I've always heard that - for the final year or two - the Vega/Astra were decent cars - but the damage was done ... Whenever I see an advert with " MotorTrend Car-Of-The-Year " I laugh - 1971 Vega holds that illustrious award ! John T.
The only of the MM heritage we had was an early 12-20 and 20-35...I only vaguely recall the 12-20; the 20-35 had been converted to rubber and was still used for wheat ground and pulling the old Gleaner combine until the mid-50s with rare use even into early 60s....
My first experience was on Farmall M altho traded them up to 400's very early on in my actual field experience time frame. Then grandfather bought a little Allis-Chalmers WD45 because he got to where couldn't really handle the 400s and wanted to keep doing field work. It had a full set of toolbar equipment -- lister, cultivator, chisel, knife sled, ... In early 60s traded it up to a D17 and I did a _ton_ of row crop on that puppy...
Eventually, the first JD 4020 arrived and it wasn't long before was all green...by then I was off to school and then gone for 30+ years.
My brother had a few cars and when he moved from Philly to San Diego, he asked me to drive the Vega out there for him. It was a fun trip and the Vega did a good job getting us there, but it took a toll on the engine. It started using oil and was never the same.
My 4 year old '71 Vega cost me $ 550. < the word was out >
but I got ~ 2 1/2 years out of it. Went through a lot of oil ! When the MTO pulled me over in a safety sweep - I was sweating bullets ! .. I was sure they would pull the car off the road and write me a ticket or two ... They gave me a list of things to get fixed - 30 days - or hand in the plates .. no ticket ! Was I ever happy - went shopping that week and found a much-better replacement .. Like this only all yellow <"we all live in a yellow submarine .. >
Pickups, and vans were common among the working middle class. Station wagons were also common. They cost about half a working middle class man's annual salary in the seventies. About the same as a common no-luxury sedan.
Today they cost about the same in hours worked.
Example.In 1973 I earned $5000 a year as a newly licensed auto mechanic and a new AMC Rebe station wagon was $2800. A new base Gremlin or a Datsun 510 could be had for about $2400. \ In 1976 a new deluxe Dodge Ramcharger SE "SUV" with a V8 and 4wd was about $5400. I believe I earned $8000 that year.
A 1975 dollar is about $4.70 in 1019 dollars. That means that SUV cost $ 25,380 and I earned $37,600 in today's dollars
Back then I was paying about $0.67 a gallon for fuel = equivalent to $3.14 a gallon in today's dollars. I filled up yesterday at $5.40 a gallon. Last week it was $5.18. Last year I made about $42000.
So GAS is about 72% more today, and the SUV (a jeep Wrangler is about th only "equivalent" 2 door (V6 instead of v8 but similar power output) 4wd SUV available today) is available off the lot for $35,000
- so it is marginally cheaper than that '76 Ramcharger.
At $2400 for the Datsuin 510 in 1972 dollars (at $5.82 conversion) it cost $13968.. Compare to a 2019 Sentra at $17000, or a Versa 14 $14,600 - Or a Hyundai Elantra at about $17000 - a base car cost about
10% more in 1972 than it does today.That's based on MY earnings - which were very much on the low side for the "middle class" - the median mechanic's wage here in Waterloo was about $47,600. Wage for a computer technician with 10 years experience is about $47,800. The house we now live in, purchased in 1983 and buils in 1974 was worth $28000 (roughly $163000 in 1974 dollars) and cost me $67000 in
1982 - (at $2.57 per 1982 dollar that is only $17200 in today's dollars) and it would take $500,000 to buy it today.My point is, other than real estate costs, it's not so much the "high cost of living" as the "cost of living high".
Don't HAVE to buy a $65000 pickup or an $85000 SUV. It's only "one-upmanship" that requires you to buy a BMW or Mercedes or Cadilac Escalade. Those are not "middle-class" vehicles, yet you see them on "middle-class" driveways everywhere - and you see young married "middleclass" couples moving into $700,000 homes (which cost 1,300,000 in Toronto or $1,700,000 in Vancouver) when there ARE decent houses available for $400,000 ($750,000 to $1,000,000 in Toronto or Vancouver) - with 2 vehicles worth over $80,000 combined in the driveway
I'd been in the workforce for over 14 years and my wife was a working professional -( both of us having been partners with the bank on $35000 houses before marriage) and we felt we were stretching the limits paying $67000 for what was DEFINITELY a middle class home. with
2 basic 8 year old cars in the driveway.
The speed shop guys who fixed mine liked that little Vega motor. There were easy to get parts that you could bump up the compression with, change the cam gear to make the valve timing a little better for performance and they did a trick with the distributor to make that curve work better with the valve timing. Rejet the carb and it was a pretty fast little car. With the 10:1 compression you needed to run leaded high test but that cat converter fell off a while ago anyway. As I said it would outrun my 3.8l Firebird. The ironic thing is I sold it because the heater core was bad and that was up behind the dash where I was not willing to go. I moved to Florida a few months later where I could have lived without the heater. The A/C was fine.
There were problems all along the path but every day was Monday at Lordstown.
Let's just go to the year you turned 16 and could start to drive - I think it covers most of us. Wonder how they came up with the car cost
- average or median? total value of cars sold devided by number?
Prices seem a bit high from what I remember - Dad bought a brand new
1968 Rebel station wagon for just under $2500. I priced out a brand new 1972 Dasun 510 with a good list of options at just over $2400. A new 1972 Gremlin X or Hornet X sold for about $2800 off the lot where I worked in 1972/73. A V8 cost about $100 more. A loaded Ambassador SST Brougham listed for about $4400. The Mazda 808 went for about $2000 (listed at $2285 but was a slow mover - I think we sold 3?)On the other hand the 2014 prices look more conservative - my 2014 Sorento EX V6 with sunroof listed at $35,400 a bit more than an "average" middle class car (I bought it 4 years old for less than half that).
Are you sure you're talking about the 2.3 litre engine ?
"The standard Monza engine is the Vega aluminum-block 140 CID (2.3 liter) inline-four engine with a single barrel carburetor that generates 78 horsepower (58 kW) at 4,200 rpm. Optional was the two-barrel carburetor version that generated 87 horsepower (65 kW) at
4,400 rpm ".. or did you have the little V8 ?
You could sit on your front porch and hear your '74 Torino rust away - not uncommon for thr mirror to fall off with a chunk of sheet meatal about 6 inches across when they were 3 or 4 years old - and my brother's new Volare rusted through the front fender before it was 2 years old. I couldn't keep the paint on either my '74 Dart Sport or my '76 Ramcharger when they were 2 years old. Build quality was so bad that if it was sprinkling rain outside it was a torrent inside the ramcharger when I bought it - and the first time I opened the tailgate it fell off on my foot., I raised holy hell with the dealer over that!! Had no front brakes either when delivered and in the 2 years I owned ikt they never solved the water leak between the removeable roof and the main body (I never took the roof off) When the dealer adjusted the driver's door to stop the rain coming in above the door you could drop a pencil on the floor and it would end up on the ground. My kid brother (an auto body apprentice) and I finally adjusted the door so it didn't leak, top or bottom - and didn't make any wind noise.
The driveability issues in those early emission control days were legendary as well!!! They stumbled all over themselves and got TERRIBLE mileage because they ran them so lean with such late ignition timing. Chrysler took first prize for that, but GM and Ford were not a whole lot better.
I used to "recalibrate" the carbs on a LOT of those Chrysler products and earned a reputation as a "wizard" for making them actually run - -
- -
That thing cost roughly the equivalent to $5000 in today's dollars - -
- We bought our first one in about 1987 for $600. It had an antenna failure under warranty and we got rid of it about 4 or 5 years ago because my wife was convinced it was GOING to fail soon. I've had latch switch problems on the new one - bet the old one would still be working if we had kept it.
It was probably late '70's. It was true that original Japanese cars did not look great to me but they kept getting better. With American cars they just worked at making the same cars cheaper, not better. That is what caught up with them.
They were Mit-so-Shitty then and they still are.
I had 1. 1972 in 1975. Traded it to my kid brother for his '57 Fargo project. My older brother has a 1973 - my Dad had a 1976 - so did my kid sister.
They were ALL trouble. Then I bought a 1985 LeBaron with a 2.6 liter Mis-so-SHitty engine - more grief. Followed that with a 1988 New Yorker with a 3.0. Other than keeping valve guides in it that engine was pretty much bulletproof - but the guides were totally finished at
100,000km - and again at 200,000. Sold it at 240,000 and the modified and upgraded replacements were still like new.
I seem to recall back in the old days that pound for pound cars and hamburger cost about the same. Today maybe a pound of car cost twice the cost of a pound of hamburger.
If they had put a decent rad in the Vega to start with it would have been a pretty good car. They tended to over-heat - and overheat that silicone impregnated block ONCE and the iron-plated pistons and the block got into a NASTY fight that neither won. The Cosworth was a REAL hot-rod - but the bean-counters over-ruled the engineers on adding an extra 2 head bolts so they couldn't keep headgaskets in them (opendeck didn't help either) and they cost more than a V8 Z28 Camaro - - -
That ComfortCab was quite an experiment!! In road gear it would do over 30MPH (so would a 44 Massey Harris)
Comparisons can be a problem in some cases though - my 1980 F100 was $ 5800. new - but you could never find any pickup to compare today ... 3-on-the-tree ; vinyl seats ; no A/C ; etc etc but I paid cash & happily drove it for about 13 years 300 k km and the young guy who bought it < $ 150. >
seemed happy !
Often wondered Clare - if you knew my brother's car - Rebel Machine - not too many around Galt K-W .. re-painted black with white stripes replacing the original stripe pattern - looked OK. When I DD'd as a 16 YO I would unknowingly take off in 3rd gear ! < feathering the clutch to avoid stalling and police attention >
.. would realize it half way through the intersection - when I didn't need to shift again .. :-) True ! That 390 was geared stump-puller-low ! .. had to stop for gas on a return trip to Hogtown .. on 401. John T.
There are still some Minnie power units on irrigation wells. Four cylinder
403s. Plodding mules compared to the others.
If it was between '73 and '75 I will have missed it. - I was in Africa then. I do remember a few black rebels - there were a few AMC hot-rods around. I worked for Jim Mitchel Motors in Elmira for a while in 72/73
Nope it was the aluminum Vega motor with the steel heads. I am not saying I was screwing with V8s, just that it was faster than my stock 3.8l Firebird.
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