife tried buying a 1980 Monza Coupe (2 door, like the third pic in this post), but nearly non-existent credit history (and no cosigner) killed that idea. She was disappointed as she really liked the little beast. I remember her pointing it out to me on the dealer’s lot as we drove by, but all I can really remember is that it was red.
She ended up buying a used 1977 Olds Delta 88, while it was harder on fuel, it was probably a much better ownership experience overall…
The Monza received its’ midcycle refresh for 1978, the revised round headlight/chrome bumper face was probably designed with both the S/wagon and the “real” Monzas in mind. In the former case there was probably an effort to reuse the Endura nose panel molding developed for the 1976-77 Pontiac Astre, and also used on the 1978-79 Sunbird wagon which was a straight badge job.
I’ve long wondered why the wagon was dropped a year early after 1979 but it had the exact same cargo volume as a Citation hatchback which offered far superior rear passenger accommodations, especially so on the 5-door.
the 2.5 is a slug 0-60 in 17 seconds. you dont know what youre talking about.
I knew that 1979 Monza had a front end like that. I owned one in the 80s. It was a brown (mica or fleck) and tan interior. Had a V6, can’t remember the c.i. though. I think it was a 5 speed.
I found one photo of the Chevrolet Monza “S”:
http://jaysnascarbrew.cyberbree.com/photo_1.html
Hi. I bought a Monza S, sight unseen, last March (2022). All original, unmolested, but a tad whethered, so to speak. Mine has thr optional 231 Buick V6. It was a Wyoming car, now it is registered in the Sunshine state. Surprisingly, it has only minor surface rust. I am in the process of restoring it to as original as possible.
Old post, but I wanted to share that I had a 1980 base 2+2 hatch with the round headlight nose in college. They were pretty common, as I recall. After an unfortunate incident with a pick up truck, I decided to convert mine to the sport nose, which turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I loved my Monza, but it was a terrible car by any objective measure, lol.
Here’s a picture of it from the time.
Here’s another after the nose job.
Wow! GM was really cleaning out the parts inventory back in the late seventies!
My best friend’s dad bought a brand new Monza S in metallic red for he and his brother to drive. Had 4-speed stick and wasnt a bad little car. Everything other than the grill and engine was a Vega.