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We’ve reached the end of our 1971 six small car comparison at last. And what a winner we have indeed! Without giving too much away, let’s just say this car runs, was for sale, and I was sorely tempted to buy it. Let’s also say that since many of you probably know our not-so-mysterious winner by now, that what we’re looking for are pithy, profound and insightful comments to explain the significance of the setting and background of where I discovered this very rare car.
Maybe you need a broom to sweep up the parts that fall off the car?
I toured the assembly plant where these losers were made as part of a Cub Scout outing shortly after this car was introduced. I saw the lazy, sloppy, repetitive work and decided then and there I was going to college.
By the way, was 1971 the last time a BMW didn’t win a Car & Driver comparo?
@new caledonia: In 1971, BMW was still one of them there furrin’ makes that you were only faintly aware of.
Oddly enough, in the early 70s, BMWs lineup consisted of the 2002 (and related small cars), the E3 (New Six sedan), and E9 (coupe). I really fail to see how they didn’t win all car comparos.
new caledonia: “I toured the assembly plant where these losers were made as part of a Cub Scout outing shortly after this car was introduced. I saw the lazy, sloppy, repetitive work and decided then and there I was going to college.”Supposedly, UAW relations were so bad at the time the car was being produced, the workers would blatantly sabotage the body integrity to make them rattle as much as possible. Talk about making a bad situation worse.
Imagine one of those guys standing up and proudly proclaiming, “I worked the line on that car!”. And yet, it’s one of the plants the manufacturer has always kept open and running, regardless of the health of the auto business.
I wonder if any of those same workers are still around to feel the financial pinch as the company careened towards eventual irrelevance and oblivion through the decades that followed.
Ah, yes. I’d recognize that roof rack anywhere. When I was a kid, we had one of the LAST of these to roll off the line (never could get Dad to answer to that one; I suppose he felt that a small family should have a small wagon). Years later, after my uncle bought the car, (apparently three years into it, Dad decided that big coupe > small wagon) he pointed out that the roof rack had been installed backwards from the factory, so that rusting tailgate would now open up to the heavens rather than simply parallel with the horizon.
Oddly enough, that silver ’77 Kammback lasted into the 1990’s and over 200k miles without any major incident. Sure, it was still a substandard design, but maybe they did actually get their crap together just about the time when they couldn’t give them away.
Or maybe we just got lucky…
@rudiger —
I can’t imagine anyone involved with that car — engineering, manufacturing, or marketing — admitting that they had anything to do with that car. (In fairness, it was reasonably handsome and handled well for its time, from what I’ve been told. And like Paul Niedermeyer, I’d be tempted to buy one now for the nostalgia.)
I’ve heard assembly line horror stories, but I didn’t witness anything like that that day. I do remember a guy balancing tires: a tire and wheel assembly slid in front of him, it spun for several seconds, then stopped. One of three lights lit up in front of bins of wheel weights, to tell him which size weight to tap on to the wheel. I saw the blank, bored look on his face and decided to do something else with my life.
In 1972 I was a hostage of sorts living in what was then called West Germany. One of my chums – a young car aficionado named Kenny Beach – had a bar coaster featuring the name of this car that his father must have picked up at a car show or somewhere. As he didn’t know the correct pronunciation of the word – he would call it a Vedge-ah – much like vegetable. More than 35 years later I still can’t help but savour the fine sense of irony of the nine year-old Mr. Beach.
Even more surprising is how Sony resurrected the name in 1998 for it’s truly ground-breaking line of flat screen CRT televisions. Accept those were spelled Wega yet pronounced a la John Z. DeLorean.
Oh, and one more thing. In 1982 I had this girlfriend in the highly under-rated Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her father had a brown Pontiac Astre wagon. She was just about as smart as they come – yet so uncomfortable when even kissing or holding hands – I wonder if she’s now enjoying an alternate lifestyle and whether it’s somehow connected to GM’s ill-fated H body…
The Vega’s biggest positive claim to fame was likely the fact that it was rather easy to install a small-block Chevy V8 into an otherwise clean example where the only thing wrong was the engine. There were numerous aftermarket companies offering DIY kits.
It was serious straight line performance on the cheap and, for a time, it was the de facto steet racer’s preferred ride after the sixties’ musclecar era had ended (remember, it was still just a economy car in the minds of insurance agents). In that regard, the Vega was okay.
Here is some very interesting reading about the reasons for the assembly problems that the Vega had (which were separate from the design problems the Vega had).
Essentially yeah, the workers absolutely did sabotage the cars deliberately but they also were responding to frustration because management set the build rate at an impossible speed. Workers couldn’t do a good job even when they wanted to, so at first they started saying “The Hell with it” and leaving out a bolt here or there and later it was “F this” and not even trying.
http://libcom.org/library/lordstown-struggle-ken-weller
Management has got EXACTLY what they deserved – and this is coming from a guy who isn’t much of a fan of the UAW.
It’s even in that weird, funky shade of 70’s yellow.
Lokkii, thanks for the Lordstown link. I had a very different perspective on the industrial sabotage matter at the time … being a kid working in my dad’s GM dealership.
A couple memories stick out in my mind: we had a customer drive off the lot in a new Buick LeSabre, only to have its entire rear end (axle, differential, suspension and wheels) fall off at the first traffic light he tried to pull away from. And then there was the time my mom dropped me off at the local mall in her brand new (that day) Firebird Formula 400. When I opened the passenger door to get out, the door itself fell on the ground (the hinge pins were MIA). Neither of these incidents were considered worthy of investigation–unfortunately they were regarded as “normal” quality snafus.
And then there was the rust. I recall that it was imperative to move Buick product from the Framingham, Mass plant (Centuries and Regals IIRC) as quickly as possible, because if they sat on the lot more than 6 months we’d end up doing body work on them. Can you imagine trying to sell cars today that were capable of rust perforation holes in the first year?
I’m looking forward to this one:
My first (new, not antique) car was a ’73 Vega GT, four speed. Damned be the stories, I had a good one. Ran three seasons of SCCA B-Sedan autocross. Discovered the SCCA bias against you if you were driving anything American other than a Corvette. Have never had anything to do with the organization since. Yes, it was using oil at trade in time, but after three seasons of competing fairly equally against BMW 1600’s and 2002’s, and Alfa GTA’s? I still remember that car very fondly.
The follow up was a ’76 Monza GT. Too heavy for autocross, but a good rally car and long distance tourer. Four cylinder, five speed.
Then I chanced my luck once too often. ’79 Monza Kammback, six cylinder, five speed. Put me off Chevrolets for 20 years.
Syke,
It’s going to be a stroll down memory lane for you, just maybe not so rosy as your experience.
OMG, I totally forgot about the Monza having a Kammback version, i.e. a Vega wagon with a new grille. Thanks for reviving that well-repressed memory. Not!
How did you find one that hasn’t completely rusted out?
In 1974, my neighbor’s girlfriend had a yellow 1971 hatch. It was her first new car. My neighbor, Carl, and some friends and I were in the complex parking lot, standing in front of the car drinking beer when Mary, who had been talking with Carl’s mother, came out to leave. She asked us what we were doing around her car, and Carl said “we’re watching your car rust.”
I won’t describe what happened next, but she ended up marrying Carl anyway.
In all the years I worked in the car business, many of them at GM, I never once heard anyone claim to have worked on the Vega. Everyone had a Corvette job in their resume, but the Vega? I think it was spontaneous birth.
I had a number of Vegas. I liked the looks, the handling, the ergonomics. There was a lot to like. Unfortunately it was all too transitory. Engine failures, rust, sagging frames, and so on. I always found it ironic that the seats would often outlast 4 engines in these cars without a trace of wear.
The best Vega I ever had was the one I put a Ford 2.8 V6 engine in. It was an easy swap, the engine didn’t weigh any more than the Vega 4 cylinder, and tghe transformation was astonishing.
I look forward to the review.
Bob
Syke: You probably got the only Vega built on a Wednesday. I’m convinced the rest were built only on Monday’s and Fridays.
And yeah, back in high school, my buds who were budding hot rod mechanics dropped small block V8s into them and man, what a car!
Too bad the rest of the vehicle fell apart in no time at all.
Anyone else ever read John Z Delorean’s book “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors”?
The GM Engineering Center was assigned to develop all new cars, taking this responsibility away from the car divisions, and despite the fact that Chevrolet had engineered a new subcompact, the GM designed XP-887 (which became the Vega) was selected – in fact ordered by fiat – by people on the 14th floor, above John Delorean (who had been in charge of Pontiac during this time and had been moved to Chevrolet just in time to introduce this turkey).
People used to modern cars – even low priced, supposedly “crummy” cars such as the Chevrolet Aveo or even a used Ford Aspire, have NO CONCEPT about how bad the new Ford Pinto and especially the Chevrolet Vega were.
Suffice to say that the whole Vega car can be summed up in the fact that the very first running prototype didn’t make it 1/4 around the test track before it literally broke in half at the firewall.
Remember; Chevrolet had already spent money, time and resources engineering a DIFFERENT car which could have been tooled up at any time instead of this XP-887.
Not to mention the fact that GM’s Vauxhall division had some competently engineered OHC slant four engines (1800 and 2300cc) which could have simply been tooled up – saving enormous amounts of development. Why re-invent the wheel? In fact, the front clip, drivetrain, major components, windshield, firewall (all the “very expensive” to develop bits) of the Vauxhall in which these engines were used could have been used to build sub-compacts.
Chevrolet could have even replaced the Chevy II / Nova line with the 4 door sedan versions of this car. It was called the Vauxhall Victor and ironically, the car was pretty much all-new in 1972, the year after the Vega came out. (I’m pretty certain that GM could have pulled the car forward by a year given that the Victor FE was being co-developed with Opel anyway). Even if not, the engine could have been used (1600cc and 2000cc) and upgraded to 1800 and 2300 as emission equipment in the early 1970’s reduced power (more displacement would have been needed to “make up for it” – all the Japanese, European and US cars used this method in that timeframe).
Synergies could have been used and enormous amounts of money saved….
Of course, the “NIH” (not invented here) factor comes into play.
But just imagine the position GM would have been in had the Vega been actually reliable (1800cc, optional 2300cc) and the all-new Nova significantly smaller but with similar interior room (2300cc and perhaps with an SS version with a 307 V8). The cars could have been built at the massive Willow Run plant, where Corvairs (1960-1969) and Novas were built. When the fuel crisis hit in late 1973, these cars would have provided GM with significant inroads for profits and market share, instead of letting the Japanese have it all…
It was not to be.
The thing is, GM could have saved multiple millions on the DEVELOPMENT of the car – and did not. They CHOSE to attempt to save multiple millions on the MANUFACTURE of the car by abusing the people in the plant. And it bit them in the @ss.
The Vega very much marks the point where I first realized that the Emperor of Cars had no clothes.
I was just at the age where I was transitioning from being a fan of cars based on their beauty and power to being a guy who had to pay for one himself.
Of course, GM cars were already failing in quality before the Vega appeared…. but it hadn’t become obvious yet. When the engine mounts, and later the leaf springs failed on my Dad’s 69 Camaro, he blamed me, and I thought he was right. It wasn’t till years later that I learned that the mounts and the springs were defective right from the factory.
http://www.citizen.org/documents/Part512-comments.pdf
See Page 7, Item 5.
When GM announced the Vega, we believed. We really thought that GM was an engineering giant who could toss out a new design with a revolutionary aluminum engine and it would be great.
The fact that it was beautiful (and the first ones were) and handled great showed that GM could take on the imports at their own game… and do it better. We were proud, we loved it. We wanted one. Especially with the (in true GM fashion) promised-early-and-often 185 hp Cosworth engine (110 HP when it finally arrived in an ugly car).
http://www.cosworthvega.com/cosworth_vega_history.html
In the end though, those facts just made the fall all that much greater. To paraphrase Animal House, “We screwed up; we trusted them”.
So I think that the Vega was the real “Out of Eden” experience for millions of Americans. It marks the beginning of the end of GM. It showed that, yes, you CAN sell millions of poorly-designed, poorly-assembled, decontented, ugly cars that rust away in a summer’s breeze… but you can’t do it forever.
@Lokkii :
http://libcom.org/library/lordstown-struggle-ken-weller
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
(s) Teamster, Boston Local 25 – 35 years (Ret.)
Paul,
Here is another repressed memory – the one passenger panel express.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:71_Vega_Panel.jpg
Contrast the article “lordstown struggle” in the link above, with historical knowledge of pre-union Detroit in the better car companies.
Packard, early 20th century (pre-UAW): The company provided the first modern, well lighted factory by means of hiring architect Albert Kahn, who invented a reinforced concrete construction system allowing massive windows. The Packard management, while not wishing to be “paternalistic”, kept the working conditions humane; provided pre-paid medical care for workers; provided for a dance hall and music for afterhours entertainment, etc.
Henry Ford could be blamed for speeding up the work process to an inhumane point, which most other car companies adopted over time (in order to better compete – specifically, GM and Chrysler)
and these “speed-ups” led to the demands for unionization in order to curb the abuse of the working stiffs.
The trouble is, the unions soon became just another layer of bureacracy that the unionized had to carry, for the most part.
If you doubt these words, look at the success of companies manufacturing cars in the non-union mandated states vs. the big-3 which have the UAW.
The significance of the photo could be that only witchcraft (symbolized by the black broom) can keep the car running longer than 30,000 miles. After all, didn’t Samantha and Darren (both of them) Stevens always drive Chevrolets?
I’mm late to this party, sorry…
But I must comment. Scheumack Broom Company! I saw those brooms last time I was in Eugene, in 2002, and thought: these are fantastic, I should import them into Germany. (Of course, I was too lazy to follow up on my idea).
Great product, great town, lousy car, lousy car company!