(first posted 6/23/2013) I started shooting and writing up CCs almost five years ago, and there are still a number of significant cars and model variations yet to be shot and/or written up. In the meantime, just how many B-Bodies have we had? One of the holdouts has been a GM Colonnade station wagon, and obviously, they’re not exactly easy to come by anymore, especially a gen-u-ine Curbside Classic. But patience has its rewards…a big one in this case.
The patience in this case was in hoping that I would find it out in the street, as I’ve known about its hiding place in a parking lot for almost two years. But I can’t write a CC without my signature profile shot as the last picture, right? But it hasn’t been easy all this time…
One time I came by to check on it, I caught it in the act of communion with the owner’s other car. This picture pretty much sums up what happened to the station wagon market.
That did give me the chance to shoot its engine, which I’m 99% certain is the 400 CID Pontiac V8, rated at 170 (net) hp. That was the standard engine in the 1975 Safari; yup, a “mid-sized” car whose smallest engine had 6.6 liters of displacement. And it still looks lost in there. The next step up was the 455, with 200 hp. And above that were the 501 and 555 inchers (just kidding; about those last two). But 455s were not at all uncommon in Colonnades.Why? This LeMans Safari wagon is listed at 4400 lbs, which means more like 4600-4800 lbs actual road ready and depending on options. Mid-sized; just keep saying that.
Ironically, the “baby” 350 V8 was standard in 1973 and 1974, but just in time for the first energy crisis, Pontiac upped the ante to 400 inches standard in 1975. Well, that didn’t last long. For 1976, smaller engines were back on tap. My Standard Encyclopedia doesn’t specify a specific standard engine for the 1976 LeMans Safari, which would suggest that the Chevy 250 six was the one (it definitely was on the sedans and coupes). I rather doubt that the wagon really came with that; more likely the 350. The wretched little Olds 260 V8 was also listed, but it probably had a more flaccid torque curve than the Chevy six.
So did anyone complain or file lawsuits about Pontiac sticking that Olds V8 in these cars, or the Chevy six? This preceded the famous ’77 Chevmobile incident by several years. Well, for that matter, GM had been doing this since at least 1961. Big deal.
Didn’t Oldsmobile use this same array of flags on some of their Colonnades?
Undoubtedly. And they were still using the same badge some ten years later. GM must have gotten a special volume deal on them. Did any other divisions use them? And what were they supposed to signify? How GM’s cars were so “international”? Well, if a 4500 lb 6.6 liter station wagon can somehow be consider “international” in terms of what that meant in 1975, someone at GM had a hell of an expansive world view. No; that’s not what I meant at all; make that a very limited world view; kind of like this one, but from Detroit. Wonder if anyone ever made a Detroit version of that poster?
Well, there was something “international” about the Colonnade wagons: they had a flip-up one-piece rear door. In 1973, that was almost unheard of in the US, except for tiny cars like the Vega and Pinto. But real American wagons had either a fold down tailgate, or some kind of magic three-way affair. But a great big one-piece hatchback? That belonged on Volvo wagons, like the blue one down the street, where the ever-patient Stephanie waits for me to finish shooting another fine old heap.
As a concession to all those American kids used to riding in the rear-facing third seat with the tailgate window down, GM saw fit to fit a little vent window for their fresh-air needs. How thoughtful.
The Colonnades weren’t famous for their interior material quality, unless one spent the big bucks for a Grand Am.
Ooops; the illustrious Gran Am didn’t come in a wagon. Now you’d think for sure someone has transplanted a Grand Am front clip on a LeMans Safari. Not according to God Google. Of course, Grand Am clips aren’t exactly going begging these days either.
This one is sporting an after-market tach, with a 5000 rpm redline. Good luck trying to get a de-smogged, low-compression, lo-po 400 to turn 5000 rpm. Maybe 4000. If ever a car didn’t need a tach, this is it. But I understand; it’s fun to watch the needle move between 650 and 1800 rpm in typical driving. Or at least be able to tell when the smooth Turbo Hydramatic feels inclined to shift, because otherwise it would be nigh-near imperceptible.
We need to find something nice to say about this big bruiser, other than it being the first one to present itself to us. The Colonnades were the first larger cars to benefit from GM’s belated awareness that “handling” was actually a quality worth pursuing, on every-day sorts of cars, not just the Corvette, Corvair and Vega. So they applied their considerable engineering prowess to this worthwhile undertaking, and the results, first felt on the ’73 Colonnades, were quite noticeable. When one remembers what loosey-goosey cars GM foisted on the American public for so long, with grossly undersized tires, flaccid steering, feeble drum brakes, and marshmallow suspensions, this was genuine progress, particularly so if the F-41 suspension option (or whatever it was called on all the different GM cars) was on board. Rightly optioned, a Colonnade could be a formidable machine.
What was learned with the Colonnades was passed along and improved upon on the 1977 B-Bodies, which shared more than a few bolts in common with them. The Colonnade frame is very similar in architecture as the B-Body, as is the suspension.
So it turns out to have been rather convenient for GM to build such large mid-sized cars, as it gave them a substantial head start to downsizing their full-size cars. That’s something Ford couldn’t copy, as their wallowing mush-pot “mid-sized” cars would have made lousy full-sized cars. It helps explain why GM’s down-sized B-Bodies arrived decidedly more “mature” than Ford’s new Panther cars, which got off to a rather feeble start.
I’d like to think I’ll find some more Colonnade wagons, but if not, here’s a full-profile salute to the first and last. And thanks for coming out and showing yourself; it’s been a long wait.
Why all the flags..The car wasn’t even available for sale in most of those Countries I bet..
Probably just the Us and Canada.
Somebody stuck those flags on, they are Olds only.
I remember wheeling a low-end Pontiac Colonnade out of the trim shop where I worked in college sometime in the early 90s. I forget what it was in for, something minor because it left with the same ugly plain blue interior with the furry seat covers, which valiantly tried to hide the advanced decomposition of it’s factory trim.
I thought, what a depressing car,
the whole thing reeked of failure and the despair of poverty.
A Grand Am would certainly have been different, I think.
I believe the flag emblem originated with the ’73 Cutlass Salon, and you’re correct, it was strictly used by Olds.
Total ’75 LeMans wagon production was only 9,275, a bit less than either the Mercury Montego or Dodge Coronet. Somewhat surprisingly, the Plymouth Fury wagons at 48,681 units outsold both the Chevelle (45,582) and the Torino (37,242) that year. The GM liftgate and the Torino being such a pig would likely have pushed me to the Mopars in that era.
Tough choice-A reasonably well assembled but gas-guzzling, gutless & wallowy pig (Torino) VS a reasonably performing & handling, not overweight, but horrendously slapped together POS (Mopar), assuming both had about the same rust resistance.
Positioned between these extremes, it’s not surprising that GM did as well as they did in those days.
With the luxury of retrospect, had I been a hapless, henpecked 2.3 kid Peoria-dwelling wagon buyer back in the day, I might just have gotten a loaded V8 Hornet Sportabout and called it a day. This presumes that I was buying before the fall of ’75, when the Volare/Aspen came out. I could see myself opting for a loaded version of that with a 360, and being a happy camper for exactly 1 month before it fell apart.
I think the late b-body Mopar wagons were better looking than the sedans, though maybe only Mr. Brady agrees with me.
Ha, Roger – I would have done the very same thing with a Volare wagon. Who knows, we could have ended up sitting next to each other in the waiting room of a dealer during one of the many recall fixes.
I think GM’s dominant market share at the time (versus Ford, Chrysler, and AMC) was itself the determining factor, not the relative advantages and disadvantages of the GM wagons versus the Torino/Montego, Satellite/Coronet, and Matador wagons.
I prefer the design of the Chrysler 1971-78 intermediate wagons, even though I remember how badly they were assembled (although with better exterior materials than the colonnades) and how easily they rusted.
A ’76 Aspen wagon is exactly what my dad bought when he got disgusted with his ’75 Monarch 302 (which he handed down to me – I should have stuck it out with the ’66 Impala convertible I bought from my sister when I got my driver’s license). Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire!
It’s surprising to see such a big Dodge/Plymouth sales gap, that late, in Plymouth’s favor. Was Dodge charging substantially more for the same car?
Stumack is right about the origin of the flag insignia. Two or three months after my mother bought a 72 Cutlass Supreme in early August of 72 (at the very tail of the model year) some neighbors showed up with a 73 Cutlass Salon. I remember thinking something like this: Cutlass Salon? Just what the hell was that supposed to be. Some kind of international thing, judging from all these flags. Great – Oldsmobile is going all international on us. Glad we got the plain American one.
I think that the Salon lasted just one year, as the Cutlass Supreme turned out to be too good of a name to go down without a fight, at least in the good old U S of A. In hindsight, maybe playing up the international hints may not have been the best move 3 years before the 1976 American Bicentennial.
Salon was available all the way through 1980 or so on Cutlass, it was a model in the Cutlass line up which ALSO included the base S and the Supreme, the Salon was sort of the Grand Am in the Cutlass line up, it was billed as the more “drivers oriented” Cutlass, later replaced by the Calais on the 1978 and up Supreme notchback Cutlass, but the Salon trim series still continued on the aeroback Cutlass through at least 1980 to the best of my recollection.
The Salon was usually what the 442 was based on in the 70’s too.
Cutlass Salon. Also there was at least one Grand Am wagon made by Pontiac Engineering, it is supposed to still survive somewhere.
As noted above, that Plymouth wagon figure seems counterintuitive; it would likely represent something like 30-40% of total Plymouth intermediate production by this point in time. From my copy of the Standard Catalog, I’m showing the same production figures for Chevy and Ford, but for Plymouth I’m coming up with only 17,601.
MY 1975 intermdiate wagon production:
Chevrolet 45,582
Pontiac 9,185
Oldsmobile 25,615
Buick 11,494
Ford 37,242
Mercury 10,262
Plymouth 17,601
Dodge 8,019
My figures are from the “Encyclopedia of American Cars From 1930”, and in looking at them again, there is an error – bodystyle RH41 is listed as “Custom wgn 4d”, but should be “Custom sdn 4d” – production 31,080 units. Correcting for that leaves17,601 total Fury wagons.
FWIW, the Plymouth was a behemoth too, actually as big or slightly larger than a Torino. The problem with the Torino was that it weight a lot more than anything in it’s class, and the front springs were too soft and weren’t well matched front to rear. Plymouth actually used pretty stiff rates for the torsion bars in the front and matched it nicely to comparable rear leafs. GM used softer springs, but still matched them front to rear well, plus had the best front suspension geometry. You needed to get the heavy duty suspension or one of Ford’s factory tow packages to get somewhat respectable suspension on a Torino, but the wagons were the worst handling of this platform.
Here’s a results page of a Popular Science test of the 1975 intermediate wagons.
The Grand Am shared the Grand Prix’s more driver-oriented dashboard with additional gauges, as can (almost) be seen in the ’73 Grand Am brochure pictures above. Besides the dashboard, the Grand Am and Grand Prix had nicer interiors with more padded versus hard plastic surfaces, as well as real wood (“African crossfire mahogany”) on the dash and door panels.
I don’t know whether anyone would have gone to the trouble of installing a Grand Am front clip on a LeMans wagon – they’d still be looking at the mediocre standard dash a lot more than they’d be looking at the front of the car.
I saw a face lifted version of this in a field on the Eastern Shore of VA last week… A 77? What a coincidence … Some other treats in this field too… Another old Pontiac, an Imperial. Sorry so fuzzy.
I like this a lot,nobody does wagons like the Americans.Sadly a lot were stripped of their big block V8s in the UK by drag racers and hot rodders and ended up scrapped or in banger racing.
On the Olds Cutlass Cieras/Cruisers, the flag emblem meant “International Series,” which meant only that it was the top-line version of that car.
I have real mixed feelings about this wagon. I hated the entire Colonnade line when it debuted. I thought GM had really shot itself in the foot. But 40 years on, the only body style I still find fully repugnant is the sedan. The coupes and wagons, well, they’ve grown on me a little. A little.
The only one I liked was the Grand-Am. The Cutlass, I couldn’t stand for the type of white-bready, Stepford-family drones who gravitated to it. Monte Carlos were for mullet-boys (did they have mullets in 1973?) who suddenly got responsible after getting married and getting the big promotion at the vinegar plant, trading in their Camaros.
The flag emblems made a lot more sense on the later “International Series” Cutlass Cieras.
All you got to do with wagons is…..lower them two inches, flow master exhausts…and pick out the right tires and rims. Nothing…and I mean not even a Raymond Lowey streamlined train engine from the 30’s…….sits as long and low and beautiful like an American tuna boat station wagon (when it’s set up right for a good low, long stance).
While that gawd-awful steering wheel makes me want to vomit, I can see the appeal this big guy has. What would have been completely embarrassing to drive by 1986 is now sort of refreshing in a Big Bird-ish way.
Except for the damn pop-out window.
I had a 1972 base LeMans which would have been a T37 the year before, with that exact same wheel. Not a great time in my life either, maybe that’s what triggers the PTSD-Pavlovian response every time I see one.
The six-passenger versions didn’t have the pop-out window. That was a feature specifically associated with the third-row seat.
Looks like a excellent child hauler. Plenty of room for child seats and properly sealed rear windows to insure the little bastards couldn’t stick their heads or hands out, doggy style.
And open that rear vent wing stuck in traffic, and let the CO send whiny little Timmy and Tammy off to dreamland.
Your confusing this with the 1978 and up A-body wagons, the rear windows do roll down on these.
That is a rare beast you found: one of the lowest production Pontiacs for 1975. 2,393 3-seat LeMans Safari wagons were built. The only models with lower production were the Grand Am sedan: 1,893, the 3-seat Grand LeMans Safari wagon: 1,501 and last (and least?) the 2-seat Grand LeMans Safari wagon: 1,393. All these are a perfect example of how rarity does not equate with desirability. This wagon, especially with the stripper interior, is just awful. Amazing that it still sees the light of day as a Colonnade instead of a reincarnated washing machine, fridge, etc.
The Colonnades are so fascinating to me. They were truly something distinctive before GM’s decade and a half of Sheer Look boxy styling (which I still find attractive in its own respects). I really haven’t seen many Colonnades either. Only the occasional coupe body style usually a Chevelle/Monte Carlo or Cutlass.
My favorite Colonnade wagon would have to be the ’76-’77 Vista Cruiser. I like the more upright front styling combined with the curvy lines of the car.
Something odd about these wagons and their successors are the bumper-located tail lights. Does anyone know if this was to improve access to the trunk? Or was this simply a styling aspect. I think it makes the rear look unfinished.
The bumper-mounted taillights also appear on the next generation (1978-83) midsize wagons, as well as on El Caminos of both styles. I think the reason was to permit the widest tailgate opening as possible. Putting the lights on the gate wouldn’t work because I believe that legally you need taillights/brake lights that remain visible when the tailgate is down (or liftgate raised). I seem to recall GM touting the wide opening in advertising.
In the 1940’s I believe some manufacturers solved that problem by mounting a taillight on a hinge, so that when the tailgate was lowered, the light swung down to remain visible. That worked fine when the taillights were bolted onto a wooden tailgate.
It really is amazing how poor the midsize wagon choices were in 1973-75 given that was supposed to be the height of the station wagon era. A Nova/Ventura/etc. wagon (and at Ford, a Maverick/Granada) would have made a lot more sense, but would have had to be sold at a lower price point, and there’s the rub. Conversely, I have a feeling a lot of dealers took midsize wagon shoppers and tried to upsell them to a Country Squire or a Caprice.
I agree with Mad Hungarian on the lights. Also, it would have been costly to put lights in the tailgate, as there would have to be a LOT of wiring to go all the way up the tailgate, then all the way back down in the body. The fixed lights in the bumper probably helped in all kinds of cost saving, even not having special stampings for different styles of hatch taillights between the divisions.
I did the Hotrod Magazine Powertour this year, and took my ’77 Chevelle sedan, out of the dozen or so Colonnades I saw there from field of close to 5,000 cars. I think I had the only sedan, there was a bunch of two door Cutlass/Chevelle/LeMans, a couple wagons, and a sedan that someone chopped about four feet out of it and turned it into a roadster.
i always wondered if the CHMSL requirements of the 1980’s came as a result of these GM wagons and El Camino’s having very poorly located brake lights… I like this wagon but I’d pop a high mount brake light on it for sure…
A guy I knew in college had the Buick version of this wagon. Green with extra Di-Noc. The right ride for hitting up used record stores, old hobby shops, whatever else we felt like finding in the far reaches of Pittsburghia.
I spent A LOT of wheel time in a 74 Luxury LeMans sedan. Ours had the 2 bbl 350 which combined all the benefits of being an absolute pig of a performer with swilling fuel like a Bonneville. That car was doing well to get 16 mpg on the highway, and got 12-14 around town. Truly awful, even for then, given the size of the car.
But handle, it did. Ours must have had an optional suspension, because it was the flattest cornering car I had ever driven up to that time, and the variable ratio power steering was quite fast. My oh my, the things I tried to do with that car.
Our 74 was notable in that Pontiac was not using that greasy hard plastic steering wheel like Oldsmobile was doing. Ours was a soft, grippy vinyl material with a fairly thin cross-section. The downside was that it was harder to keep clean.
Funny, I really hated that car when I was 16, but today it is my favorite of the Colonades. I would take a wagon like this quite easily. The quality of interior materials was these cars’ biggest failing, but nobody else was really using any better stuff then. These were better built than the Mopars (and felt more solid) and were better than average against rust. I really like this car.
Our ’74 Luxury LeMans coupe also had the Radial Tuned Suspension – clearly the best thing about the car, which had appallingly cheap rocker panel and exterior window trim.
The 1974 cars were about the worst for fuel economy generally, primarily because the state of the art for pollution controls was so crude; 1974 was the last year before catalytic converters were introduced on most American-built cars, which helped somewhat – although there were certainly pigs after that, such as the ’77 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham 4-door we had for a few years, with the 440 “Lean Burn” engine.
You are absolutely right Paul about how GM’s handling efforts on the Colonnades benefited the downsized Bs. The Colonades made beautiful coupes and pushed the envelope on everything else. The taillights down low in the bumper on the wagons and El Caminos was definitely a new look. I think they did the hatch on the wagon more for styling and opening size than to save money.
I love the vent windows in the rear glass.
It has been years since I saw a colonnade wagon. The Lemans was always my least favorite of them particularly in the coupe or sedan form. The profile of the Lemans with the pointed rear end made it look like the rear end should be in the front and the front which was more squared should be at the rear.
I was in college when the Colonnade cars came out. I thought the Monte Carlo looked especially good. The rest? I was put off by the plastic door panels. And here in Tucson, it seemed like all of the Colonnades, and their full-sized brethren of the same time, were rotting awfully quickly. I can’t tell you how many I saw with rotted weatherstripping around the windows, and adhesive oozing from under side rub strips and the chrome around the windshields and backlights. Then there was the paint–metallic colors faded with alarming speed, and white cars especially seemed to lose their paint in whole sheets. And I can’t forget all the cracked dashboards. Large areas of the U.S. have to deal with rust from salted roads. Arizona has to deal with the sun, and the sun did some numbers on these cars.
In the late 70s, I did test-drive a 1974 Malibu Classic when I was looking for a car. This one was in good shape (maybe kept in a garage?) and drove well, but was a bit out of my budget.
I’m amazed that I see any of them on the road any more.
Funny you bring up the “international thing”. As a kid I thought these wagons had a Euro look with their clean and simple greenhouses. Sure, the LeMans has the fussy side stampings, but the Malibu was a model of simple elegance compared to its Ford and Chryco counterparts.
My first car was a Collonade. To be precise, it was a 1974 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Classic Landau Collonade Coupe. Say that 6 times fast!
Rose colored glasses aside, it was a pig. The body was too big/heavy for the chassis. That car wore out front-end steering/suspension parts like nobody’s business. The 145hp, 2bbl 350 was pretty gutless, especially with the 2.73 “highway” axle fitted to my car. On the other hand, if I was careful, I could eke out 17mpg.
I wouldn’t drive one for the world. 9 years and 340,000 miles of ownership was plenty.
340,000 miles. Yeah, what a POS.
Yup, you sure didn’t like it one bit.
My first car was a ’76 Malibu Classic sedan that my parents bought brand new, and 16 years later I got to drive the car I came home from the hospital in. I had it 8 years, and 80,000 miles. In those 200,000 miles total, it had one front end rebuild – at 130,000 miles, an engine overhaul at 100,000 miles, and the A/C was never quite right. It leaked water into the trunk from the taillights, that was only found by me about two years before I junked it, so the trunk was rusted out, the floor pans had rusted through from the leaky weatherstrips around the windows.
The 140hp 305 and 3.08 axle were a good match, as that car was fairly fast, It got a heck of a lot faster once I threw some speed parts at the elderly 305. I did keep the 2bbl carb just for laughs on it. It drank oil, got 14mpg in town and 19 on the highway.
The ’77 sedan I have now, has the slightly peppier 305 (145hp!) and a 2.56 rear, and is markedly slower, and is thirstier in town (12mpg) but can get as high as 22mpg on the road. It too needed a complete front end rebuild as the rubber had disappeared from the front end bushings. It does use far less oil, and is in much much better shape than the old family hauler 76 was.
I did update the suspension to the optional HD package, and aside from a stiff rear end, it rides much better and less floaty, and with front and rear sway bars — it’s a surprisingly good handler.
I woulda bought one for travelling in OZ front engine RWD plenty of room inside not too large outside I like the cool little vent window that woulda prevented the dust being sucked in thru the tailgate it looks about Falcon/Valiant sized ( Holdens could be too small) but none came here or OZ. Power is irrelevant if you are driving 4 days to get somewhere fast isnt what you want.
Definitely bigger, significantly bigger than the US Faclon and Valliant. By this time the so called “mid-size” cars had grew to the point that they were as large as a 60’s “full-size” car.
The 1970s Falcon and Valiant had grown too, especially the Valiant. Moreso when you get into wagons too which typically had a 5″ longer wheelbase than the sedans – 116″
These were about 210″ long (5.3 meters) riding on a 116″ wb. What they do best is eat up the miles on the highways, and if you are crazy enough, can be fun to toss in corners though they suffer from terminal understeer (I know this firsthand) with the stock suspension.
Scarcity makes for increased value. Which explains why this awkwardly-styled, poorly-executed vehicle has any interest value at all.
It’s good that one survived. It’s good that GM learned much on designing a rationalized-size chassis on this vehicle. It’s good that someone who seems a bit hard-up in the monetary department can get transportation out of it.
Mostly, though, it’s good that these are no longer common. Because while it may have been better than the Torino experience across the street…it wasn’t much better.
How do these stack up to the 77 B body wagons? Was the interior close to being as roomy? What about overall length, wheelbase, & weight?
The 77-90 B body wagons were a lot more space efficient. Also had larger rear cabin area for 3rd row seat. Colonnades were pure style, designed at height of muscle car era, as with the Fuselage Mopar mid sizers.
“That was the standard engine in the 1975 Safari; yup, a “mid-sized” car whose smallest engine had 6.6 liters of displacement.”
Blessed are the tourque makers, they shall inherit the earth…
Of the Collonades, the Pontiac has always been my favorite. ’76 more specifically. Great catch!
Here y’go Paul, the sole factory-built Grand Am wagon, a 455 V8 built by a Bill Collins, Assistant Chief Engineer for Body and Electrical at the Pontiac factory. Apparently the Grand Am used a high number of model-specific parts only available at the main Pontiac plant; as GM had shifted all station wagon production to Framingham, a Grand Am version wasn’t possible. GM Engineering owned it for a couple years, then refitted the Le Mans front end when they sold it to a Tom Goad, a GM/Pontiac employee who put the Grand Am front end back on and apparently still owns it today. More pictures and details about it here: http://www.pontiacsonline.com/TOM%20GOAD.htm Also here: http://www.pontiacsonline.com/SAFARI%20P4.htm
Nice in a French bulldog way.Pity it wasn’t for sale de smogged, that would be a neat Q car
“Ironically, the “baby” 350 V8 was standard in 1973 and 1974, but just in time for the first energy crisis, Pontiac upped the ante to 400 inches standard in 1975. Well, that didn’t last long. For 1976, smaller engines were back on tap. My Standard Encyclopedia doesn’t specify a specific standard engine for the 1976 LeMans Safari, which would suggest that the Chevy 250 six was the one (it definitely was on the sedans and coupes). I rather doubt that the wagon really came with that; more likely the 350.”
My copy of the Standard Catalog shows that the 400 2bbl remained standard in LeMans wagons for 1976 (this is both stated in the text and shown in the engine chart). For 1977, the engine chart does not differentiate the wagons from the rest of the line, but the text states that the 350 was standard in wagons.
I coulda been a contenda … for being the first to post about the Colonnade wagon. There was a 74-76 Malibu wagon owned for several decades by someone who lived near my parents’ house, possibly since new, until about 2 years ago. After years of becoming increasingly decrepit, it disappeared shortly before I decided to submit my first post to CC.
I came only one time in close contact with a 1976 Malibu Wagon. But it was in a disasterous condition so I refused to buy it.
I like wagons, but I never cared for the Colonnades, or for the intermediate sized wagons of this era.
When intermediates bloated at the beginning of the 1970s, those bloated nasties looked ever worse in wagon form.
That rear hatch was heavy and if you needed to haul anything long, you couldn’t unless you tied the entire thing down onto it.
The tail lights couldn’t be seen in traffic, they completely disappeared under the long hoods of the era.
1970 wagons of this size don’t come to their senses until after 1978, with the downsizing of the GM vehicles, the Ford Fairmont wagon, and the newfound popularity of Volvo wagons.
My parents bought a 1977 LeMans Safari the summer of 77–my dad got a good deal becuse I’m sure the dealer knew the downsized cars were coming–In fact we couldn’t order a car, the dealer had to get the car from another city. It was buckskin colour with the interior being the same. As typical for my parents cars it only had pwr steering, brakes and an AM radio. The button in the glove box to pop the liftgate was space age stuff. Our car didn’t have the 3rd row seats so there wasn’t the vent windows like the feature car but the compartment under the load floor was covered and hid a lot of stuff from customs coming back from trips to the US. The engine was the 301 with the funny 2bbl that looked like a quadrajet with the secondaries sealed up.
Eventually my mother wanted a new car and just had to have one of those Magic Wagons that Gary Carter of the Expos did the ads for–our next uncool at the time family car was a 1985 Caravan LE.
My brother got the LeMans but wrecked it on a snowy night–my father was lamenting how he just put a new battery in the car–my brother’s respnse–“But I’m okay Dad”
I was smiling the whole time I was typing about these memories–great web site
Mine was the Bienne-Switzerland assembled 1980 Grand Le Mans Safari (Woody) Wagon but with a 4 barrel carburetor and also with the genuine 301 cui V8 (4.9 Litre). The 14″ wheels weren’t good at winter icy conditions. But if the asphalt was dry the car drived very well. If I remember well the transmisson was a 3-speed THM200!? Light coffe/milk brown interior and the same metallic paintjob on the outside.
hey although I appreciate the article, this is my car and has some serious sentimental value. If you would like the full story of this car and its
‘S travels then maybe you should have asked us. That being said we are still here if you would like the story behind the car!
Seems that it ain’t easy to get any kind Pontiac Wagon anyway. More complicated if a european citizen purchases to get one. Especially the Collonades. All started as I became a GM oriented young man inmy early student years. So I started with Opel. It’s a GM, almost a Chevrolet. But not a Chevrolet. Year 1990. Hey…what was that rolling on the street? Looks like an Opel Kadett-E (Vauxhall Astra Mk2) BUT has got BIGGER BUMPERS and lots of other additional extra features on the outside and the inside…BUT it hadn’t been an Opel. That had been a Pontiac! Le_Mans…and that is also a GM I thought. No internet in those times. The Berlin Wall came down only a year earlier. I started to pay more attention what was movin’ on the streets from that moment. Step by step I’ve started to absorb more and more infos about cars…especially Pontiacs… My second and third cars luckily were a 1990 sedan and soon after a 1980 Safari Wagon. Few years later I has discovered that a mid aged farmer had a 1976 Catalina Safari with original paintjob BUT without engine/transmisson. I started to bid for the car…but without success. He was always changing his mind and turned the agreements upside down. From time to time I tried to make the agreement with him about the Catalina Safari but again and again I have to give up. The bidding period lasted almost 8 years and the car still sits in the barn of that farmer. The early Pontiacs had been sold in the meantime and because I didn’t found any Pontiac which has matched my taste/vallet, in the heat of the moment I decided to get a Trans Sport (Montana Trim) but…as it is Europe, this also came to the market…no not as Pontiac…but as Chevrolet. After 2 real Pontiacs, few Chevrolets and a Mercury I am still chasing my ideal future Pontiac. A 1975-1976 Grand Le Mans Safari which might be a perfect match. But I didn’t see any of these alive throughout Europe. Other Pontiac Wagons which could match my taste as options are became very rare too. Even the Bienne assembled 1978-1981 cars as well. So the search is still on…
Love the picture of wagon with the minivan, and all the implications.
On a related note, somewhere at home I have a picture from one of my many childhood family tailgating experiences, and the line-up of three cars is a 1970’s Toyota Land Cruiser FJ55 in the traditional two-tone green and white, a Colonade Wagon in this very same blue color (probably a Lemans, just can’t remember), and in the middle, our 1975 Jeep Wagoneer in Red with wood siding. It was as if the Land Cruiser and the Wagon mated to create the suburban, on-road SUV.
Not my cup of tea. When they came out in 73 the big hatch on a wagon seemed so wrong but just a few years later it seemed OK on the Volare and the Fairmont. The frameless door glass on these was also ugly. They were a styling dead end.
Isn’t that a Chevrolet instrument panel?
no, the Chevelle panel had a horizontal sweep dash, or the round gauges, but there were 6 holes, two large ones for speedo and tach, and 4 smaller ones on the top edge of the dash, with the HVAC controls below them on the right, with the radio on the bottom of the stack.
the base dash followed the same thing, but with the clock on the top right and the gas/warning lights on the top left.
Tommy T is right. Here is a better picture of the Pontiac panel, though this one is a 73. Completely different shape than the Chevy dash.
Nice find–these are seriously rare (though it sounds like there weren’t many of them to start with). I have mixed feelings about the Colonnade cars in general but the Pontiacs are some of my favorites.
There is a colonnade wagon here in town, but I’ve only ever managed a bad night-time photo of it. I think I know where it lives, but it’s not anywhere I usually pass by, plus both times I’ve seen it there it’s been hiding under a tarp. If I ever see it uncovered I’ll have to get some more photos and write it up.
I didn’t like these at first, but I’ve come to see them as the furthest point forward for station wagon styling in the US. Both the 74 Mopar C-Bodies and the 77 GM B-Bodies turned out fine wagons, but they were really styling refinements of a well known model.
The low, straight beltline (or really sill line) the large expanse of side glass and the rear hatch was a new paradigm that somehow went no further, although the Aspen/Volare came closest.
I’m really torn on these cars. In 1975, I was nineteen, an age which a few years earlier would have put me squarely in muscle car territory. Alas, insurance payments, the first gas crunch and smog regulation had taken care of that.
So, by 1975 I was looking elsewhere than the big three for my car fantasies. In particular, I saw the Colonnades as cheap-looking junk. Just look at that straight-on front shot – the crappy headlight surrounds and the phoned – in egg crate grill. This on a Pontiac? The Pontiac of the first-gen F-Bird and the 1969 Grand Prix of just a few years earlier? Sacrilege!
Now, though, I look at the side shot, and this wagon looks pretty good. Sporty almost. And as I now know, it had a decent suspension that promised decent handling. I never looked closely enough at the time to learn that.
Sort of like looking back now from 66 at the young women that I avoided dating at the time because they seemed staid or boring. Now, those women strike me as good life-partner opportunities missed. And who knows, maybe some had good handling, if you know what I mean. I certainly never gave them a chance to show me, just like I never took a colonnade for so much as a short spin.
Ah, the foolishness of youth. . .
Neighbors had a “75 Vista Cruiser”. It lasted about 10-11 years. Was not the “primary car” after 1981. The rust was really getting hot/heavy come 1983, as I recall.
Started out as such a pretty car too.
Wstrn PA was still a “major salter of roads in winter then. They, as I recall rarely washed their cars.
I almost bought one of those wagons but decided not too.
One of my smarter decisions.
My mom had one of these… 1975, beige w/ “wood” siding and 400/2V. It was indeed a good-handling car for its time… especially in comparison to the barge- like ’68 Country Squire it replaced, but also a bit better than my dad’s ’74 Grand Prix. Both the wagon and the GP had the RTS package, but the wagon had a rear sway bar that the the GP lacked. Colonnade wagons from the other GM brands also seemed to normally be without the rear bar.
Overall, a good car that bit the dust, along with the telephone pole that ran into it while my sister was at the helm. (No injury to her)
CC effect?
I saw a 77 Malibu wagon just this morning outside a Pick-A-Part yard. Car was a light yellow with a saddle tan interior. It looked decent, but tired.