My apologies; I’ve been very busy working outside taking advantage of our first sunny spring weather. Meaning, I didn’t check this morning’s CC, which was supposedly about this “1975 Malibu” that had been mislabeled as a 1976 at the Cohort. The whole gist of the articles was an explanation of why it was really a 1975.
Except that it wasn’t. The grille is obviously from a 1974 Malibu. Any quick check of a brochure our our own archives would have made that instantly obvious.
Here’s a genuine 1975 Malibu from our archives, as written up by Jason Shafer. Its grille has nine vertical bars, unlike the ’74’s Mercedes-style grille with horizontal bars.
Here’s the proof, as if it was needed.
And here’s a 1974.
One can’t always assume a Google Image Search will be spot on, but it’s so easy to find ads and brochures online that there’s really no excuse for a mistake like this.
I once gave TTAC a hard time here because a contributor there mistook a Dart for a Volare. Ok; that’s a lot more egregious. But we pride ourselves on our batting average. And because the whole post was about proving that it was a ’75, there was no way for me to correct it. To the trash it had to go.
My apologies. I take full responsibility.
I hate it when I’m wrong, but I’d rather be corrected than allowed to wallow in my ignorance. The author of that piece shouldn’t take it too hard; it happens to the best of us.
But standards are standards and this is, after all, CC.
The best part about the CC “family” is that there was no arrogance or name-calling in the comments. It was more like, “hey, um, I’m not certain, but I think just maybe that’s a ’74, not a ’75”.
Politeness goes a long way.
+1
Politeness sure does go a long way.
Problem solved; we move on. If anything, this is a reminder of how slavishly Detroit held to the rule that each succeeding model year had to look somehow different from the preceding one.
If only that front bumper could be fixed so easily. But, our ’73 Malibu was a pretty good car.
And then by the early ’80s they realized that they had so many models across so many brands that no one would really notice (or care) if they went several years without a new grille.
Every time I look at a Malibu of this era I find another styling detail I don’t like. Today it is the way the bottom edges of the grille and the headlight trim don’t line up. The 74 on the brochure had little chrome lines that went outwards from the grille and resolved the problem, but the actual 74 and the brochure 75 lacked them. Our old Luxury LeMans looks better and better to me.
For me, it’s the roofline on the 4 door. It looks far too flimsy in comparison with the rest of the car. The two door roof (and the thick C pillar) look good however.
The subject ’74 is missing the filer panels which make it look bad. With the filler panels in place, it looks fine IMO (look at the ’75 Ad). Those little chrome trim pieces are just extra ginger bread for me, and IMO they don’t improve the looks of the car.
I still argue that sans vinyl top and with minimal trim, the Chevy Colonnade was the cleanest of the bunch. It just was stuck with either super bland or ugly front and rear styling, depending on the year or model. The other cars were so baroque and over the top in comparison.
The 76–77 Buick and Olds coupes are the cleanest colonnades, and have aged the best IMO. The heavy side sculpturing is gone, and their chrome grilles have a finesse that the clunky Chevelle grilles lack.
I think that Chevy really got the short end of the styling stick with the Colonnade generation of GM midsize cars, with both the Chevelle and Monte Carlo lagging far behind their Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac brethren in terms of desirability. In general, I like the formal personal luxury coupes best, followed by the four door sedans and then the wagons. The two door base sedans are mostly just bleah, at best. On the 1975 Chevelle pictured above, I find the vinyl landau half-top and opera window combination especially offensive when paired with the fastback slope and it really ruins the cleaner lines of the base version with the triangular window. On the other hand, if something like the heavily customized 1977 Malibu Classic wagon that Daniel Stern found for CC a few years back were to suddenly become available, I might have to reconsider.
Agreed on Chevy getting the short end of the styling stick. I would’ve gone shopping at the Pontiac store. One small step up the Sloan ladder, one giant leap for aesthetics.
Short end of the stick?? The Monte Carlo was one of the best looking cars of that era. It outsold all other personal luxury cars for years. as for the Cutlass, can someone tell me if the 2 door outsold the Monte by itself?(real question) Most other car makers were copying the Monte Carlo. As for the Malibu, i owned a 1977 sedan and loved it. To me it looked like a little limo. It was one of the most reliable cars i have ever owned. My dad also had a 1974 Malibu with the landau top. Great looking cars in my opinion.
I disagree, at least as to the 1973 Monte Carlo. In it’s first year, Chevrolet got the details all right – recessed, ribbed taillight lenses, egg crate grille, bumpers that hid the the fact that they were HUGE metal beams,
Spent a LOT of time washing my parents 1973 Monte and got a lots of cuts on my knuckles from all the sharp trim and edges.
The Colonnades were a high point in GM design. In the case of the Monte, they kept tinkering with it, and by the time they added stacked quad rectangular headlamps, the car was far less attractive.
Any doubt about the model year could have been resolved by looking at the rear end. The taillights were vastly different on the ’75’s plus on the ’75 there was the “Unleaded Fuel Only” label by the fuel filler.
“I once gave TTAC a hard time here because a contributor mistook a Dart for a Volare.”
It was a Valiant…
Ah, the sweet irony…. 🙂
I didn’t even look at it past the headline.
I thought it may have been a plant to catch the unwary!
I doubt if I will have any company when I say that I have always liked the Colonnade Chevelles, at least in coupe form. I think it is the simplest expression of this generation of GM intermediates. That’s not to say that I don’t like the others, too. I think they all look great in their own right with the right color and options.
I have never owned one. Well, that is not completely true. For a number of years in the early 1980’s my daily driver was a ’75 El Camino. That was a great little truck and gave me good service even though it had been used kind of hard by it’s first owner. I bought it cheap and fixed it up and then enjoyed it for a long time. The only reason I got rid of it was because the front end was getting loose and I had a new job where I really piled on the miles. I sold it to a friend who fixed the front end and drove it for a couple of years until some idiot hit him in a bridge and totaled it. He pulled the drive train and front end and installed them in another El Camino and drove that one for a long time.
I certainly hope I didn’t come off as impolite in my comment on the original posting; I thought I was being “matter-if-fact”. Though I’m sure I was long winded, I’ll have y’all know I’m in a 24-step program for the latter problem.
Recalling I pointed out differences in model year hubcaps, this new posting presents me with conundrum. The advertisement posted featuring the silver ‘75 Malibu Classic coupe has…gasp…what appear to be ‘76 full wheel covers. If it were a curbside pic, I would say someone hammered on the wrong hubcaps, but this is a print ad, so they must be correct. I’m assuming the ad was from late in the model year, and Chevrolet was attaching next year’s wheel covers? Any takers on this question? The pic of the green ‘75 sedan has the correct ‘75 wheel covers. Interestingly enough, the Chevy mid-size line and the full-size line utilized the same full wheel covers in ‘75, ‘76, and ‘77.
I have to agree with you Frankster, the picture of the green sedan has 1975 Malibu Classic wheel covers. My Mother bought a 1975 Malibu Classic silver with red vinyl top just like the one in the brochure. I drove it from 1977 until 1982. Put a four barrel intake and headers on it to keep up with the rubber bumper Z28’s. Changed out those wheel covers right away for Corvette rallye wheels.