Classic car identification is made much easier when the car in question has a feature unique to its specific model year. Such is the case with our Clue Car’s grille here – it’s a one-year wonder, featuring subtle details exclusive to this year, make and model.
So, can you guess the car to which this grille belongs? Good luck – and as always, please submit your guesses without photos, so everyone gets a chance at it!
1980 Plymouth Volare.
No, if it was a Volare grille it would be broken.
LOL So ture. My Apsen’s grille spent more than half it’s life broken. i was constantly watching eBay for unbroken grilles to show up.
1980 Chevy Caprice.
Ford Crown Vic…. 85?
Crown vic
1974 ford custom 500
1982 LTD Crown Vic
My guess as well
I don’t recall the grille on the four-headlight ’79 LTD/Crown Vic changing much until the mid-’80s facelift
Sorry Daniel, deleted your post.
First (unspoken but sometimes mentioned) Rule of CC Clue Club: No pics in the comments.
Really? I wasn’t aware.
It’s been a sore point on occasion – ruining the fun for others. We usually mention it in the text for each Clue post which it looks like Eric has done. Please don’t take offence, if I could have just deleted the pic from your comment I would have done that.
No offence taken—I’m chagrinned I either didn’t know or forgot this rule, and that it didn’t occur to me on my own.
Since it is one year, perhaps a 1970 F Series truck?
100% sure this is a GM product. I’ll go 1982 Malibu
1983 Chevrolet Malibu.
1979 Cadillac deVille
80’s Crown Vic
81/87 RWD Cadillac
the horrid Cadillac Cimarron with the ‘gold trim’ package
That was my guess too, but after further review, Cimarron only has 4 rows of squares…What about a Seville?
It looks very late-80s/early-90s Plymouth to me.
It does look like a Plymouth Reliant to me, too, except for the “one year only” clue. Unless there’s some subtle difference in the egg crate grille for one year? Or the difference is actually the radiator rather than the grille.
Seems a bit of a stretch to call a plastic eggcrate grille “unique” 😉
I doubt it is a 1978-79 HZ Holden, but it could be.
Is that not oxidised aluminium?
You know the thing, where you dread detail cleaning one cell because it commits you to a week of increasingly tedious work.
From 1970-ish onwards (HT model) Holden grilles were plastic. I remember a comment/quote about the prior HK model having a grille that looked like the farm gate many of them were parked behind!
Possibly a Holden Kingswood from about 1975?
1978 Monte Carlo
79 Olds 98.
Things aren’t always what they appear to be… so I’ll jump in here with a hint.
It’s interesting that the average model year of all the guesses so far has been 1981. Our Clue Car is actually a decade or so older – and it’s not a boxy-looking car… despite the eggcrate grille.
72 Cutlass?
Customized Pinzgauer
If this is correct, then you win the internet!
1970 Toronado
Hoping it’s a Mk II Continental. ’57 if the condenser is under the hood.
With Christmas coming wishes just might come true…
I keep thinking some mid-to-late-’70s GM sedan like the ’76 Seville or ’76 to ’79 Olds 98, but when I look at those they don’t seem to quite match the picture here. General Motors had more annually-changed grilles in this era than Ford, Chrysler, or the imports which generally kept a grille two or three years. (note = I wrote this before I saw the clue update indicating it’s from about 1971)
1970 1/2 Ford Falcon. One year – or one half year – only model.
1971 Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL [W109]
I was going to say 1979 Cadillac DeVille, but with the later clue, I’d say 72 Olds Cutlass.
1968 Dodge Coronet
i wish it was 71 i h light line.
Some great guess here, and several are getting pretty close.
One final hint: The Clue Car’s grille has a distinctive shape. A clue to this shape can be found in the upper-right corner of the Picture — notice how the squares up there are tapered a bit. And this image is zoomed in pretty far, so the egg crates appear bigger in the picture than they do in real life.
Buick Apollo?
1980 Chevy Citation
1969 Pontiac Firebird?
Can I change mine?
1969 Pontiac Bonneville.
Challenger 1970
The Clue Car is a 1972 Pontiac Luxury LeMans – which had a grille different from any other LeMans model. It’s not quite the type of car that comes to mind when one thinks of an egg crate grille, and to me, the zoomed-in photo sure looks like the grille of an ’82 Malibu!
Ross Vuich and 210delray were SO close with the guess of a ’72 Olds Cutlass – right year and GM body style. And la673 sure seems correct by saying that it seems as if GM changed grille designs annually more often than other manufacturers… I’m not sure if that’s actually correct, but it sure seems it to me.
Tj and Colin were on track with guesses of Pontiacs, and I wound’t be surprised if Pontiac used the same egg crate pattern on the Luxury LeMans as was used on some other models. Looks similar to me.
Well, here’s the shot where the Clue came from,
-Eric
Eric, I’ve got to hand it to you. I was thoroughly stumped, as we’re the rest of us. This is the first CC Clue post I remember reading since I jumped in board on 2014 where no one has guessed correctly!
I looked through the details of my pics to find a good Clue shot… and when I zoomed in on the grille, the egg crate pattern seemed completely incongruous when compared to the overall car. I figured it would be a challenging Clue!
That was one I looked at – as well as the ’70 and ’71 versions – the curve of the top right edge matched your description, as did the time frame, my hunch that it was a GM product, and the non-boxiness of the car. But I was thrown off by those two chrome horizontal bars, which didn’t seem to leave room for five vertical cubes near the top right of the grille. In the pics I looked at online there seemed to be only four high at the top right. The clue pic I now realize was of the center top portion of the grille, not the far right (I think).
well my first thought for a one off year grill was ’72 firebird but then i realized that was a flattened honeycomb design.
do i get points for knowing its from a pontiac? (geez, just realized how much i sound like my students with that comment!)
Maybe Steyr bought the tooling from Pontiac and used it on the rare luxury Pinzgauer Tyrolean Edition.
’78 ltd