pictures by runningonfumes
There’s something about this face that slays me; it’s just so deadly. The result of a “Take Your Kid To Work Day” at the Checker Motors GM Design Center? Naw; no kid would draw something this dull and stupid. Yes, I gave this car Deadly Sin status long ago. But there’s a station wagon body attached to this particular front end, and that does redeem it, in a certain way, if only in its relative rarity these days. But by necessity station wagons have rear ends, and the Malibu’s has us asking: which end is deadlier?
Cool! Yes, I have very mixed emotions about all the Colonnades. I did from the moment I first laid eyes on them in 1973, and it hasn’t changed, except of course I love them for just being the survivors that they are, as well as being such a period piece. Their underpinnings were mostly just fine, especially if optioned correctly, as the beloved B-Body cars proved for several more decades. But their mediocre space utilization, equally mediocre build quality, lousy fuel consumption, frameless windows, as well as stylistic extremes just didn’t amount to a winning formula.
Did the Colonnade wagon’s lift-up hatch predict the eventual future of American wagon tailgates, or was it just a cheap bean-counter’s solution to help offset the cost of 5 mph bumpers and catalytic convertors? Let’s just say that GM went back to a proper two-way tailgate for the B-Bodies, and a somewhat cheaper but still more flexible lift-up window-drop-down tailgate for the downsized A-Body wagons in 1978. So is this the world’s biggest and heaviest hatch ever? And the most awkward ever, given the huge gap caused by the 5 mile bumper? If ever a conventional drop-down tailgate would have been called for, here it is. I guess the bumper was supposed to replace that: instead of tailgate parties, in the 70’s the social event was bumper bashes. Or bashed shins. Deadly indeed.
My grandmother’s second husband purchased a 1977 Malibu Classic sedan at auction in Fort Wayne the early 1990s. It was white with red velour interior and a red vinyl top. Midwestern road salt was already eating the fenders. The car had crank windows, a solid front bench, and much wind noise coming in through those frame-less windows. It was powered by a 305V8 and I have never ridden in an American car with so much FLEX in frame, body, and suspension. Although because of the interior room it was more pleasant to ride in than my Grandmother’s Escort. The two of them took it on numerous trips often covering 500 miles in a day and I do not recall the car ever leaving them stranded.
Because the only adjustment you could do to the seat was moving it fore and aft my grandmother had to use pillows to see over the dash, it was much worse than her 1979 Oldsmobile 98. I remember a little old lady in a car that was three sizes to big for her.
The experience you described pretty much echoes the one I had with my ’75 Buick Century Custom coupe. It had buckets and a console and the unoccupied passenger seat shook like a wet dog. That was really its only failing though. The car never failed to start and thanks to the optional “rallye firm” suspension, it was actually less floaty than my ’87 Ford Taurus.
The style of the rear end is definitely interesting, sort of like the designer forgot to put some place for the taillights so they stuck them down in the bumper where they couldn’t be seen. This set up did make it easy to have 1 shell for the BOPs too. Slap on the doors with the character lines to match the respective front ends, a different bumper for the different tail lights and different marker lights in the same holes.
One plus to the hatch style set up is that you don’t have to reach so far to get something in or out of the back w/o the tail gate dropped down in the way (before they licensed the magic door gate for the B boxes) and if you are sitting there watching your kid play soccer in the rain you’ve got some sort of cover over your head.
“Naw; no kid would draw something this dull and stupid.” – Pure gold 🙂
Actually, I think that the back is even worse. If ever the rear end of a vehicle could be penned without the slightest bit of character or imagination, this would be it.
As for the liftgate, recall that the 1961-63 Tempest, F-85 and Special wagons (and maybe the Lakewood?) used a liftgate. However, the BOP wagons from the 60s at least had a rear window that would lower into the gate, leaving two fixed side panes, much like the Mercury Breezeways. Maybe the liftgates on these 70s wagons really paved the way for the modern minivan liftgate that is the size of a barn door.
You are also correct about the gas-hogginess of these. My mom’s 74 LeMans lived in the lowest range of double digits, yet was not a particularly speedy car. Despite multiple attempts, I was never able to get to 100 with it in my teen years. Oh well, maybe with a little more road. The sad thing is that the Ford and Mopar midsizers of the 70s had so many other issues that these actually looked fairly good by comparison.
I was 20 when this hit the streets (19, actually, if you figure that they actually rolled out in the fall of 1975), and the Malibu grille was enough to make me believe that design was dead. So generic the badges should have just read “CAR”.
I don’t think I want this car. The next year was something else. Had a 77 Impala that I have lauded several times as the best work car I ever had. Don’t know about this but my wagon had truck ujoints, brakes, etc. Tail gate could be used like a Sedan Delivery or like a truck.
Couldn’t make it break till one day towing a 16 foot tandem trailer filled with deck blocks and lumber to school something broke in the engine. It was a 50mile one way trip and luckily was close to home.
I hooked up my 1979 Datsun 620 and towed the same load to school the next day (albeit more slowly). I did not fix the chevy. Gave it to a kid who was trying to build a truck. The little truck got closer to 30mpg than 13. It wasn’t as good at being a truck as the wagon but the fuel bills were easier to live with.
Having driven the Buick wagon version, the Pontiac sedan version, and the Chevy coupe version, I do actually like these cars. The Chevy did suffer from horribly bland styling, and when they went to square headlights it gave all versions an unfortunate “pignosed” look. The LeMans was my favorite.
All 3 that I drove had 350s, and for whatever reason they were terrible gas hogs.
I always thought these were the beloved ’77+ B-bodies under the skin? Though the Bs certainly felt a good bit lighter…
Some claim that the B boxes were just re-skined colonnades, usually those that also claim that the colonnades and the B boxes were the best handling sedans of their respective era. The B boxes certainly did fallow the same basic chassis design as the colonnades, however the colonnades were just downsized versions of the Donk B’s.
I cannot say that I drove the Mopar B bodies that much, but the GM colonades certainly out-handled the FoMoCo midsizers. Ford nailed quiet and serene in those years, but at the expense of handling. The Fords I drove were wallowers, while the colonades were quite good handlers. Believe me, I gave my mother’s LeMans a pretty good workout on a regular basis. It cornered very flat and its variable ratio power steering was quite tight. Even with its bias ply tires (that made a LOT of noise when I drove it) it was one of the best handling cars of any size I ever drove in the 70s. However, I think that the 77 New Yorker I later owned with factory HD suspension would probably ouyhandle the LeMans, despite the weight penalty.
The problem with the Mopar intermediates was that they debuted with swoopy, fuselage styling for 1971 just as the market was turning to more formal styling. Chrysler tried to rectify this in 1975, but it didn’t have enough money to restyle the entire body. The more formal front ends didn’t mate well with the rest of the body, and the addition of stacked, rectangular headlights for 1977 didn’t help, either.
The Mopars undoubtedly handled better than the Fords, but, in the end, they have always struck me as being neither fish nor fowl. The Fords had a quieter ride and MUCH nicer interiors, while the GM cars had much more modern exterior styling and better handling.
Chrysler was “out-Broughamed” by Ford and “out-Euroed” by GM.
I hated these when they were new, but if I ran across one for a good price now … I’d seriously consider it.
Yes, I gave this car Deadly Sin status long ago
But hey, why miss another chance right?
Ha!
Yes, this is nowhere near as good as a Torino or a Plodge Grand Monaco, now those were svelte road carving machines, I often confuse the Torino Elite with the 365 GTB Daytona. Its just that darn sexy.
Paul has said that the Colonnade cars were superior to their Ford and Mopar competition. They were the best of the domestics available at that time. Which, in the long run, was the real problem for the domestic industry as a whole…
I’m going to carry water for Carmine here. 🙂
The Colonnade wagon may not be a thing of beauty, but it wasn’t ugly enough to kill off the midsize wagon segment its predecessor had owned. That Deadly Sin belongs to Ford:
The midsize wagon segment was killed by the shift to SUVs, not the fish-faced Taurus. Honda offered Accord wagons in the 1990s, too, and they are also long gone. SUVs were “cool,” wagons were not.
The blandness of these proabably did alot to sell the Monte Carlos that were right next to them on the lot.
The Colonade A’s are interesting because the “specialty” higher end models were the big sellers as opposed to the the bread and butter cars. The Chevelle was an okay seller, the LeMans was a dud, but the Monte Carlo and Grand Prix’s sold like hot cakes, and then there was the big daddy of them all, the Cutlass Supreme Coupe.
Oldsmobile made lemonade out of lemons. It had been denied its own version of the Monte Carlo and Grand Prix in 1970. So, it added a formal roof to the standard Cutlass coupe, and sold them as fast as they rolled out the factory door. Since Oldsmobile, unlike Pontiac and Chevrolet, wasn’t selling its intermediate entry under two nameplates, it could claim that the Cutlass line was the number-one selling car in the country by 1976.
Yup I’d say that not having a personal luxury nameplate to split the sales with helped the Cutlass take the best selling name plate title for much of the middle 70’s. The fact that most of the “standard” cars split their sales between multiple name plates like the Impala and Caprice also helped.
If I recall correctly, the Caprice and Impala were grouped together as the “standard Chevrolet” for sales-reporting purposes. The Cutlass line still easily outsold both of them in 1976. Chevrolet bounced back with the downsized cars in 1977, but even then the Cutlass line was a close second in the sales race.
Yes, the ‘standard’ Chevy was #1 until 1976, and always included the various trim names. Big Chevy took back #1 for 1977, though.
Don’t forget Buick, when they dusted-off the Century nameplate for 1973 for their mid-size (Skylark did a little retirement, no one suspected it would return for ’75 to substitute to the Apollo name) with the addition of Regal. I guess the Century/Regal was helped by the popularity of the tv series Kojak who drived a Century. http://imcdb.org/vehicle_89720-Buick-Century-1973.html
i kinda like it for it’s simplicity. there’s something very honest looking about these wagons and i like the rear vent windows. hate the bu & the sedan of this series. don’t know why…
This looks to be a very clean and cared for car, and I like the original look, rather than the usual mutilation of 22″ wheels. I seem to recall these being seen as very well received at the time, and the styling was probably aimed at the more mainstream market, considering the more swoopy Lemans and Centuries. Every one that I drove in seemed quiet and tight, and than couldn’t be said of all the competition. I’d have this one in a jiffy if it came my way.
For the Malibu line I’d say that the 73 nose and the 73/74 Laguna were the best looking of the bunch.
I was never a fan of the wagons but they did have less awkward lines than the sedans.
One need not look any further that the 1973-77 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu were indeed recycled again to its colonnade styling from the early through mid-1990s. Case in point the redesigned 1991-96 Chevrolet Caprice Classic/Impala SS. The platforms of those last generation B-Bodied and its larger B “Special” 1977-78 Buick Riviera, C-Bodied Buick Electra and D-Bodied Cadillac De Ville/Fleetwood Full Sized Sedans dating back from 1977 were in fact based from the 1973-77 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu/El Camino and Monte Carlo. The most striking similarities between a 1973-77 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Colonnade Wagons and the 1991-96 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Wagons were uncanny that some may even suggest that it was the reincarnation of the old Chevelle Malibu Colonnades. Same can be said with the 4 Door Models of these large Chevies as well. Attach is a photo of both wagons which were almost two decades apart and nobody can deny their differences. Next to the Panther Platforms for the Ford LTD/Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car (which BTW were similar in size with the 1973-77 Chevelle Malibu) which ran from 1979 and all the way to its discontinuation in 2012 after a 33+year run at least from the US & Canadian Domestic Markets since Ford now exclusively currently exports the 2012 versions of these cars to The Middle East & Arab Countries, the 1973 RWD A-Bodied chassis also had a long production run which ended as a 1996 B-Bodied and had a 23 year run.
Weren’t these wagons largely responsible for the “3rd high-mounted brake light” mandate that came down the pike a decade later? I seem to remember the very low and very tiny brake lights on these generated a lot of complaints about being hard to see in time and a significant factor in rear-end collision accidents. Their replacement wagons, the ’78 A-bodies had exactly the same problem.
Well, Oldsmobile (and to a latter extend Buick) did an experimentation of the “3rd high-mounted brake light” with the 2nd-gen Toronado and the 1974-76 Riviera. They was ahead of their time for that idea but that’s another story. 😉
Yeah this was my shot. I’m not sure I want to take credit for it, but I did like those dog dish hub caps and whitewalls. It was in good shape.
I’d never, ever want one of these, but I do think fondly of them, as my mom had a ’76 Malibu wagon in Venezuela when I was little. The Mustang Sportsroof was too impractical with two kids, so away it went and in came many years of big American wagons. I remember it mostly as big and grey.
I drove taxi for a pharmacy in Lincoln, Massachusetts for a couple of summers (’77 and ’78). We had a couple of Ford Granadas, a couple of Country Squire wagons and a sad ’75 Chevy Malibu sedan. It reportedly had been hit by a school bus early in life, then repaired and put back into service. Apparently one or both of the rear wheels were bent because at a walking pace the rear end oscillated side to side. While it’s funny to look back on, we all detested the thing and only took it if nothing else was available.
One piece tailgates on station wagons finally solved the dust sealing problems wagons always had no other sysytem is dust proof on dirt roads.
I enjoyed the hell out of my sister’s colonnade LeMans. It handled well and was much more fun to drive than the USS New Yorker that my mom was driving in the ’70s. The Chryslers we had always handled like crap and those rear leaf springs clanged and bucked. The GM cars I spent time in were so much better handling. I especially liked the ’78 El Camino that we drove on the maintenance crew at Oklahoma City U.
We license plate collectors hated the heavy bumpers of the 1974-1976 era because on nearly all of them the rear plate extended an inch or so below the bumper, and way too many of them ended up looking like the Washington plate on the car shown here.
Pickup customizers liked that Chevrolet rear bumper though, particularly for narrow box trucks – it came with taillights and made it unnecessary to figure out whether to hang the lights in stock position at the box corners or french them into the rear fenders.
These were my thoughts as well, when I saw this on the CCC. That shot of the rear, it’s just such a featureless blob. It’s as if the executives saw a clay model that hadn’t been started on yet, thought it was the finished styling proposal, and said, “I’ll take it!”
Perhaps it’s ahead of its time? Kinda looks like it might fit in during the Chiclet-inspired 90’s.
One of the oddities of Colonnade wagons and 4-door sedans is that the design of the B-pillar creates an optical illusion that it is floating in midair. Take a look at the side view of that wagon and you will see it. It looks like the B pillar ends about a quarter to a half inch above the doors. It’s ever weirder on the wagon than the sedan because the wagon C-pillar does not have the same problem; it looks connected to the body structure below.
Is This what Marge Simpson Drives?
Always seemed way down-market of the Cutlass. In reality how much difference was there?
You got a Chevy 350 instead of the Olds unit, and you got the soft rubber/plastic gearshift knob that would come loose and fall off.
I completely and utterly disagree with your opinion about the ugliness of this car’s `face’. It is a simple, honest, unpretentious design, befitting the car’s place in the automotive pecking order. You would say it lacks character, but I say it lacks quirks. The hatch, though, is somewhat bland without taillights at the side, but then they either obstruct and decrease the hatch access area, or need to be mounted on the hatch itself, dramatically increasing complexity (very few, if any modern hatches, use this method). A good two tone or stickering can easily take care of it. The side profile is excellent as it is.
I agree about the lousy fuel efficiency and mediocre space utilisation, but those were par for the course at the time. The fact that I personally like highly efficient aerodynamic bathtubs with tailfins and short overhangs with huuuuuge interior space with compact dimensions does not mean that every other design sucks completely.
Honest?? Unpretentious?? Hello! The 1973 at least had an original grille. For 1974 (and on) they stuck a blatant Mercedes rip-off grill on its face; one that looks like it was an aftermarket accessory you’d find at a cheap parts store.
Can you explain how slapping on a Mercedes grille is “honest” and “unpretentious”? I’m very eager to hear that.
And that stand-up hod ornament; now where did that idea come from? Bill Mitchell’s fertile mind? Hmmm. Very honest and unpretentious indeed.
Come come, the cars are as different as chalk and cheese (I’m referring to Chevelle and MB), in USA, but the MB-clone grille is neither a near-enough fake to call it a copy, nor is it explicitly intended to compete with MB. In keeping with the tendency of Chevrolet styling to copy luxury cars, this grille and hood ornament comes out as Mercedes-ish, instead of Cadillac-ish. And that too only for a few years in a long run. The grille on the featured car, for example, is different. Its hard to hold that against it. Honest and unpretentious meant clean, minimal and cheap, which excludes the overwrought monstrosities of grille-bumper combines (honest), no `formal’ grillle (i.e. RR clone), and, unfortunately, of a low quality. The *real* MB fakery award goes to Ford, of course, with the Granada. They even went so far as to run TV spots comparing(!) the two cars.
That aside, if only GM had developed production resources to match Mercedes’ build quality, these cars could’ve given MB a run for its money, even in Germany. I believe they did try something like that with Opel in the sixties or so (there was a CC related to that too). But the need for keeping American auto jobs overpowered the need to build better cars, and the rest is history, as they say.
Monte Carlo love.
My father had the El Camino version of this with a 350. It would not run over 85 and would bottom out when going over the slightest rise in the road (especially at 85). Either the front suspension or the oil pan generated a bunch of sparks (so my friends told me as they were ALWAYS ahead of me and saw the sparks in their rear view mirrors). It never broke, but it sure was slow and thirsty.
Paul, that front shot makes it look shocked.
In defense of CarCounter’s opinion. The 75 did look more “honest” than the 76 Malibu Classic with the stacked headlights and an even more faux luxury grille.
It pains me to say that too as I am a Colonnade freak.
Never liked those stacked headlights anyway. It requires a really special front design to make vertically stacked headlights work, and the Malibu Classic ain’t got it.
The plain Malibu grilles in 1975-77 were cheap looking compared to the Malibu Classics. The car featured shows this. The 76 M. Classic had a diamond pattern grille.
Also, only the Classic got the hood ornament.
This reminds me of a car I’d love to see (if not outright own) – a strippo 1976 Chevelle with a six-cylinder and a 3-on-the-tree manual transmission. It would be the last ‘big’ Chevy (or big car from any of the domestics) so equipped and the end of an era.
I always loked the Pontiac versions of these cars, they seemed “streamlined” to me.