(first posted 11/6/2012) The 1970s was the decade when small cars became a significant part of the U.S. auto market. You can argue that the ’60s marked the start of that trend, but there was a huge difference: In the early ’60s, American small cars were every bit as good as their imported competition. If that seems like a slight exaggeration, the fact is the American triplets of Corvair, Falcon and Valiant were relatively small cars that did what they were supposed to do: Start every morning, and then bring you home every night. During the first compact boom, many foreign competitors (VW was a notable exception) could not always make that claim. By 1962, the Corvair had been marginalized, and the ultra-conventional Chevy II embodied the very attributes of an American small car–solid, reliable, and dull as dishwater.
That said, I suppose it’s little wonder that when the U.S. industry decided to enter the sub-compact territory in the early 1970s, those “American Car” attributes were seen as good things by executives in Detroit and Dearborn. Although both GM and Ford (Lynn Townsend’s Chrysler Corporation would sit out this round of innovation) already had well-developed small car platforms in Europe, both companies chose to rely on them only minimally. While the debut versions of the Vega and Pinto might disappoint fans of European Opels and Fords, they’d be seen (at least initially) by those Americans who insisted on such vehicles as acceptable small cars.
But once the Vega and Pinto were in showrooms, U.S. firms decided to take their small-car game to the next level. I can hear it now: “Let’s make a small car that WE would want to drive.” What was it that “we” wanted to drive in the mid-1970s? Clearly, it was something with a vinyl roof, opera windows, deep-grained vinyl upholstery and thick carpeting. And thick vinyl side moldings. Lots of thick vinyl side moldings. There was no more skillful purveyor of 1970s-style fashion than the Ford Motor Company and, true to form, Ford was first to the showroom with its “better” small car . They called it Mustang II.
Most who view the Mustang II do so through the prism of the original Mustang, an perspective often not very flattering to the latter car–yet perhaps that’s not the best analysis. Actually, the car that became the Mustang II represented Ford’s way of packaging most of the goodness of a Gran Torino, or even an LTD, into a package only slightly larger than a Pinto. Isn’t that what the American car buyer really wanted? Lee Iacocca thought so, and who would know better?
As usual, Chevrolet got into the game a bit later. Seen as more of a driver’s car, their Vega seemed the more appealing package in the fall of 1970. However, its legendary design compromises and quality lapses sucked up a lot of attention at GM, and perhaps that obscured the urgency of moving on to version 2.0 of the platform–or perhaps GM’s product planners were satisfied with their work, and reacted only after rumors of the Mustang II had wafted across town.
One year after the debut of the Mustang II, Chevy dealerships began receiving the first Monza 2+2s. In a way, GM got it backwards: In Brougham-crazy America, the last thing Mr. Leisure Suit and Ms. Pantsuit wanted was another little hatchback. Ford understood this from the get-go, and had offered a notchback coupe right out of the gate. Chevy would be a little slower on the uptake, and a few months behind, but by April 1975 had come up to speed with the Monza Towne Coupe.
Yes, Towne Coupe. Not Town Coupe. That would be a Lincoln. The Towne Coupe was, let’s face it, the Chevrolet Mustang II. Let’s give the Chevy boys some credit on one thing – they did not call the car Camaro II and try to bathe it in styling cues from the ’67 Camaro (to the extent that the inaugural Camaro actually had any). I guess the recycled Corvair wheelcovers were a nice touch.
It is well known that the original Camaro was a blatant reaction to the 1964 1/2 Mustang. The Monza Towne Coupe makes it clear that by the mid-1970s (if not immediately after the tragic chapter of the Corvair), Chevrolet had stopped trying to influence the basic package defined by its crosstown rival. The Towne Coupe was a Mustang II infused with enough Chevy personality to appeal to GM die-hards (who in those years represented a very large number of customers).
Under its skin, the Monza wasn’t much more than an improved Vega, essentially sharing that car’s aluminum four-cylinder engine and basic architecture. However, it did manage to resolve some of the Vega’s notorious rear suspension bottoming and hop issues. With the Monza’s arrival, the Vega became relegated to econocar status as the Monza was given all the sex appeal.
Speaking of sex appeal, the Monza did one thing from the get-go that the Mustang II didn’t; specifically, offer an optional V8 engine right off the bat. The Monza’s light weight made even the little, de-smogged 262 cu in (4.3-liter) V8 seem powerful. It is also the car made famous by the discovery that it was impossible to change spark plugs without slightly lifting the engine from its mounts. Ten pounds of engine in a nine pound engine bay? It would appear so.
The Monza is an early indicator of the indecisive management that eventually doomed GM. It seems that Chevrolet never quite figured out what the Monza was supposed to be. Ponycar? Little brougham? Pocket rocket? Econobox? Matters were made worse in 1978 when the Monza’s new front sheetmetal was grafted onto the now-discontinued Vega hatchback and wagon to create the new Monza base coupe and the Monza wagon. This was also the year the Pontiac Iron Duke replaced the unloved Vega aluminum four as the base engine; a couple of V6s, including the Buick 3.8-liter, also made the lineup. In fairness, Chevrolet was selling a lot of Camaros at the time, which probably imposed restrictions on just where the Monza should be positioned in the lineup.
One thing the Monza never did was to outsell the Mustang II. Until the two former Vega models got sucked into the lineup in 1978, the Monza managed to sell between 2/3 (1975) to one-half (1976-77) of the MII’s volume. Even with a base hatch and a wagon available in 1978, Monza hit only about 2/3 of the Mustang’s volume (and don’t forget that Ford was still selling a fair number of Pintos). It is interesting that while Mustang coupes generally outsold hatchbacks by about two-to-one, that ratio typically was reversed with the Monza. It is also interesting that the Monza had its best sales years in 1979 and 1980, its fifth and sixth years of production with very little change, and following the demise of the archrival Mustang II.
I think I understand. One of my three law-school roommates had a ’75 Mustang II base coupe, and another had an ’80 Monza base 2+2. Both cars were four-cylinders with stick shifts. Both were slow, rough, fairly noisy and made a guy with a slant six Scamp feel like a genius. But the Ford felt like a higher-quality car in terms of body structure and interior materials. The Monza was all molded plastic. Put another way, the Mustang II felt a lot more like an LTD than the Monza felt like a Caprice. The Monza was probably the better car to drive and to own for the long haul, but the Ford landed in a fatter part of the market with better showroom appeal.
Here is a mystery to ponder. These Monzas were pretty solid structurally, not bad against rust, had moderately durable engines (other than the Vega-derived base four) and were set up for V8 power. So where did they all go? The Mustang II was a rust bucket of the first order, and is as unloved by Ford fans as any car since the 1958 Fairlane. Yet in my personal and very unscientific study, there seem to be more Mustang IIs than Monzas still around. I first saw this Monza last winter, and since then I have not seen another. So much for the CC effect. This V6-powered car is owned by a young mechanic who works in his grandfather’s repair shop. He picked it up precisely because they are so seldom seen, and kindly permitted me to take some pictures.
After thinking things over, I’ve decided that I sort of like the little pup (although the unusual color is not my thing). But what is its legacy? Was it an underachiever with an identity crisis that displayed an occasional flash of above-averageness, at least compared with its crosstown rival? Or was it a decent car that sort of got lost between the Vega’s infamy and the Camaro’s dominance? I don’t know. Maybe its muddled image and mission continue to dog it, because this seems to be the one small Chevy most everyone has forgotten.
The H Body, the closest thing you can get to an Americanized Alfa Romeo or Lancia.
The cheap versions of Monza essentially replaced the Vega in 1978. But they were lame ducks, with Fox Stang and J cars around the corner.
Sunbird! That was Pat’s car. I had forgotten what it was called. The notchback version, with the Iron Duke motor and automatic, basic interior. What someone above described as “crude but effective.” But a step-up from his starving graduate student Chevette; he was quite proud of his first new car. I thought it was quite pretty, the interior certainly plusher than my Vega GT’s, same comfortable and supportive seats, softer and quieter ride but it swayed on the turns. And that Iron Duke motor! I guess it didn’t bother me too much, coming from my Vega, but it vibrated so bad it had a habit of loosening the alternator adjustment bolt, resulting in fan slippage and then battery drain. Pat had no mechanical ability, but he got very good at hailing people in the parking lot to give him a jump-start. He was very proud of his ability to attach the jumper cables correctly. I would try to keep the alternator adjusted for him once I learned of this, but unfortunately I did not know of Loctite in those days-don’t know why the dealer didn’t just use the same. I kept it tuned for him, tuned being a relative term-it was indeed bog slow, but like Chrysler slant sixes I have known, rather indifferent to timing, plugs, idle mixture, etc. There was slow, and there was a little less slow. Question for Paul and our other resident mechanical engineers: Why did GM, who invented the modern smooth, quiet, powerful and relatively efficient small block V8, produce such a succession of buzzy, varyingly reliable, underpowered 4’s? If not a Deadly Sin, certainly a succession of venial sins, that added up to a big one.
Question:
“Why did GM, who invented the modern smooth, quiet, powerful and relatively efficient small block V8, produce such a succession of buzzy, varyingly reliable, underpowered 4′s? If not a Deadly Sin, certainly a succession of venial sins, that added up to a big one.”
Answer:
“To upsell to a V6 or V8 option, or better yet to an intermediate or full-size or Camaro, which would actually make money”
BTW, it’s interesting that less than 10 years after the Cosworth Vega you could buy a DOHC 16V fuel-injected Corolla, the GTS.
I bought a ’77 2+2 for $500 two summers ago. Factory V8, complete and running.
In answer to the other gentleman’s question regarding where these cars all went- most of them were turned into drag cars.
I don’t know what’s more amazing, the fact that someone preserved one of these (it’s possible they parked it after 10K miles cuz it sucked) or that it was listed as a “muscle car”.
http://www.kumberamotors.com/cars.htm?l=&id=603
I think this might have been my first car. I drove a ’79 Monza just like this, in that hideous color through high school ’87-’89 and gave it up when I went away to college. I was shocked to see the Indiana plates on it because I grew up in Indiana. The black trim between the front and rear side windows was worn that way when I had mine as well. What a piece of crap car that was — I spent more repairing it over two and a half years than I paid for it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Not sure if you will reply but i am the owner of this car you should contact me lol i would love too see if this was yours or not lol
RE: 1975 Monza Towne Coupe 5.7L (350 cid) 2-v (California)
Where was Ralph Nader when GM let this killer on the road?
Too fast into a turn or curve – massive understeer and off the road you go!
Too much throttle in a left turn – snap spin when the right rear tire breaks traction (real easy to do in the dry, unavoidable in the wet).
Panic stop at freeway speeds – brake pedal goes to floor when the pads shear off the disk brake backing plates!
But in stock form TC would beat the performance cars at the time from a roll, running in first gear up to 70mph and second to 100mph.
Add velvetouch pads, THM350 valve body mods, stiffer minitruck front springs and sticky Caldwell retreads on wider keystone steel wheels (with stock hubcaps), the TC was a real sleeper and shamed many ’75 era “muscle cars”.
The caveat was that if it didn’t kill you first, it made you a better driver.
A schoolmate of mine drove a v8-powered H body variant in the mid-80s…he told me with a straight face that it had “self-changing oil”. Apparently it burned so much oil that his father told him to just keep topping it off?! I seem to recall that it was a red Monza hatchback with white vinyl seats, but it’s been so many years, who knows.
Great post on a car that is seldom seen. There were always a lot less Monza Town Coupes around than the more popular (and pretty) Monza fastbacks. I owned a 78 Monza 2+2 fastback for a couple of years in the late 80’s It had the iron duke and a 4 speed, I can say from first hand experience, after having owned a Pontiac Astre (Vega) that the Monza was a 100% improvement over the Vega. Gm used galvanized sheet metal on the Monza and the Iron duke 4cyl was a stout little motor. But these were entry level cars with little resale value, and sad to say most of them have been shredded. As an aside the Astre I had was a real POS! And it was SLOW, just what a naturally lead footed young guy needed at the time to learn how to drive on city streets in a civilized manner
When these were — well, not NEW, but still on the road as daily drivers — I thought they were nice-looking cars. Now I see that their proportions couldn’t be more wrong. The size relationship between the greenhouse, the front overhang, and the rear deck betrays just how cramped the interior is. It looks like the front clip was cannibalized from something at least one size class up. Ick.
“Let’s give the Chevy boys some credit on one thing – they did not call the car Camaro II and try to bathe it in styling cues from the ’67 Camaro (to the extent that the inaugural Camaro actually had any).”
I’ve never understood the backhanded swipes at the styling of the original Camaro that I’ve occasionally read on CC. It was a very good shape: restrained but sporty, sophisticated but muscular. IMO, it was a better visual design than the original Mustang, which by comparison looks dated. The first gen Camaro was outshone by its stunning successor in 1970, but it had nothing to apologize for.
Yep, he detracted from the case he was making with that one. And the original Camaro was plenty sharp, especially with hidden headlights. I’m really not a GM fanboy, but my observations and experiences were often more positive than what I read here. My cousin had two Monza notchback coupes and put a ton of miles on each of them. He took care of his cars and the Monzas’ bodies held up pretty well for Maine. I’d say the Monza was what the Vega should have been in the first place.
Oh c’mon, can’t a guy have a little fun at the 67 Camaro’s expense? It was certainly not an unattractive car, but it was little more than a 65 Mustang restyled by Bill Mitchell. And let’s be truthful, other than a pleasing shape, did the 67 Camaro really have any truly memorable styling focal points? I think the 69 did, but not the 67. I just took a few minutes looking at several of them. Take a look at one without stripes or cool wheels, and let’s talk again.
“other than a pleasing shape, did the 67 Camaro really have any truly memorable styling focal points?”
IMO, creating a good overall shape is the most important and difficult thing for a designer to do. While “styling focal points” are important, if this is all a designer knows how to do, he’ll design the 1958 Continental…or a Pontiac Aztec…or a Mustang II. The first gen Camaro has it all over the first gen Mustang in regard to their basic shape…to my eye there is more than 2.5 years difference between the two cars.
The shape of the Camaro is so good, I think, that its undistinguished details still work. For example, the taillights are bland, but they are very well-proportioned for the rear fascia. The whole is well integrated.
I like the ’69 the least of the first gen; why did they get rid of those excellent wheel arches?!
No stripes or cool wheels here…but pretty darn nice.
Yeah Jim, I shouldn’t have tweaked you for stating an opinion. As for the ’67 I’ll stand with mFred. The details at the ends may have been a bit bland, but the shape is a classic, imho. And yes, the Firebirds and the later Camaros did improve…
If someone looking for a new, old-school musclecar in 1975 just couldn’t bear to cough-up for an A-body 360 Mopar, the 350-2v Monza was the bargain hotrod to have (at least if you lived in California). The reason for it was that the 1975 350 engine passed the stricter California emission standards while the V8 engine for the other 49 states (I don’t recall if it was the 262 or 305) did not. Car and Driver did an article on the 350 Monza and thought it was great. The article’s lead photo was a frontal view of a Monza 2+2 smoking the rear tires which, considering the smallish size, doesn’t really sound like that much of feat.
But, one-year-only musclecars aside, the Monza was just about as typical a small car as one was going to find in the seventies, i.e., not very good. It might have been a GM product that was able to last a ‘little’ longer than a Vega, but the Monza still left a huge, gaping vacuum for the much better-built Japanese products to fill and, man, did they ever. The Monza’s ad copy should have read, “So you say you want a piece-of-crap small car? Have we got one for you!”
I have never seen one of these in the wild. For some reason, when I look at the side profile, the first thing I think of is ’86 Toronado.
Hard to find fastback or notchback Monza now. There was a fastback a few blocks way in my city. It sat in the front driveway for a couple of years and has now disappeared. Its condition leads me to believe its back on the road with a warmed over V8 under the hood. In fact whenever I see a Monza its hot rodded which is not surprising as they were such light cars.
Your last line is hilarious, rudiger.
I wonder sometimes if folks whose first car was a Maverick, Pinto, Vega, Monza, Gremlin, Pacer, Skyhawk, Chevette or Mercury Bobcat (remember those!) ever wax nostalgic and think “Y’know, I wish I’d have kept that”?
Maybe if they got a good one the first time.
Probably the Chevette. It seemed the least pretentious, had the most European DNA and, more than any of the others, was the hardest to kill and most worthy of the ‘cockroach of the road’ moniker.
The problem with all of those cars was that, on top of having abysmal quality where things would routinely fall off, break, rust, or simply quit working, the driving dynamics were horrid, as well. None of them were much fun to drive and that, alone, lent people to take out their frustrations on the car. It’s highly unlikely that anyone remembers any of them fondly.
They were all bottom-feeder, close-to-being-disposable cars whose main buyers were people who couldn’t afford anything else. Woe be it to someone that actually had to rely on one as their sole means of transportation. They got driven into the ground quickly and whatever was left of them after a hard, barely maintained life was unceremoniously disposed of at the nearest junkyard or, more likely, simply left on the side of the road somewhere.
These were great cars, from a stylistic standpoint, but the quality on them wasn’t good. I remember back in the mid 80’s, even seeing one around wasn’t that frequent. We had a 1980 Sunbird, and it was a fun car, but it wasn’t made very well, either. The Monza’s death knell was the introduction of newer, cheaper cars that had their own issues……Cavalier, K-Car, etc. Monzas/ Sunbirds were very cramped (as someone here mentioned, the backseat legroom was nearly non-existent), and GM should have gave up the ghost and just had it be a two seater, and then expand the front leg room and trunk space. They should have made the car a bit higher for a bit more headroom, too. Consequently, I think that the cars were just neither performance based enough (not enough muscle for the muscle car guys), nor were they practical enough (not enough room for family, etc), so you tend to get people in the comments section saying that they had one of these cars out of high school or as a first car or something, that was good on gas, sporty and looked good…..but it generally wasn’t a car that people committed to. I remember our 1980 Sunbird having a cracked block in early 1992, and it was off to the scrapyard–they just weren’t worth it to save (we’d bought it for $500).
Not that their cars in this class were any better, but the Ford guys in Dearborn used to refer to these GM cars as “toilet cars”.
In retrospect, it`s hard to believe we actually drove cars with such horrible interiors, but I guess we did. Considering GM`s quality control, It`s amazing that they didn`t melt in hot weather. This car makes a good case for walking.
The F bodies overshadow these H body cars in GM fans’ eyes. So, they get junked instead of modded or “kept in a barn”.
I had a friend who had one of these hatchback Monzas.
He bought it new.
As we were college buds and two more of us were riding in this, I was relegated to the back seat (or what passed as one).
This was a miserable car – and I won’t forget that there was a seam in the middle of the back of the front seat where the zipper was housed for easy assembly. I’ve seen cheap cars, but that zipper stands out as a low in cheap.
I could be wrong, but I swear that I remember a zipper on the back of the front seats of our 1980 Monte Carlo, because if I’m not mistaken, I had unzipped it at some points and saw the white padding that it was filled with.
Approximately 3.6 million H-body cars were produced by GM from 1970 thru 1980 (see below). I can see why GM kept producing Monzas because all the development cost had been amortized; only the directly production cost (labor and materials) needed to be covered. Yet, now much ” bad feelings” did GM generate with these vehicles??
Now I fully appreciate why Toyota Corollas or Datsun B-210s when flying off the dealer lots in the ’70s and Reagan requesting voluntary import restriction during his administration.
731,504 H-Body Monzas
125,311 H-Body Skylarks
479,967 H-Body Sunbirds
125,188 H-Body Starfires
2,006,661 Vega
147,773 Astra
3,616,404 Grand Total
The same mistake and “bad feelings” were repeated with the GM X-Car (Chevy Citation).
My company-car gold notchback w/vinyl roof in 1981, 4-cyl auto, was so bad I named it “Lurch.” It would randomly lunge off a straight line at highway speeds, its rubber-band tires inspiring fear. That and the anemic growl of the engine made me park the thing and drive my own car – a fwd Volkswagen.
I had a new 79 Monza TC for 10 years and close to 400k miles. When something broke I fixed it. The point being this was an entry level car that could be maintained over long run and most were used up.
One little correction. The tiny hubcaps (and pressed wheels) on your photographed car are not recycled from the Corvair. They are from the Vega.
The Monza was supposed to be the next generation Vega, and it is, but got a last-minute name change to try to throw off the poor reliability image. You can see a lot of styling cue evolutions from the last Vega to the Monza. A few of these early Monza cars actually carried Vega badging. Crazy.