Much like Prince Akeem went looking for a bride in Queens in Coming To America, I should’ve known Las Vegas was the place to go for a Vega. Right as you make your way out of McCarran International, you’ll probably see this 1971-73 Chevrolet Vega welcoming you to the city. It’s not quite as flashy as the Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas sign but it’s a local landmark in its own right and a worthy submission for the Great Vega Hunt.
It seems to have been here a while, if not for quite as long as Betty Willis’ famous sign. I’ve seen it pop up on Facebook groups. You can even see it on Google Street View, accompanied by a couple of 80s box Caprices and a 1973 Cadillac Sedan de Ville. Since the Google vehicle captured it in February 2018, it’s been treated to some new tires so it hasn’t been left to rot.
It’s no trailer queen, however, as this front-end damage can attest. The front bumper is missing so the licence plate is sitting on the dashboard. There’s also some bondo, a bit of rust around the rear window, and some standard dings and scratches you’d expect to see on an almost 50-year-old car.
The interior, like the exterior, has some minor cosmetic issues. It’s in need of a reupholstering although it otherwise looks intact.
Like the ’74 I photographed on the other side of the country, this Vega is the most popular of all Vega variants: the standard hatchback. Priced around $100 higher than the notchback, the hatchback nevertheless outsold its trunked sibling considerably: by 3-to-1 in ’71, then almost 5-to-1 in ’72 and ’73. In contrast, the Pinto Runabout hatchback only narrowly outsold the trunked version most years. The two Pintos looked much more alike than the two Vegas, however.
Both the hatchback and notchback Vegas were handsome little cars but the advantage of a big hatch and a spacious load bay evidently appealed more to consumers than an enclosed trunk and a quieter cabin. The hatchback, like the kammback wagon, could also be had in sporty GT trim with its 110 hp version of the flaky 2300 four.
With so few visual changes between 1971 and 1973, I can’t pin down the exact model year of this Vega. It could be a ’73 in that year’s Chamois color or it could be a ’71 in faded Yellow Orange. Can anyone identify the year?
Whether it’s a ’71, ’72 or ’73, it certainly meets the criteria Paul set out for the Great Vega Hunt. One wonders though: is it still on its original engine? If so, the owner should head on over to the Strip and try their luck at the tables.
Photographed in Paradise, NV in September 2018.
Related Reading:
CC For Sale: 1972 Chevrolet Vega – Like New! Only 8433 Miles! Hasn’t Blown its Engine Yet!
Curbside Classic: 1974 Chevrolet Vega Panel Express – A Sedan Delivery For The ’70s
Winner winner chicken dinner!
The early hatchbacks were such beautiful, little coupes. I even like it in this Austin Allegro-esque shade of hearing aid-beige.
The front and rear badging appear to be the “Vega by Chevrolet” badges. Those were introduced for 1973. In ’71 and ’72, they read “Chevrolet Vega 2300”.
Correct. The missing front bumper would also have longer standoffs to position it about 3” farther ahead of the ‘71/‘72 Model bumper location. Great find!
Ed-
It appears the rear hatch window frame suffers form the same water retention issues you saw on your car.
I just reread Paul’s sexy sins article. Great read! see https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1974-vega-kammback-gms-deadly-sexy-sin-2-take-two/
Relatives once had an extended stay with us. Their Pontiac Astre (the Vega sibling) claimed the garage one weekend, for reasons that completely escape my memory at this time. However upon Monday’s arrival, the garage completely reeked of gasoline although none had leaked onto the floor. That honour was claimed by engine oil, indeed a very decent puddle of dino juice had accumulated. I thought the thing a rolling time bomb. As I recall they eventually replaced it with a Toyota Tercel. Whew.
Excellent find!!
The license plate reads “Classic Rod”; therefore, I would imagine the owner took some pride in the vehicle. Should this car have been in upstate New York, it would have dissolved into a pile of rust by now.
The last time a saw a functioning Vega was in the early 90’s. Smoke was belching out the rear end, but it kept a steady 55 MPH on the Interstate.
Wow, aren’t you becoming the Vega Whisperer. I am not an expert on the details of the 71-73 but my vote on the color would confirm Mike and Ed above. That yellow orange color on the 71s was kind of obnoxious and I doubt that it would fade that uniformly. On the other hand I remember quite a few 73 Chevys in that color that should have been named Butterscotch Pudding.
This was the era that GM was diving headlong into its Molded Plastic Interior era. I thought they looked cheap then and they did not handle long-term sun well at all. The Vega was far more attractive than the Pinto outside, but the Pinto had the nicer interior.
Why were so many 70’s cars such dramatically awful colours? The monochrome greys of today are bad and bland, but the 70’s colours all seem to be body fluid. Gosh, you know what would look great? A car painted the same colour as cat sick. Did people actually want band-aid, sex doll flesh coloured cars? The mustards, oily greens, even the blues managed to be sickly and washed out.
You would have really hated the Harvest Gold and Avacado kitchen appliances.
I was born in 1976 so I saw the ’70’s hangover as a kid. I DID hate the harvest gold/avocado green look. Everything was so UGLY. Ugly polyester clothes. Ugly houses in ugly colours. Ugly cars. Ugly politics. Ugly economy. Ugly fake wood paneling in basements which looked dank and musty. Everything had a – it started out as a normal colour and then got smeared with a thick layer of dirt look. Heavy, dark woods in furniture imitating either some sort of Don Quixote 16th century Spanish look or the Steak and Ale faux Tudor ambiance, heavy, dark cabinetry, all that ugly heavy carvings.
Now it seems like the kids who suffered through the ’70’s aesthetics have embraced the light, clean lines and bright, cheerful colours of the mid century modern aesthetic.
I came of age in that era and found it horrifying. The bright pastels of my childhood descended into the darkness of the Nixon era. Mom’s Danish modern furniture was replaced by heavy fake antique Mediterranean.
I like these colors! I have a 70s MXR distortion guitar pedal in almost the same shade as this Vega, they still make this pedal today but the yellow isn’t the same glorious pale mustard mine is, just plain normal yellow.
EARTH TONES….
+1
Wow, I’d forgotten about the fold flat rear seat in the Vega. As I recall my Dad fit some very large object in the back of our 74 Vega with the seats down and hatch open.
Vegas in Vegas. If there ever was a place one of these would survive without rusting into oblivion this is it. Nice find, I still like the look of these cars.
My 1973 Vega was a GT hatchback, in yellow with the black “skunk” stripe. On more than one occasion I folded the back seat down and caught some sleep in the back. It was a little claustrophobic, especially with the hatch pulled shut, but at least I was horizontal and not trying to sleep in the passenger seat. I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a Vega in the wild, especially one with the original four cylinder engine. There used be a couple of them around town with SBCs grafted in but I haven’t seen either one of them in many a year. I still think the first generation Vega was an attractive car, especially considering its size; it is not easy to make a small car look good. Too bad that GM couldn’t have been bothered to come up with a better engine choice or design them so that the didn’t rust in a heavy dew.
Kind of off the subject, but I was curious about the Pinto sales numbers. Unlike the Vega, every year the Pinto WAGON was available it outsold the Pinto hatchback, until 77-78.
Some years around half of all Pintos sold were wagons, not bad considering it had the same low, strictly-for-two (below the hump line!) back seat as the fastback coupes.
The Pinto wagon was a decent cargo hauler with almost 50% more seats-down cargo volume than the Vega.
I actually got back from Vegas last night. I saw that same Vega on the way from the airport to Westgate! I was in an Uber and thought, “Man, I should take a picture.” Looks like someone already did!
Ironically, I have a grille for an early Vega in my basement. Kept it when my parents’ downsized. My dad had a string of Vegas back in the 70’s. I couldn’t just throw it away.
Cool find! I could even deal with the color.
A Vega would rate early induction into my lottery garage. Preferably, a pre ‘74 because of the baby Camaro nose. The later models with the louvered nose never did appeal much to me.
If a serviceable 2.3 engine was unavailable, perhaps a 2.8 MPFI and 5-speed from a 3rd generation Camaro would be a good fit?
Great find, Ive only ever seen one 4 cylinder Vega and it was collapsing from rust, dumped behind a rural hotel its gone now no doubt shovelled into a ute and taken in for scrap, the only other ones in captivity all have V8 or V6 transplants and those are rare here anyway.
Back in ’74, 2 friends were driving from LA to Denver in a ’73 Vega, just like this one. The non-owner was stopped in northern Arizona for 87 in a 55! Taken directly to court, his defense to the judge was, “your honor, I was a Marine helicopter pilot in VietNam, and I can honestly say, that car can’t go that fast”.
The judge laughed and sent them on their way.
Based on the badging, the car is a ’73.
If the original bumpers were still intact, the front one sticks out a wee bit farther than the ’71-’72 iteration (I had a ’72 Kammback back in 1976).
Curious as to what engine is in it. Can’t imagine one of the original 140s still running in a vehicle for regular use.
I think it’s a ’71 because it has the louvers on the trunk/ hatch that all ’71 g m cars had
External Flow-thru ventilation louvers were a 1-year GM corporate feature for 1971. For ‘72 vents were moved into the leading edges of the quarter panels inside the door jambs.
It’s a shame the early Vega was such a craptacular POS. It’s otherwise a very nice looking car, in either hatchback or Kammback guise.
I took me a while to notice it, but what’s that chrome ball looking thing on the roof? My first thought was maybe a mount for some kind of sign. I can’t imagine a Vega taxicab, but I could see something like a pizza delivery sign or something like that.
I would imagine the mask is for some type of short wave antenna.
It’s a mount for a old style CB antenna, the 102″ whip type . That’s a bad location for it.
I’ve driven past this Vega hundreds of times on my commute. But you had mentioned it in an earlier comment, William, so I let you have it 🙂
For those who don’t speak Spanish, “Las Vegas” is a Spanish phrase that means “The (Chevrolet) Vegas”. 🙂
At first, I ignored this car. “Eh, it’s just a Vega”, I thought to myself. “Nobody cares.” Then I realized the nonchalance I’d achieved after a dozen years of living in “The Land that Rust Forgot™”.
While in Vegas last summer, I found a straight, complete, rust free first generation Accord at an auction. It needed restoration and sold for I believe$125.
The Vega had better styling and better interior room and comfort than Pinto or any VW at the time. Too bad GM forgot to add an engine. It could have been a pretty decent automobile with an engine.
The Vega is one of GM’s sadder ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’ cars, simply because it looked so good. It really had a mini-Camaro vibe going, which can’t be said for any of the other small cars of the time. Unfortunately, it was the ultimate GM ‘corporate’ car, which was built to the most extreme penny-pinching GM’s accountants could muster. It was even designed to be shipped on its nose via special Vert-A-Pac train cars.
Interestingly, when the Vega did get a decent engine, it cost nearly as much as a Corvette! That would be the Cosworth Vega and, needless to say, not very many were built/sold.
I had a Pinto with a trunk as my first car. Trunk was *uselessly* small. Cousin had a hatchback Pinto. So much more useful.
My buddy had a “trunked” Pinto as well, but was a glass half full kind of guy-
When I pointed out my hatch made the car much more usable, he responded with “Yeah, but the rear shelf is a GREAT location for the rear speakers.”
So true! We hunted around the interior of the car for quite a while before cutting holes in the “walls” of the back seat for the speakers we put in my cousin’s Pinto hatchback. Not much flat space back there. Not too solid, either, but their wasn’t too much bass to be had, and the noise in a Pinto hatch precluded any claims to high fidelity.
I’m going to guess that noise and less structural rigidity (meaning less safe in a rear-end collision) is what has largely done in the hatchback, particularly in larger cars.
Speaking of Vegas, I ran across an article in a 1974 Hot Rod magazine about the upcoming 1975 262 cube Small Block V-8. According to the article, the 262 was slated for the Nova, Monza, and Vega. Too bad it didn’t show up in the Vega.
Obviously, nostalgia blinds one to many faults, but as a former Vega owner for almost 5 years (also a ‘73 hatch, though a GT and a much nicer color) they were really pretty good cars. Even the engine wasn’t that bad; it wasn’t smooth, but it was torquey for a four in those days. The car itself had decent handling, pretty roomy for cargo if not the rear seat passengers, and comfortable seats and ride. If only GM had done as Ford did with the Pinto, and used engines from Europe. Oh, and rack and pinion steering … that would have been a fine car. Oh, and better corrosion resistance. And …
The only problem is that the Chevy II 153 would also have been rough but torquey without the Vega engine’s problems. Using it would’ve freed up money for some of that other stuff, too.
I started looking for a first car in 1991. I don’t recall any Vegas being for sale, though I remember a few old ones still putting around. A family friend call their motors “sewing machine engines”, and said they drank gas like an eight, but were underpowered junk.
The classified ads were awash with Beetles, Pintos, Malibus, Accords, and Corollas though. I bought a ‘ 79 Corolla.