(first posted 6/6/2015) This ’77 Cutlass Supreme, photographed in the parking lot of Flint Central High School, is almost like one of my Cars Of A Lifetime in that many cars just like it were once a part of my everyday scenery as a teenager. While I never owned a Cutlass of this vintage, I did own its Chevy cousin. Twenty-three years ago around this time of year, I was a senior at Flint Central awaiting a graduation commencement ceremony at Whiting Auditorium, full of uncertainty about the future and having given up my childhood dream of becoming a car designer. There was no good reason for abandoning my dream outside of a lack of self-confidence in my math and science abilities, but that’s a topic for another day.
Many GM “Colonnade” mid-sizers once populated this very parking lot. My first car purchase in the fall of 1991 was a ’76 Chevy Malibu Classic coupe in “Buckskin Tan” with a matching interior, for the princely sum of $1,500 cash (roughly $2,600 in 2015 money). It had bench seats front and rear, and the de rigeur powertrain combo of the SBC 2-bbl. 350 V8 and three-speed Turbo Hydramatic. The ‘Bu was thirsty, but it always started in the Michigan winter, ran smoothly and effortlessly, had reasonable pickup, and was nicely appointed and comfortable.
I loved activating the high-beam switch on the floor with my left foot. I also liked how the nubby seat upholstery smelled a little like inside a thrift store, at many of which I used to buy clothes in my quest for individuality, and well, out of being broke. Gassing up that car wasn’t cheap. My family moved to southwest Florida in 1992, and I sold the Malibu in Flint to a friend’s brother with the hope of finding a straight-bodied Southern car with a little less Bondo. I plan on writing a COAL about my Malibu at some point, and I want it to be clear that I loved that car.
I had always presumed these Colonnades were fairly easy to work on, given their presence on the streets of Flint even as late as the early ’90s. GM factory jobs were still fairly plentiful here at that time, even if there weren’t quite as many as there had been several decades prior. Even if you weren’t mechanically inclined like some of the guys in shop class, chances are you had a mechanic in the family or knew someone who could keep your uncomplicated, mid-70’s GM machine running fairly easily and inexpensively. In fact, my Malibu was the only car I looked at to purchase (out of four or five) that our family mechanic, Ted at Autotech, approved of.
Most any Colonnade was a simple, substantial, generally reliable car, not unlike a big, lovable, affectionate Mastiff – and every bit as thirsty, and about as graceful. Pulling my Malibu coupe’s big doors shut would require a combination of muscle, grip, and momentum, and would be followed by a loud creak, a “chunk” sound and a few seconds of rattling door glass. Its sheer mass just gave you the impression that it was a safe place to be.
Of the four lower-tier GM makes, loyalty and presence was fairly evenly represented in Flint Central’s parking lot. There were a few Malibus and Monte Carlos, Cutlasses, Regals, and a Grand Prix or two, among the Ford Escorts, Chevy Cavaliers and Chevettes, and Chrysler K-Cars and Omnirizons which dominated our parking lots. There were S-10 pickups, a few mid-70’s F-bodies, and the usual assortment of imports – some hand-me-down Hondas, Toyotas, a few Datsuns / Nissans, and at least a couple of Mazdas. This is a big parking lot, and it was mostly full in the early 90’s. The most exotic car in our parking lot was an upper classman’s mint-condition, triple-white ’72 Grand Prix hardtop. My freshman year English teacher, Ms. Fisher, drove a silver, mid-70’s Lincoln Continental Town Car that looked as large and imposing as did some of her homework assignments.
Many of the Colonnades in our parking lot were accessorized like the subject car: jacked up in the rear, non-standard wheels (these Chevy Rally Wheels are among my favorite designs, ever), and usually a body panel or two in a non-matching color from a donor car. The subject car appears to have sported custom flames at some point.
Much like this particular car’s decline in general appearance, so did the fortunes of Flint Central High School, which closed in 2009 after 86 years, in the face of falling enrollment and lack of school funding. A final open house was held in 2009 for all alumni, teachers and staff, well-wishers and members of the community to walk the halls of Flint Central for (presumably) one last time. I live with the regret of having thought it seemed more important at the time to underwrite insurance policies that day in Chicago, than to go home to Flint for this gathering. (Since then, I return to the Vehicle City fairly regularly, perhaps once a quarter.)
I photographed the subject car in May of 2012 during the week of the final, official FCHS Alumni Dinner to be held, which was also the year of my 20-year high school reunion – both of which I attended. (I even got to visit with Ms. Fisher, who now takes amazing photographs in her retirement.) This Cutlass seemed almost like an old, school buddy – a little worse for wear, and sporting a lot of unfamiliar ink, and seeing it here was like a chance meeting with someone I always thought was cool and used to see between classes on a semi-regular basis.
Cultural Center, Flint, Michigan.
Saturday, May 19, 2012.
Related reading:
Curbside Classic: 1977 Chevrolet Malibu Classic – Everyone Needs Some Love, And A Home
The Colonnade Cutlass Cult (And Have I Escaped It?)
Curbside Classic: 1973 Pontiac LeMans Coupe- A Strong Start to a Weak Finish
Curbside Classic: 1973 Buick Century Regal – The Confident Colonnade?
When I was im High School, These were everywhere, To me thIs generation of the “A” body Oldsmobile is to the ’70s what the ’57 Chevy means to a ’50s High schooler. Chicks “dug” Cutlasses, and dudes who had them were instantly popular, Other dudes either wanted Camaros or T/As. But the ’73-’77 “A” bodies will always be my generation’s “Tri-Five”. I was rolling a Deuce and a Quarter! (and that was Pittsburgh……..and a car from Flint….. )
Deuce-and-a-Quarter! Love it! You were rolling in style. Totally agree with your idea that the Colonnades were like the Tri-Fives of their generation – brilliant.
The only collinade I can remember anyone in my family owning was one of these. My aunt bought it in the mid 80’s for a grand. It was buck skin with a cream colored half vinyl top and matching interior.
I remember it being a reliable car when I was a small kid and it was easy to get in and out of the back seat.
It gave her a lot of crap. She kept a screwdriver in the glove box for when the automatic shifter and the turn signal shifters fell off. She spent a lot of time with her arm out the window using hand signals.
It never failed to get us to the elementary school everyday.
It took one nasty hit during a rain storm when someone went through a red light and clipped the quarter panel
She drove it another year before giving it away and buying an S-10 blazer, a little less easy to get out of due to getting older.
But all of us remember that olds fondly.
Thanks for the memories. I miss that boring large barge brougham coupe.
Even at 10 years old it showed its age but that’s what made it so great for me as a kid it had character, not as much as the one you photographed but it left its impression
One of my favorite vehicles built during the mid to late 70’s period, it’s easy to see why these cars were very popular back in the day, I always ranked the 1976-77 landau window Cutlass coupe’s to be the best of the Colonnade vehicles with the 1976-77 Chevrolet Monte Carlo close behind, many of these cars were still on the road well into the 1990’s, these were definitely one of the cars that defined the 1970’s
Being bad at math doesn’t exactly prevent from being an engineer or in the car business. I’m a senior in mechanical engineering with concentration on automotive despite my extremely troublesome history on math
( it takes me forever to figure matrix right, calculate the probabilities, and make a correct integral. During my high school years I usually didn’t get over 40% in math grades ) and I did have some troubles in college too
( recieving an F for linear algebra for example. But on the other hand, the moment I saw the math professor driving a Lincoln MKC I realized he wouldn’t be easy )
Just keep rolling and afloat in some other areas to make it up ( similar to manipulating CAFE numbers by making Cavalier and Corsica ) and it will be fine. When necessary, getting an A in literature course to keep the overall grades good and stay afloat in engineering lessons.
It is different to drive cars with high beam switch on floor, and that’s a lot of things to push on left side if coming with a stick ( clutch, high beam switch and parking brake ) and a lot of cars at the time didn’t have high beam indicators and the ultra bright lights can make the people blind in the opposite lanes. ( I tried on mine in the parking lot to see how bright it is with high beam on. It’s really bright, and probably it explains why the headlights dimmed in the early ’90s and it doesn’t blind people that much. But certain cars with aerodynamic shape and thin headlights make the driver literally blind themselves at night though )
Wow…..And I ACTUALLY survived the ’70s!
“It is different to drive cars with high beam switch on floor, and that’s a lot of things to push on left side if coming with a stick.”
Likely the reason the high beam control moved to the stalk for the ’76 models. I believe that was a fed mandate. I remember when Halogens first came out. Very bright wide beam and the glass never went cloudy. IMHO far superior to the overpriced projection systems popular now.
My driver’s ed car was a ’78 Volare and it had the high-beam switch on the floor.
As far as I’m aware, it’s still legal in the U.S. to put the headlamp dimmer on the floor; it just became unfashionable in the late ’70s. I recall Rolls-Royce keeping the floor button in place for decades after that time, someone at C/D commented that it wasn’t any harder to use than the by-then-normal column stalk, and the move to that location, touted as an ergonomic improvement at the time, was really just a change that was no better than what came before.
Yep, a floor-mounted kickswitch beam selector is still perfectly legal. Hand-operated beam selectors do have some real advantages —ability to build in a momentary-contact function for headlamp flashing, a switch up in the steering column is less likely to corrode and cause problems than one down on the floor, and elimination of conflicts between needing the left foot for the kickswitch and needing it for the clutch.
But all hand-operated selectors aren’t equal. I like the pull/pull switches: pull all the way back to toggle between low and high beam; pull partway back to momentarily flash the high beams if the lamps are off or the low beams are on. I dislike the Japanese-type push/pull switches (push forward for high beam, pull back for low beam, pull back further for momentary flash), but these have become ubiquitous.
I had forgotten about floor mounted dimmer switches. Daniel is certainly right about corrosion. I remember having to replace the switch in my mother’s 66 Corvair after only a couple of years. Ontario salty slush is pretty hard on anything made of metal.
The first hand operated switch I came across was my aunt’s 1964 VW Squareback. My mother borrowed it for a short trip to the store and couldn’t figure out what the warning light was that kept coming on. It turns out the dimmer switch was on the back of the turn signal. At every corner my mother was clicking it. It was fine once you knew it was there.
I still have a preference for floor mounted dimmer switches, possibly because I’ve had to replace a couple of the column mounted ones on my 1980’s-90’s GM cars. They’re push rod activated, and located in a position on the column where you have to drop the thing to get at them… as they lack flash-to-pass functionality in my applications, they lose out to the floor-stomp switch. One of my first cars was an early Peugeot 404, and I actually mastered the art of depressing the clutch and poking the beam selector with the left corner of my foot at the same time when necessary. I do remember having to stamp and stab around on the floor in search of the dimmer switch in unfamiliar vehicles, though.
DS- I have tended to prefer the pull/pull switch, too… but the push/pull arrangement is growing on me. I like the fact that I can quickly tell if I left my headlamps on low or high beam last time I turned them off, saving me from potentially blasting someone with a face full of brights out on the road the next time I turn my lights on.
In addition to the floor mounted high beam switch, old look GM busses had 2 more floor mounted buttons for the left & right turn signals. Considering how busy your hands were kept by the steering wheel, it was a well thought out placement.
You’re probably very right about what it takes to be an engineer. With me, it was more of a self-confidence issue than anything. I was always pretty good at math and science, and I got an exceptional education through the Flint Public School System’s Magnet Program (a busing program for schools throughout the city which specialized in subjects). I lost my nerve after I went to a two-week summer program at GMI (now Kettering) for wannabe engineers to get a taste of what college classes would look like. I believe everything happens for a reason, though, and I was glad I wasn’t working for GM when the 2009 US Auto Industry crisis happened. I wish you all the best with both your studies and with your Volaré, and look forward to your next post!
” a lot of cars at the time didn’t have high beam indicators” I’m pretty sure that an indicator for the high beams has been something that has been required by law for many years, but Daniel will know better there. I do know that my 50 Ford F-1 had one in its instrument cluster as did the 60’s Buicks I’ve owned.
A high-beam indicator has been federally mandatory since 1968, and was mandatory in every state for multiple decades before that.
Is there any legal requirement for indicator color? Most 1960s cars I’ve driven had red high-beam indicators (car my family had when I was a kid, ’66 Polara, had a Dodge “Fratzog” symbol whose inner triangle lit up in red. Cool, but not as cool as the Chief Pontiac head in Ponchos). But in the ’70s it seemed the indicators turned blue/violet. But I’ve seen ’80s and early ’90s Volkswagens with red indicators, so the blue must not have been a legal thing. Newer VWs have blue indicators though, so I’m confused on this.
Red was common in North America until blue or blue-green became required by Federal and Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 101 (Controls and Displays) around 1976. This change was made primarily for international harmonisation; the ECE Regulations required blue. In 1982, MVSS 101 was changed to allow a green high-beam telltale, in response to a petition from automakers who wanted to use LEDs—which at that time were available only in red, yellow, or green.
Don’t know what VWs you might have in mind, but I think you are misremembering. The law required blue-to-green at that time. Our 1990 Jetta had a blue high-beam telltale, as did every other Mk2 VW I ever saw.
I must have been remembering green rather than red then. I do remember VWs having a different color in an LED cluster, and do recall the inavailability of blue LEDs back then being an issue. Side note – blue LEDs were a major breakthrough that also resulted, usually by adding yellow fluorescence, in making white LEDs possible. And that in turn led to the development of ultra-low-wattage LED lamps and bulbs for cars, buildings, and outdoor lighting. The inventors won a Nobel prize for their efforts.
A 1933 Franklin Olympic was the newest car I’ve driven that did not have a high beam indicator… pretty much everything I can think of from the late 1930’s forward *does* have one.
I remember my Mom’s 1977 LTD having a red “Hi-Beam” indicator, which was situated in the same row as the rest of the red warning lights. This row included the somewhat nebulous “Engine” light, which Ford rigged up with a couple of diodes so that it could serve as both an “Oil Pressure” and “Temperature” warning, presumably to save a couple of cents. It was set up to illuminate 3-5 seconds after your engine passed away. I digress. I’m pretty sure that the beam indicator was blue for 1978, the last year for the BIG Ford.
The 1969 Camaro and full size Chevy had violet blue high beam indicators, but their trucks stayed red through 1972. If a car was equipped with the nifty Vigilite fiber optic lamp monitors, the color of the high beam section on the monitor’s lens was the same as the dash indicator, so both red and blue were produced. Low beam was always green, and the park/turn section was clear with an amber filter inside the parking lamp. GM’s 1973-87 trucks featured two little dots that illuminated a deep blue color top/center on the speedometer; this reminded me of the two round headlamps on our 1975 GMC when I was a kid. My 1986 has the same two dots, though it has four rectangular headlamps, still in the deep blue color instead of that funky light blue turquoise that most other GM vehicles got. I certainly appreciated the un-piercing glow of that indicator last night while navigating off road in the pitch dark.
I remember wondering how VW procured blue LED’s for their eggcrate-stuffed-with-round-LED instrument clusters of the 1980’s… before blue LED’s were available, and found out that the high beam indicator is actually an incandescent bulb wearing an LED costume. On my quest for this cool but unnecessary knowledge, I did see a picture of a cluster with a green LED in the high beam position, but never saw a car equipped as such in real life.
Oh lord. That was a whole lotta spewing forth with information nobody really asked for, eh? I mean, like never listen to some goof on the internet telling you what color your Fratzog should light up. Over and out!
Lessons learned from that ’70s Ford “engine” light freaked people out when they saw a similar “check engine” light glow years later in their 1980s cars, unaware that it didn’t mean your oil pressure was zero and/or temperature was >210F, but rather some usually benign condition sniffed out by the primitive on-board electronic module. You could use a paper clip do detect which of about 12 codes this was.
I remember these colonnade Cutlass Supremes being everywhere in the mid to late ’70s – Olds was happily selling hundreds of thousands each year. No other GM intermediate approached these numbers in terms of production volume. I knew people who were severely disappointed when the car was downsized for 1978.
A friend in high school had a Monte Carlo of similar vintage, burgundy with white vinyl hafl-top. A tank of a car, could easily jump a curb and run over a stop sign (As the driver did once, struggling to find a lighter).
Agree with the author, thinking of these cars in terms of modern virtues is a bit beside the point – they were big, plentiful and cheap to keep running, which was enough for the people who bought them (especially used in the 80s).
Also agree that the floor-mounted high beam switch was cool (so long as the floorpan didn’t rust around its mounting due to the galvanic corrosion, which many did).
Left-floor high-beam switches were standard Detroit practice back then, I had completely forgotten about them until now. They had a satisfying, positive click action.
Supremes were about as popular as SUVs today. I recall my mother liking the Cutlass, but she never got one.
I miss that solid click, like dialing a rotary phone, the floor mounted switch still feels natural, but at the same time 30 years from now, almost nobody will “get it”! Kinda sad.
The Salon models (the ones with the flags) had a column dimmer, to reinforce it’s “European-ness” Also shared with early Grand Ams.
Go to goldenrod-garage.com to see a rare 77 Cutlass. Factory equipped 260 with a 4 speed, power steering and brakes. It’s a rusty hulk and probably has no future except for being unsalable inventory. I never would have guessed such a car was ever built as I remember them all being 350s with automatics. From the days when Oldsmobile was riding high and people who drove Toyota’s were thought to be “a little different.”
I’m pretty sure that’s a 5-speed. I’d know that shifter & boot anywhere. I had one in my ’76 Omega. B&W T-50, weak-assed gearbox.
It’s a shame about that rust! And also about that 260 – I’ll bet this car was kinda slow. I did like the standard “S” rear quarter windows and roofline, but I preferred the ’76 models’ slanted header-panel over the upright style of the ’77s.
Kinda slow is an understatement. Purchased a new 78 Cutlass Salon Brougham with a 260 V8, automatic and a 2.29 rear axle. Rated at 110 HP, it wouldn’t get out of it’s own way. Also the MPG was nothing to brag about. I always refer to the Olds 260 V8 as a Boat Anchor.
These cars are a great example of what GM did, and still does, best. A big, front-engined, rear-drive vehicle using a small block V-8, and an indestructible automatic transmission – oh, and the greatest air conditioning on the planet. Its core elements are basically immortal and easily repaired. Lots of room inside for the driver to stretch out comfortably. An hour or two spent flying across midwestern highways is effortless to the point of actually being refreshing- seriously two hours on the interstate in the prototypical GM vehicle is quieter and more relaxing than most hotel rooms, and the sound system is way better.
Nowadays these vehicles are disguised as SUV’s to get them past the “cars-will-destroy-our-planet©” busybodies but they still rule the highways of middle-America and I hope that someday they can return to the elegant beauty of those A-bodies and their 60’s predecessors.
Big? That’s a mere intermediate size car.
(OMG, fifteen minutes of editing. What’s next, up and down votes?
“and usually a body panel or two in a non-matching color from a donor car. ”
That line got me. When I got my 73 Chevelle in my senior year (90-91) it had a little rust and a Flat Black passenger fender.
Colonades were still relatively popular in the late 80s and early 90s around the Chicago Burbs.
“Grandma” cars were still plentiful at the time for cheap. Sadly either out of benign neglect, “hot rodding” or in two special cases a full restoration to show status and being indefinitely mothballed they all disappeared.
Your round-taillight ’73 Chevelle was the model year I wanted! I had a classmate with a faded bronze ’73 Laguna that I really liked and secretly coveted.
There was something about the round lights. The Laguna was really the best of them all.
74s oval lights weren’t bad either, 75-77 were just a bit too bland.
’75 had that cool Chevy logo imbedded in the plastic
That is cool. I had forgotten about that detail.
I was already well out of high school when these were brand new.
The only member of my family who would ever own of these was my Uncle Don. Uncle Don had owned/driven nearly new, low-line, Chevy full sized wagons forever. Then, 1 afternoon he and my Aunt Margaret drove over in their new car….a mid 70s Buick Regal coupe. NONE of my other uncles (11 in all), would EVER own as neat a car as I thought that Regal was. It would be replaced a few years later by another Regal coupe. (Cars were Uncle Don’s 2nd “indulgence” with good cigars being his 1st.) Yet I always preferred that light metallic green Colonade with a white vinyl half roof and interior to it’s later, downsized “sister”.
It’s a shame 99.9% of the Colonades (no matter the body style) are now jacked up and rolling on 22-26 inch wheels with gawd-awful paint jobs.
I always loved the 1973-77 Cutlass Supreme. I still do – if I could find a nice original one that isn’t in need of a ton of work I would grab it in a heartbeat! My sister’s boyfriend now husband had a 1975 Supreme Coupe that I rode in many times. It always felt like a solid, well-built car. And one can never forget the sound of the Oldsmobile Rocket 350 V-8!! One of my favorite cars ever!
I was surprised to see the production numbers of the downsized ’78 Cutlasses as they sold very well too. The problem was that the 1977’s were so wildly popular – IIRC I think the entire Cutlass line sold over 600k units in 1977, so GM had a tough one on its hands to fill with the redesign. Luckily the American public took well to it. The Cutlass name was sacred at the time, so GM had to make sure it made a good-looking, reliable, well-built successor to America’s beloved Cutlass. In my eyes, I think they succeeded quite well.
I did also really like the downsized ’78 Supremes, Supreme Broughams, and Calais models. That’s the last Cutlass body style I truly loved, especially when rolling on those body-colored Super Stocks. The smooth-sided ’81s, while still okay, just didn’t do it for me in the same way the ’78s – ’80 models did. The Salons were lovably hideous…the coupes were okay.
I rode in many of those ’78-’80 Supremes over the years. GM made sure those cars were screwed together well, using the best materials possible. I’m convinced that they made sure the Cutlass was going to please the American public because that was the car that middle class America loved and trusted. Everyone that I know that had one loved it. One of the most memorable was a friend of the family’s 1979 Brougham Coupe. It was black with a black landau top and tan colored leather interior, a power sunroof and the black Super Stock wheels. I remember when they first told my Dad they were special ordering it, it was right around Christmas time. It took almost 3 months to come in – I think it was April when they finally got it – and they nearly cancelled because they needed a car and didn’t want to wait for it to arrive. They were about to pull the trigger on a regular Supreme Coupe in the dealer’s stock when the dealer found out their car was being shipped. It was such a classy car – I remember the first time I saw and rode in it, I thought it was the nicest Cutlass I had ever seen! Apparently the delay was caused due to them ordering both a sunroof and the Brougham interior in leather – the manufacturer of the seats had a huge backorder issue and it made the car sit while waiting for the interior to be made!
That black-on-tan ’79 CSB sounds like a dream – visually about as close to a Hurst Olds of the same year, but keeping its broughamness intact. If I could find one like that in good shape for a good price, I’d be sorely tempted.
They were built on the same assembly line along with the other three GM intermediates, so they all should be equally well built, or not.
My dad had a 74 Supreme he bought new. Bucket seats with the shifter in the floor. When I was 11 he used to teach me to drive on it, I told him I wanted it when I got my license. Back then most people in the south had CBs in the cars & I would love to ride with him and watch the antenna slant to the back when he would speed. He traded it roughly a year later due to slipping transmission for a Ford Fair Fairmont Futura. He claimed he forgot I wanted the Supreme. My neighbors had a beautiful 77 Pontiac Grand Prix 2 tone silver, bucket seats with floor shifter & t-tops. They drove that car like it was the General Lee, I was in jr high & they were in high school. My mom stopped me from riding with them because she thought I’d be killed riding with them.
My dad had a 76 or 77 Supreme in the 70s, in fact it was green with a white vinyl top, although I think it was more lime. Originally had the Oldsmobile rally wheels too(also green), which, as much as I agree that the Chevy rallys look good, they belong on Chevys and don’t look nearly as good as the Olds rally wheels.
I think the Collonades are one of those cars where you had to be there to understand. Some cars transcend generations – prewar V8 Fords, the tri-fives, most of the Muscle cars, ect. You don’t have to be a baby boomer to love a Dodge Charger or be part of the greatest generation to understand the allure of Hot rodding, I was born in the late 80s and I love it all! But the Collonades are so deeply engrained in the 70s, with all the baggage with it, that they just seem like ugly relics to my eyes. I instantly was fascinated with Muscle cars the first time I laid my eyes on one, same with hot rods, in fact my Dad showed me pictures of most of his cars he had when I was a kid, his first was a 71 Charger, next was a Collonade 442, after that the aforementioned Supreme, the 78 Trans Am, and the downsized 78 Supreme he and my Mom got married in. Two cars in that scrap book I desired, shouldn’t be hard to guess which ones they were.
I’ve learned to appreciate the Collonades, but I really had to dig deep to find something endearing to them, even though in many ways they were superior to the legendary 68-72 A-bodies. The 73 styling never looked very good to me since the neoclassic inspired round headlights used on all of them from Chevy to Buick just looked dorky and retrograde, and while the later square quads helped they ended up looking a bit mismatched with the still relatively swoopy body. The Cutlass I really do understand the appeal of, since it’s squared off flanks, formalized roofline and more upright tail all seemed more uniform than the other division’s equivalents, but alas, if you’re not a fan of earth tones and grew up in a time where 100% of the Collonades you see are even more worse for wear than the feature car, it’s very hard to fall in love with them. Some cars wear rough patina gracefully, their predecessors do(like that primer black LeMons recently featured), these do not.
I never considered the GM collonades ugly. I thought they were plain but not ugly. But I did not like the cars overall because they were such dogs. Ridiculously slow and poor handling. When I was a teen, these were considered a pathetic facsimile of a muscle car. A fake. A fraud. Bought by fools who did not know any better and who thought they were getting a real Chevelle, or a real (fill in the blank).
I think the middle years were ugly, the 74-75s that transitioned from 1973’s low deck “second gen F-Body on steroids” look to the taller deck/big rear bumper cars while still retaining all the wild bodylines of the originals. The squared off square headlight cars from 76-77 were the boring ones, but I’d argue the Buick was the least attractive from start to end, especially the stacked headlight sedans. Those are just horrid looking cars.
I share your opinion that the Buicks were probably my least favorites, with the exceptions being the original ’73s coupes, then the ’76 & ’77 coupes – all variations. I’m not a huge fan of the fender-skirted Pontiac Luxury LeMans models, either, but as far as frontal styling goes, at least those never received the stacked quad headlamps that somehow don’t work as well on this brown Regal sedan the way they did on the Montes and Malibus.
Looking at what Ford and Chrysler were doing with cars like the Torino or the Monaco, the Colonnades were not really that bad for the time era. None of these cars were aimed at the muscle car market with any seriousness. Cars like the 1973-77 Grand Am and Cutlass 442 or even the Laguna came closest and if one of the largest V8 options was ordered power was at least reasonable. What these cars all did far better than the 60’s muscle cars was stop, steer and handle far better. And so was the ride quality for the most part. Quality control and fuel mileage were hit and miss and much dependent on the engine/transmission chosen.
Wow, it’s nice to hear some positive comments & fond memories of these. Those shots of the poor subject car are excellent but leave me wondering….who left it there…and why… If only that car could talk….
My father bought a rusted out Mandarin Orange ’77 Supreme at a dealer auction twenty-something years ago — it had these same rally wheels unfortunately. My father’s buddy had a white ’71 Monte Carlo with some old chrome aftermarket wheels on it — Imagine my surprise that the wheels got swapped after my suggestion — my planets were aligning.
That rusty Cutlass was quite peppy & drove a lot better than it looked. The buckskin quarter top & matching vinyl interior really brought out the ugly in that mandarin (dull orange) color and its option content made for a dull vehicle: 1/4 vinyl top, full wheelcovers, A/C, AM radio & little else. In fact, its build sheet stated that it was delivered to Hertz Rent-A-Car. At least it had the 350.
Either we do not have the same definition for “quite peppy”, or one of us has a flawed memory. So I looked up the performance stats to see if it is my memory that is inaccurate regarding these collonade GM cars…
’73 chevelle with optional 350 V8 and automatic:
3726lbs
145 horse power
0-60 in 11.7 seconds
1/4 mile in 18.5 seconds
14MPG fuel consumption
This is exactly how I remember these cars too. I would call it a pathetic excuse for a muscle car.
source:
http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/chevrolet_usa/chevelle_malibu_2gen/chevelle_deluxe_2gen_coupe/1973.html
“Peppy” is a relative term. Remember that cars have to be evaluated in the terms of the time,and market realities.
True.
The “time” for me was my teen years when all the guys I knew were cruising the main drag every friday and saturday night. Chevelles, Novas, Various Mopars, Mustangs, Camaros, a few Monte Carlos, a few Torinos/Galaxies, and various Pontiacs/Oldsmobiles were what was popular. Mostly of the 1965 to 1971-ish vintage but there were some exceptions. Nobody wanted a collonade of any kind. They were a joke.
My car was laughed at by those that did not know what it was capable of. I had a hotrodded 440 in a 1969 Newport 2door hardtop. According to the link below, the bone stock version of my car weighed 4250lbs, had 375HP and would do 0-60 in 6.5 seconds
I never did get it dynoed but I estimate I had about 425 horsepower. The size of the car looked like it should’ve weighed about 5500-6500lbs. It was a unibody though, so it weighed much less than it appeared.
http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/1969/123335/chrysler_newport_2-door_hardtop_440_tnt_v-8_torqueflite.html
I guess since my memory of these collonade cars was mostly of dumb guys thinking their 1974 chevelle was like a 1970 chevelle because it had the same name, I have a mostly negative image of the car.
K, True enough, But comparing a ’69 anything vs a post ’72 anything is almost moot. Not just in the performance car realm. My 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood would have absolutely smoked my 1989 Cadillac Brougham, despite the ’89 being shorter and hundreds of pounds lighter.Two gas “shortages”,government edicts; rising insurance rates and “primitive” technology to deal with it all in a rather short period had it’s toll.
I’ll give you that Colonnades were generally not very fast cars, but your sources for performance data is not good. Auto Catalog is just estimations. The 1973 350-2bbl was the base V8. A 1970 Chevelle its base 307-2bbl wasn’t fast either.
FWIW, I have an actual road test of a 1973 Chevelle Laguna with a 454. It ran:
0-60: 8.0 secs
1/4 mile: 15.7 sec at 88.4 mph.
Sure not super fast, but that was with 2.73 gears. That’s in the same ball park as a 325 hp 396 Chevelle.
As far as handling goes, the Colonnade Chevelles had greatly improved suspension geometry and were in fact better handling car than their predecessors.
For the Chrysler 440 I have an actual road test of a 1969 Dodge Monaco with a 375 hp 440, which is pretty close to the Newport. The Car Life results were:
0-60: 7.6 secs
1/4 mile: 15.5 secs at 93 mph
This was with 3.23 gears. Those numbers aren’ t too far off the “slow” 1973 Chevelle with it’s weak “245 hp” 454 smogger engine.
Anyone can cherry pic numbers. I’m not into that game.
I never saw a collonade that did not have either a 350 or the smaller V8.
“Anyone can cherry pic numbers. I’m not into that game.”
John you started that game by quoted the inaccurate Auto-Catalog numbers. I was just posting some remotely accurate numbers from a actual road tests of these vehicles.
I agree with you most Colonnades had low performance engines. My point was, the not all were. The early years did offer high performance engine options that still had respectable performance. Few were made because by 1973 this market had withered away. On the contrary, in the late 60’s, early 70’s Chevy pumped out lots of big block Chevelle SS’s
That said, even in the earlier golden years of performance, by far the most common engines in most cars were low performance options. For example in 1969, the most common engine sold in the Chevelle was the 307-2bbl. The performance of this car was nothing to write home about, in fact it was probably pretty on par with a Colonnade Chevelle with a 350-2bbl.
I started no such game. I used the same source to compare vehicles. You, however, chose to cherry pick.
My dad bought a 1974 Malibu sedan with this same engine combo and never once complained about it being slow. Many of these posted numbers online should be taken with a grain of salt as quality control varied from one car to the next, fuel quality sucked and most of these tests were with green un-broken in engines. His was a lower mileage 62K elderly one owner car so it was in need of a tune up and carb rebuild due to sitting around for a year until the estate could be settled. After my uncle, who was a mechanic that owned his own garage, rebuilt the carburetor, tuned up the engine and ran a little more timing got done that Malibu ran very well and felt much more brisk than 11.7 seconds 0-60 and got better than 17-18 MPG with more highway trips.
Being realistic about the time era involved brought things more into perspective. With the oil embargo, tightening emissions standards and insurance companies getting on the bandwagon raw power was out and peppy was a better term to describe the V8 powered 70’s cars. If anything the worse was yet to come. 1980-1982 were the absolute pits for performance with 85 HP Slant sixes, 105 HP Olds 260 V8’s, 112-115 HP Ford 255, 115-120 HP 267 Chevy’s and 125 HP HT 4100 full size Cadillacs. That was a true malaise era!
Joe, I agree with you. My dad to owned a 1976 Malibu 2-door with a 350-2-bbl engine. While it was never a powerhouse, it had more than enough power to get the job done. I can remember having six people in that car a full load or cargo and towing a loaded boat to summer cottage vacations without issue. The thing about these old low powered V8’s is that they may not have had high peak power, but they still had strong horsepower and torque in the low RPM range. This made them “feel” faster and more powerful than some modern small displacement engines with similar power outputs. Dad’s old Malibu was fast enough for that time and certainly outperformed the smaller displacement V8’s that followed.
That said, I drove that same car last week when my brother brought it by for a tune-up. While that old 350 is reliable as ever, and runs just as well as ever, it sure doesn’t feel as powerful as it used to. Sure you may say some of it is engine wear, but this was just after a fresh tune up, and the car does run a hotter ignition curve as well as true dual exhaust now. I think it’s just the fact that I am used to modern cars, that have far better performance than any cars have through history that the old Malibu feels more sluggish than it used to.
As far the road tests goes, I have quite the extensive library of old tests. Sometimes there is a wonky test but they are usually easy to spot. Some magazines also tended to get better numbers, like Hot Rod, while others were generally slower, like Popular Science. In the end, the ones in the middle do seem to be relatively accurate. In fact many of the muscle cars that are raced today in stock form, turn out pretty close numbers to the original magazine tests. It’s just that there aren’t too many in truly stock form anymore.
My buddy Geoff’s dad had a (I think) ’77 Supreme in that same Mandarin color with matching Super Stocks and the Buckskin roof. I actually quite like that color combo. Before you mentioned the wheel covers, it had me wondering if yours might have been Geoff’s dad’s car. Small world – you never know!
Loved these when I was a little kid and they first came out. Tried to get my dad to buy one and even rode my bike down to the local Chevrolet dealer to get him a Monte Carlo brochure but he was busy trying to save the American Motors Corporation. Finally got my chance to buy a nice original bucket seat 64K ’75 Buick Century Custom in 1993. It’s still rolling just as pretty as back then on its chrome Buick rallies having just flipped the odometer this year.
As you can imagine, in the Lansing area these were everywhere. However, I’m about 5 years older and the colonnades were still pretty decent looking when I was in High School. Specifically I recall brothers who had ’75 & ’77 coupes. The real range of nice to beater was the previous generation. Off the top of my head I had classmates with a ’69 coupe, ’71 wagon, and 68, 69, & 71 covertibles.
This is the car that high-school mullet-heads usually aspired to after they’d mangled up their mid-seventies Camaro to the point where it was completely undrivable (which, in and of itself, was quite a feat). It also likely explains why there are so few mid-seventies Camaros and Cutlasses left; they’re not really worth restoring in the same way as first-generation Camaros.
Great article. My dad bought his 1976 Malibu when I was in high school. I have a lot of fond memories from that car and it was way cooler than mom’s wagon. It certainly worked and drove better than my rusted out 1972 Chevelle with a 250 and PG.
I look forward to reading about your 1976 Malibu. I’m lucky my brother now owns my dad’s old car so I still get to drive it fairly often (I am also that cars mechanic and still enjoy working on it).
Good article and one I can relate to. It’s always sad to see your once proud high school abandoned or worse let deteriorate to the point where it has to be bull dozed down. Many of your childhood memories gone in an instant. Same for the neat old Cutlass Supremes that roamed the streets in great abundance which even back in the 90’s had many admiring glances and comments. Now the new replacement high school looks like any other building with little to no character and after only 10 years is already starting to fall apart and the roads are loaded with cookie cutter silver tan and grey Camry’s, Impala’s, Accords, Civics and Corollas that nobody even notices. Time can be so cruel.
It’s now quite a shock to see a 70’s or 80’s Cutlass or similar era car driving around or a high school that is still original and well kept from history and it is mind boggling to see how much has changed from as little time ago as the 90’s to present.
I always enjoy posts about Colonnades. For better or worse, they are such interesting cars, with such a wide range of models, and they really were a big part of the ’70s in the automotive world (well, the U.S./Canada “world”, anyway). As a longtime owner of a 1976 Monte Carlo, I’m looking forward to reading about your Malibu, too. I’m a few years older but also grew up around a lot of these from childhood up until high school, where quite a few used and hand-me-down examples were in the parking lot.
CC effect: I decided, for no particular reason, to make a pilgrimage to my old high school, Springbrook, last weekend for the first time in about 8 years. Other than built-up security at the entrance (when I went there in the early 80s, you just opened the door and walked in), little had changed. New windows everywhere, a fourth floor added in one section, but basically the same building that went up in 1960. The addition may have been to accommodate 9th graders which when I was a student were still schooled with 6 and 7th graders at White Oak Junior High just up the hill. That’s still there too, only it’s now called White Oak Middle School. Why did “junior high” fall out of fashion? I used to think it was to avoid the druggy connotations of “high”, but it’s still “high school” not “upper school” in most places. Kinda like the repositioning of the headlamp dimmer from the floor to the stalk discussed above; just change for change’s sake.
I visited on a weekend, with school out of session for summer, and partly closed anyway due to the pandemic, so the carparks were mostly empty. When I was a student, 1970s American cars ruled the parking lots, with GM intermediate coupes the most common. The 68-72 GM coupes had none of their later clout; they were just typical used cars for high schoolers who couldn’t afford anything better or newer, selling for about $500, and were super-common. Colonnades were newer, plusher, and meant you had at least some money. 1978 or later were probably their parents’ cars. Some car buffs drove Camaros or Mustangs or various pre-smog Detroiters with big engines, which were already regarded as desirable but hadn’t skyrocketed in price yet. There was an AMC or two, and a lone ’64 Studebaker Lark Cruiser whose driver I never met despite living next door to one of my best friends and across from my cousin. Imports were surprisingly rare, although Celicas, Accords, air-cooled VWs, and soon-to-be-discontinued-in-America Euro brands like Renault, MG, or Fiat all had some representation, but they were the outliers. Also rare: trucks of any kind. Customized vans were common a few years earlier but had all disappeared by 1982; where did they go?
The term “middle school” was I think partly to distinguish 6-7-8th or 7-8-9th grade schools from the 7-8th grade ones. Also pedagogy has focused on this age as a separate period from either elementary or high school age.
When I went to “Jr High” is was together with the high school, maybe having to do with the baby boom getting there (much lower high school numbers, much higher elementary and junior high age numbers). I’m sure the sophisticated mature high school crowd was really happy with us kiddies mixing in. I know I was a bit intimidated at first in the halls. Big jump from 6th grade to high school!
Here it was elementary (K-6), jr. high (7-9), and high (10-12). At some point long after I graduated they changed to K-5, 6-8, and 9-12, but that was well after renaming “junior high” to “middle school”.
The car left over at the end of the day that nobody wants to take home? 😉
It looks like a typical teenage job of buying what you could afford and trying to make it something it wasn’t. That half-vinyl roof seems totally at odds with the hiked rear end and the sorta-flames on the front and doors. Bet the body wasn’t in that poor a state when they were done.
As an Aussie, I’m amazed that a school needs a parking lot this huge. In my state you can’t get a licence till you’re 18, and back in my day there was only one of us who could afford a car when he got his licence, so there was plenty of room to park in the streets around the school. There was no parking lot even for the teachers – they’d never get away with that nowadays!
They’ve toughened minimum driving age laws in the States too. I lived in Maryland, where at the time (early ’80s) you got a learner’s permit at 15-1/2 (which allowed you to drive if there was an adult in the front passenger seat), and a full-privilege driver’s license at 16. Driver Ed was taught in my public high school, taught in an 8 day rotation – one day behind the wheel of a real car, instructor at side, four days of classroom instruction, three days of driving a simulator (about 15 mockups of a 1975 Chevrolet Caprice interior buck, real left half of a dashboard, with a film screen at the front of the room; there were extra lights on the dash that lit up if you did something wrong).
High school-provided driver ed apparently ended a few years after I learned to drive there, and 16 and 17 year olds now get “provisional” licenses that have various restrictions (can only drive alone or with adult(s), at certain times, etc).
Peter, my beloved Flint Central High School used to have so many students. In fact, a new fieldhouse and a few other facilities were constructed in the late ’70s to accommodate moving the gymnasium and pool out of the main structure to make more classrooms. 1979 marked peak GM employment in Flint, and while the overall population wasn’t at its highest levels, there were still a lot of people in Flint, and kids that went here.
Today, it’s such a sad, empty, graffitied wreck, empty since the last class graduated in 2009. I honestly think I could cry right now just thinking about how much has changed there even since I had first posted this article six years ago.
The older I get, the more I realize how many differences there are between countries that have a superficially-similar culture. In Australian schools there is no such thing as the Driver’s Ed many of you seem to have such fond memories of. That’s your parents’ job. No school meals either as some countries have. Once again, up to the parents. And your school had a pool! Wow! We walked two miles to St Kilda beach for swimming lessons.
Joseph, time is a strange beast. You don’t notice the incremental changes around you and then out of nowhere – wham! The suburb where I grew up has gone the other way, from slum to way upmarket, and the tumbledown flat where I grew up, well, Justy showed me an ad for it a few weeks back advertised as the most prestigious apartment in Melbourne, or some such real estate agent’s guff. It sure wasn’t back in the sixties, I tell you! But having said that, I haven’t been back there since we drove past (and didn’t stop; that was barely safe in my day) twenty years ago to show the kids where Dad grew up. Too many unhappy memories already without checking for changes, and I have my own little paradise now.
When we drove past there was a huge palm tree growing out the front, and I felt as old as Methuselah telling the kids that I remembered Libor’s mate Jerry eating dates one afternoon and throwing the pips off the second floor balcony, and how surprised my Dad was to find this thing growing a few months later. I thought it should be transplanted. “Just leave it” he said, “It won’t thrive there.” Damn thing was up to the third floor balcony by the time we drove past!
Time….. it’s weird.