The excitement for the 1971 Chevrolet Vega started a year early, with teaser ads showing all of the technology and design features. As an 18 year old, I was eagerly awaiting the introduction of the new Vega. What could possibly go wrong with such a thoroughly engineered and tested car? Not much I surmised. GM was a great car company and I was tired to Chrysler’s old design of the Duster. The bait was on the hook and I was ready to bite. The Little Car That Does Everything well. What could go wrong, this was Motor Trend magazine’s CAR OF THE YEAR!!! Before you answer that question, read further.
In June of 1971, I got my new Vega. Truly a stripper special car in red that cost $2,000 out the door. Nothing in options except an AM radio and a TorqueDrive automatic transmission. What’s a TorqueDrive? It was basically a Powerglide transmission that you had to manually shift from 1st to 2nd at about 20 MPH. Ford’s and Chrysler’s small cars had 3 speed automatics, but GM was still in the Powerglide lane. My sister was going to be using the car at times, so a stick was out of the question. The pictures below are what my car looked like in red.
The styling mimicked the Camaro and I still consider the styling to be attractive today 47 years later. It was much better looking than the Pinto and had better interior room. It also had the famous GM flow-through ventilation system with a perforated vent in the trunk lid. In theory, it was supposed to provide continuous ventilation in the cabin. In reality, you couldn’t tell the difference. The fan switch on the dash could never be turned off, only to the low position.
Mechanically, the new 2300 cc engine was an engineering marvel, with that silicone impregnated cylinder walls that eliminated the need for steel cylinder liners. Too bad that this technology was ahead of its time. Although I never had a problem with that aspect of the engine, many others experienced severe cylinder wall wear when the coating bid a premature adieu. Other competitive cars had a coolant recovery bottle, but, not the Vega. So I added an aftermarket one to resolve any potential problems. The only problem I had with the engine was the oil filter. The first time I went to change the oil, I could not get the filter off with an oil filter wrench. Finally had to stab it with a large screwdriver to get it off.
Body wise, the first signs of rust appeared on the top of the front fenders about a year after purchase. Hmmmm, what’s this I wondered. A couple of months later, it was quite obvious what it was. Then the lower fender started to repeat the process followed by the lower part of the rear quarter panels. My first experience with the joys on Bondo. Turns out that the boys at GM saved a few pennies on rust protection by not providing any. Still, the car was still performing well and looked good after Bondo repairs and paint. The TorqueDrive transmission never gave any problems, although passing anyone on a two lane road was fun. Maybe 20 minutes after you decided to pass, would you be able to complete the job. Ahhhh, life in the slow lane teaches you patience. Something an 18 year old doesn’t have a lot of.
The interior wore well, although the black vinyl seats were always toasty in the summer. The steering wheel continually leached plasticizer during the summer, forcing you to keep a rag handy under the seat to wipe it clean. The rear seat was somewhat comfortable, but had to get into.
In 1974, the car met its inglorious end. I had been asked by a neighbor to park in their driveway while they were on vacation so that the house looked lived in. Since the car did not have a temperature gauge, there was no way to tell if the engine was overheating. Overheat it did and warped something related to the head gasket. I would have said that the head warped, but this was a cast iron cylinder head on an aluminum block engine. That would have been highly unlikely. It managed to leave its mark on the driveway by belching oil on the driveway. I managed to get the car started and brought it back home. Then I had to go clean the neighbor’s driveway to remove the oil stains.
Dad took one look at the car and declared that it was done. My younger brother had been looking into a V8 conversion for the car, so it was donated to him. He found a Buick aluminum V8 (pictured below) from the early 60’s that fit along with an automatic transmission. The car had good power with the only downside being the shift pattern for the transmission was PNDLR not the PRNDL that the car came with. You had to keep that in mind every time you entered the car. It soon met its demise when the engine burned a piston and the car was scrapped. The junkyard kept asking if it had a V8 because if it did, they didn’t want it. The answer was NO and they took the car.
In the end, the Vega was the car that only did one thing well. It disintegrated so far so fast that as a three year old car, it was worth $0. The next car would be back to the future.
The ad says “Inexpensive but not cheap”.
Exactly right, but not how they meant it.
Every time I read another (damning, are there any other kind?) article on the Vega, I think back to my ‘73 GT. And how it served me well for the three years I had it, despite wrecking it within four months of getting it (ran a stop sign), and three seasons of SCCA B-sedan autocross.
The trick, of course, was that I traded it in before the fourth year. It was already starting to show traces of smoke out the tailpipe the day I turned it in.
Just the same, I had a good one. And remember it fondly, with few complaints.
Always nice to learn something new… I was never aware of the Torquedrive transmission. I knew a lot of people with Vegas, but they must all have been manuals.
I could be wrong, but I think there was a “similar” manumatic type transmission available for the Chevy Nova.
Bingo! I know what a Torque Drive transmission is but thought it was only used in the Nova with the 153 C.I. 4 cylinder engine. Learn something new every day!
According to some sources, the Vega was originally intended to come standard with Torque Drive, with Powerglide as optional. And supposedly, the Opel-derived three speed (and four speed) manuals were only added later in its development.
This is almost identical to the trajectory of the 1960 Corvair, which Ed Cole insisted on being only available with Powerglide, until cost overruns changed that to make a three speed manual as standard. I bet if the idea of Torque drive had popped into Ed Cole’s head during the Corvair’s development, it might well have been its standard transmission.
The similarities between the 1960 Corvair and the 1971 Vega are curious: both had high-torque. low output aluminum 140 CID engines, intended to work well with a torque converter transmission. This was clearly Ed Cole’s influence, both times.
A little digging around in http://www.oldcarbrochures.org yields the following: Torque-Drive was also used in six-cylinder Novas as well as the fours, but it was gone from both Nova and Vega for 1972. Turbo-Hydramatic became available for 1973 in the Vega, which was the last year for Powerglide.
What’s this with “room for two full-grown people and three or four semi-grown people”? Was GM really suggesting you could squeeze *four* kids in that tiny back seat that has only two seat belts? How did that get by the lawyers?
Why would they wear seat belts? What are you, a fighter pilot?
“Why would they wear seat belts? What are you, a fighter pilot?”
You have me laughing like a complete idiot!
When I graduated from college I took a 2 week road trip from California to the Canadian Rockies with two friends, in my ’73 Vega GT. The larger of the two took a bus home from Vancouver. He did not fit in the back seat, even for 1/3rd of the time as we traded seats. Of course, he missed the catastrophic overheating when the intake manifold gasket let all the coolant seep out, slowly so I never saw any steam, on the southbound I5 bridge coming into Portland on the return to California. The running costs for the 600 or so miles home were quite a bit higher, as I had to buy bottled water in gallon jugs, and the oil consumption skyrocketed, as well as gas. I replaced the gasket and drove the car another 3 years, adding oil at every fillup. Power and drivability were not noticeably affected.
I’ve always wanted a Vega to compare to my 5 Pinto’s I’ve owned thru the years, but now I can’t afford the damn things…you should have kept yours, they seem to be worth big money to the Rednecks around here. They’ll want $1500 plus for shells.
Rednecks? We call ’em Vegatarians around here, son…
My old man had one of these, a ’76 GT (lol) and I had the same problem with the oil filter coming off. Of course he thought he could drive it down to the local mechanic to try to get the filter removed with a hole in it’s side. This was my first and only viewing of how much oil pressure is put out by a running engine! BTW, that engine looks like something that can be found in a Farmall tractor.
Good call on the agricultural appearance of the Vega’s engine. The biggest difference would be that, unlike a Farmall, the Vega’s powerplant was much more user unfriendly. Despite all the space in the engine bay, everything looks like it’d be a real pain to get off and/or easily torn up in the process. I’m talking, of course, really cynical stuff like an air cleaner that could only be replaced as an entire ‘assembly’.
That’s one of the reasons the Vega was so bad. When something needed to be replaced or simply broke (a common occurrence), due to the extreme flimsy nature of all the pieces, getting it repaired or replaced would not only be pricey (relative to the overall value of the car), but a quite involved process. No wonder the Vega became such a darling with the V8-conversion street-racer crowd, a quite unintentional situation.
A neighbor bought a Vega new in 1971. I believe it was already rusting as he signed the paperwork. Near our houses was a rough railroad crossing, the kind that humps up and the rails stick up 2 inches so that you had to just crawl over it. One day in 1974 his Vega gets stuck on the tracks. Rust had gutted it to the point that it was sagging and reducing ground clearance. Three years old, rust in peace.
These Vega ownership stories always remind me of those things that used to be published in The Readers Digest like “How I Survived Being Mauled By A Doberman.”
I had a boss who had 3 or 4 kids and no money. He bought a new Vega because it was zero down and $750 cash back. It was so cheap that the passenger seat had no adjustment, just bolted to the floor. He tried to do the first oil change and trashed the filter. He had it towed to the dealership.
He tried to install a new toilet seat. Put the first bolt in and the second was tilted and jambed. Tried to force it with a hammer. He wasn’t much better at work.
In the early 1970s, I read in the local paper about a woman who was so fed up with her Vega that she parked it outside of the Lordstown plant where the Vega was built and set the car on fire.
We had something similar. Someone didn’t like their Gremlin and parked across the street from the dealership with huge signs that were very easy to read on the fly stating exactly how they felt about AMC dealer service.
Reminds me of a story my dad told me about a Chrysler that a friend of his bought. Everything that could go wrong with that car did, to the point where he cut a big lemon made of sheet metal and attached it to the roof. It had “This Is A Chrysler Product” painted on it. The dealer gave him grief about it, but he kept it on the car, and they finally took the car back and gave him a (much better) new car. I don’t think you could get a better Vega – they were all garbage.
The ‘set car on fire’ story is true about a Lincoln Mark III. Featured on “60 Minutes”.
I owned a new 72 Vega Panel Express and a new 76 Pinto.
My Vega was traded in 74 for a 72 Triumph Spitfire (straight up) so I never experienced any of the more common Vega problems. However, my Vega had probably THE worst assembly quality of any of the 25-30 cars that I have owned. From the windshield forward all the different parts had poor fits/panel gaps as did the larger parts that made up the instrument cluster.
The Pinto? Over 2 years the only thing that broke was 1 of the filaments in a front turn signal/parking light bulb. A sore point was either the bias ply tires or the brake rotors as the front end developed a bit of a shake when the brakes were applied with a lot of force. The assembly quality was pretty good, but then that same basic car had been in production for 6 years and it was assembled in a plant that did not have the level of animosity between the workers and management that the Vega plant had.
My ’74 GT was already on it’s second engine in ’75 when I decided it was time to part company. The second motor had the same bad habit I did- it smoked. I picked up a ’69 Malibu Coupe from the original owner in Eugene for $500- possibly one of the best used car buy I ever made. 350, Auto, Bucket Seats, and Rally wheels, 26K miles, and just a few parking lot scratches. Never should have sold that one.
Nice! That Chevelle (my favorite model year, BTW – and yours sounds like a very nicely optioned example) must have felt like justice after the Vega!
My 77 chevy vega with a small block 350 turbo 400 tranny posi rear end. Its a rocket
Friends of my parents bought a new Vega around 1971. It had a manual transmission and said friend offered to teach my Dad how to drive so he could get his first licence (yes he was very late at getting his driver’s licence.) Just a year or maybe two later the friends traded their Vega for a brand new Valiant sedan since the Vega was rusting like crazy. They loved the Valiant but 2-3 yrs later jumped into the fire again with a brand new Aspen sedan which had the same rusting issues as the Vega!
I purchased a lightly used 1973 Vega GT in the spring of 1974. I drove it for several years, including an epic cross country trip from my native Kentucky to my Air Force duty station in California. If you want to experience true misery drive a car with no A/C headed west, in July. The driver is on the south (sunny) side of the car and ends up getting roasted. I finally had to wrap a towel around my left arm to prevent terminal sunburn.
I don’t remember rust being an issue with my Vega, probably because I got rid of it before the tin worm could take hold. I do remember buying oil in bulk and always having some spare quarts on board to deal with the ever increasing consumption. On the trip west the Vega needed a quart of oil added every 200 miles or so, which worked out to adding oil at every gas fill up. The oil consumption finally deteriorated to a quart every 100 miles which was where I bailed; I sold the car (for a couple of hundred dollars) to a fellow airman who wanted it for his wife. He ended up spending a considerable sum rebuilding the engine and making some other upgrades. Of course at this point he probably had $1500 invested in a thousand dollar car but at least the Vega could be driven without worrying about the oil.
A real shame they weren’t put together better, it’s a fine looking car. Nothing wrong with the styling at all
+1
I like the ’71 styling, too. Count me as another ‘+1’.
Shoulda bought the Duster!
True. Dusters were kind of crude and rusted fiercely (I owned one), but they would run forever.
Wow, I guess I can be thankful that I couldn’t really afford a new car, back in the day. Virtually all of my used cars over the years were better cars, held up better and required minimal maintenance and repairs. Sounds like the Vega could be called craptastic.
Why was there no 4 door Vega? Jamming two husky adults through that tiny opening into the back seat seems impractical. Wedging “four semi grown people” through that same opening is worthy of Yackety Sax.
Because that would be two more things to break????
This is a VEGA we are talking about, after all.
Because it would look ugly like ALL small 4 door cars today – especially original Chevy Spark – gag me with a spoon.
“Turns out that the boys at GM saved a few pennies on rust protection by not providing any.”
Bull. the Vega’s body went through immersion anti-corrosion dips. the problem was that the body design didn’t eliminate “air traps” and the anti-corrosion coating couldn’t reach some areas. however the tires could fling water and salt into those areas where it would collect and start rusting the body from the inside out.
what is it with the internet where people value snark over reality?
“Overheat it did and warped something related to the head gasket.”
good lord. this is a car site?
when the engine overheated, the *engine block* distorted and since it had an open deck, the cylinders would go out of “true.” then they’d be scored by the pistons/rings and hence oil consumption would skyrocket.
Hey, Didn’t Don Draper develop the early teaser ads for the Vega (code named XP-887)?
Lest we forget:
March 1971 GM brochure page with price/availability stuff–I didn’t remember the “Torque Drive” transmission, either:
Craze-ball engineering. My old 911 has a similar coating on the cylinders. 45 years old and 95K miles later tells me they must’ve used the correct process. You can faintly see the original cross hatching with a bore scope.
Nikasil isn’t that much different than what GM did with the 2300. the Vega’s problem is that it was 1) prone to overheating, and 2) an open-deck block. The engine was fine until the first overheat, then the block would distort, the cylinder bores would go out of true, and the pistons would score the walls, ruining them. at that point oil consumption would skyrocket.
As has been mentioned above, at least your basic red Vega was something to look at. A really pretty car for sure.
Can someone explain why the top half of that troublesome engine looks so strange, with a big expanse of metal and very low-set plugs? I can’t think of anything that resembles it.
I’m guessing they wanted to have a relatively flat, simple cam/rocker cover, so they raised the one wall of the cylinder head and the cover mounts on an angle.
I had a 71 Vega hatchback w/ 90hp and Turboglide. What a challenge to get on the expressway in Atlanta w/o getting run over. Most sluggish car ever, I thought, until I got it on I-40 and held it on the floor for what seemed like forever. When it finally got to about 80 the engine began to sound different. At 85 mph that overhead cam came alive. I don’t know if it had a top end but it became really responsive above 85. I could back off the accelerator and then floor it, the front end lifted and it would push you back in the seat. I have driven a lot of big V8s but that little overhead cam 4 was impressive if you had the patience to wait for it to get up to 85.