Thoughts on terrible 1970s American cars ...
by Chris Hafner
on December 12, 2007
There is a nice little exchange in the comments of my Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna Type S-3 454 Car Disgust post regarding whether bad American cars of the 1970s are worthy of ridicule or not. I responded in the comments section, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought the subject deserves its own post.
To sum up the two viewpoints:
Anthony Cagle: "I've tended to defend the mid-late '70s
cars and feel I must do so now!"
Mochi Mochi: "With all due respect to their defenders, Mid-70's american cars were an absolute abomination of the grotesque."
The strange thing is that I agree with both of these statements.
By today's eyes, or even those of 1970s Europeans, 1970s American cars are abominations - ugly, overwrought, hideously out of proportion, slow, and unrewarding to drive. There are exceptions, of course, but it's hard to deny that it was a dark decade for domestic iron.
Mochi Mochi: "With all due respect to their defenders, Mid-70's american cars were an absolute abomination of the grotesque."
The strange thing is that I agree with both of these statements.
By today's eyes, or even those of 1970s Europeans, 1970s American cars are abominations - ugly, overwrought, hideously out of proportion, slow, and unrewarding to drive. There are exceptions, of course, but it's hard to deny that it was a dark decade for domestic iron.
Yet ... yet ... in the last several
years, I've found myself increasingly warming to those 1970s American
cars. It goes back to what I've said several times - bad cars can be
incredibly interesting. Just as cars are about more than
transportation, so are they about more than performance, or efficiency,
or the quality of their engineering.
Many 1970s American cars are empirically bad - slow, inefficient, overstyled, under-engineered - but they are still interesting. Most people read history in books or watch it on TV; 1970s cars are rolling history, imbued with the spirit of both the people who design them and the people that use them.
Take, say, the Pinto. Not a great car. In fact, many people think it was one of the worst cars of the 1970s. Somewhere, three decades ago, a designer proudly unveiled it to the bosses at Ford; workers spent their waking hours building it. Young families bought Pintos, showed Pintos off to their friends, washed Pintos in their driveways, drove their babies home from the hospital in Pintos. Some of you drove Pintos; some of your parents or grandparents drove Pintos. Pintos were on TV, in movies, in magazines and newspapers.
The Pinto is part of the fabric of our history. Drive one today, and you can share that. The sloppy suspension, the awkward styling, the tractor-like engine; these place you bodily back in the 1970s. You experience exactly what drivers experienced in the 1970s. The realities of the OPEC difficulties, the emissions crackdown, the priorities of Americans in the 1970s--these are all reflected in the Pinto, frozen in sheetmetal and glass.
A Pinto isn't just a crappy car from the 1970s--it is a veritable time machine. It's an anthropological statement that is still useful enough to do the vast majority things that people do with their cars every day. You can still get to work, pick up groceries, or drive long distances on the freeway.
Now, I could be hoist on my own petard here, as all of this is as true of the Saturn SL2 as it is for the Pinto. But this is as close as I'll ever get to acknowledging this fact.
Many 1970s American cars are empirically bad - slow, inefficient, overstyled, under-engineered - but they are still interesting. Most people read history in books or watch it on TV; 1970s cars are rolling history, imbued with the spirit of both the people who design them and the people that use them.
Take, say, the Pinto. Not a great car. In fact, many people think it was one of the worst cars of the 1970s. Somewhere, three decades ago, a designer proudly unveiled it to the bosses at Ford; workers spent their waking hours building it. Young families bought Pintos, showed Pintos off to their friends, washed Pintos in their driveways, drove their babies home from the hospital in Pintos. Some of you drove Pintos; some of your parents or grandparents drove Pintos. Pintos were on TV, in movies, in magazines and newspapers.
The Pinto is part of the fabric of our history. Drive one today, and you can share that. The sloppy suspension, the awkward styling, the tractor-like engine; these place you bodily back in the 1970s. You experience exactly what drivers experienced in the 1970s. The realities of the OPEC difficulties, the emissions crackdown, the priorities of Americans in the 1970s--these are all reflected in the Pinto, frozen in sheetmetal and glass.
A Pinto isn't just a crappy car from the 1970s--it is a veritable time machine. It's an anthropological statement that is still useful enough to do the vast majority things that people do with their cars every day. You can still get to work, pick up groceries, or drive long distances on the freeway.
Now, I could be hoist on my own petard here, as all of this is as true of the Saturn SL2 as it is for the Pinto. But this is as close as I'll ever get to acknowledging this fact.
--Chris H.
That Car Guy on October 27, 2008 at 08:21 AM
The terrible 1970s American cars are why the Japanese cars are so successful today.
smitty on April 04, 2009 at 03:25 PM
Yes . . . but,
Look through the Mopar enthusiast magazines (at least three I know of) on the rack and you'll see restored and street-rodded examples of early '70s Dart Swingers, Barracudas, and Chargers that look and perform very well, and stand out in any crowd of modern cars as something the individualist would rather be driving. Look at the late '70s Chevy El Caminos, with their smooth, understated, tasteful design. Or if you want avant garde, what about the Pacer, which is daring design even today?
Engine performance, admittedly, was way off in the '70s, because these were the years that the smog police forced the car companies to clean up emmisions. The resulting switch from closed-chamber squish heads to open-chamber smog heads cut low-end torque, as did further compression reductions to deal with low-octane low-lead gas. Those were the years of reaction to the OPEC oil shock, and car makers tried to make things lighter, but thinwall casting of engine parts has its limits, and lots of cylinder heads were notorious for cracking.
The '70s cars had good disc front brakes, but Detroit still thought Americans wanted a soft sloppy ride. By mid-decade it was noticed that MerBenz was selling biggish cars that rode better and HANDLED, and the American companies began to firm up their own cars.
Modern swirl/tumble head designs have enabled some of the lost compression to be restored, making for much snappier performance. Modern electronic feedback fuel injection works a lot better (unless the computer croaks) than lean-burn carburetion. Thinwall, crack-prone iron heads have given way to aluminum heads, most of which hold up well . . . until you run them low on water and warp them.
Yeah, there were a lot of huge, boxy, sharp-edged tanks coming out of Detroit, and Japan wasn't yet building many very good cars (the Datsun 510 having been discontinued in '72), but the decade wasn't a total loss. And again (my hobbyhorse), if you like one of those old cars, you can upgrade it to be a very capable, practical machine by any standards.
J Smith on November 04, 2009 at 04:46 PM
I agree with everything you said. Horrid yet wonderful--like most things from the 1970s. They are sociological statements about American society of the time: bloated excess, etc.
I don't know your age, but maybe it has something to do with them being the cars of your childhood. My mom's 1972 Delta 88 had an indelible impact on me and I still like the cars of that era. Even though some, i.e., most, were hideous. Why did anyone spend goo money on a 1975 Thunderbird? Given that it was sort of a geezermobile, it couldn't have been drugs. Or a Vega after they began their engine meltdowns? Well, the answer to the last question is my dad, who bought one in 1975.
El Kabong on November 05, 2009 at 03:56 PM
Didn't the Pinto tend to explode when hit from behind?
valtrex online on February 23, 2010 at 06:02 AM
I like this text: "Modern electronic feedback fuel injection works a lot better (unless the computer croaks) than lean-burn carburetion. Thinwall, crack-prone iron heads have given way to aluminum heads, most of which hold up well . . . until you run them low on water and warp them..."is very interesting!!!