Still wondering what the featured car for this week’s Junkyard Outtake will be? Maybe this will help – same vehicle, different angle.
CC Clue: Perhaps This’ll Shed A Little Light On It
– Posted on January 3, 2014
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Curbside Classics Archives
That is a Chevrolet Monza Spyder.
I had a plastic model kit as a kid.
Damn!, I guessed Monza, but I said Town Coupe
wow, you found a real Monza Spider? very nice find!
Wow, a Monza Spyder! I found one in the scrapyard a few years ago & nabbed its steering wheel & front nose emblem.
AHA! So that’s what that car-on-its-side posting is! No wonder why this pic is from ‘above’ the shpider. Same body color and having had a ’76 Iron Dukeless HB 4sp I should have recognized that final tailpipe bend.
One in happier days.
I still maintain that for 1975, this was one of the best looking cars around at any price.
Having owned and enjoyed one in the ’80s, in Emerald Green with the 262 V8 and a 4-speed, I would concur. That said, the increasing layers of plastic cladding used in later years of Monza Spyders were a turnoff. Less gingerbread on these, the better.
The Monza Spyder was to compete with “Charlie’s Angels” Mustang II Cobra II. But F- body sales were stong, and H bodies sold as economy cars back in 1977-79.
Sporty car shoppers in 1978 could get a Z-28 for not much more than a Spyder, and with a 350 V8.
I like both the Spyder and Cobra II. In that campy 70’s caricature way. Of course, I have never driven or ridden in either one.
I never owned a Monza, or any of it’s kin. But would always check them out on the street. The looked very fresh when new, and helped make rectangular lights the ‘in’ thing, for a few years. However much I liked their Ferrari-like exterior, I found their interiors econo-looking, and somewhat generic. They just ‘seemed’ more fragile, than robust, even when new.
My dad had a ’75 Skyhawk V6 for nearly a decade, and it started to fall apart by 1978.
Forget about all those gimmicky plastic spoiler bits and tape stripes they’d add to these… I think if they sold a version that was devoid of extra trim, with lowered suspension, and more than anything… fat tires. With fender flares in the back. These could have looked pretty good. Stock, they never looked brawny enough.