I’m not sure this is actually a ’76; I’m afraid my Skyhawk identification skills aren’t quite what they once were, due to lack of usage. When was the last time I saw one? Quite a while. And you? I don’t think we’ve ever seen one here at CC either. But thanks to whatnext2010 who posted this well-preserved find at the Cohort, we are once again graced by its presence. What a find. And what a fine complement it makes to today’s Electra Limited, which is why I’m calling it a ’76. Anybody know exactly from this picture? Calling all Skyhawk experts!
The Chevy-Monza clone Skyhawk arrived in 1975, undoubtedly in response to the energy crisis. It also arrived the same year as Buick’s repatriated V6, once the tooling was rushed back from AMC, re-installed on the same foundations, and cranked up. Buick was desperate to get the little Fireball V6 back after having sold it to Kaiser-Jeep back in 1967. Kaiser-Jeep had been buying V6 engines from Buick since 1965, and undoubtedly got a good deal on the whole transfer line. The de-smogged 231 inch V6 now made 110 net hp, which was barely adequate in the 3000lb Skyhawk; never mind the 4200 lb Le Sabre that it found itself in in 1976.
Needless to say, the difference in the Skyhawk from the Monza were subtle, given how quickly it was rushed into production. But the Monza had V8 engines, and the Skyhawk didn’t. How odd was that? Nothing was odd in the seventies.
Brings back a few memories as I had a ’76 Monza 2+2, 4 cylinder (don’t remember which one, not the Vega aluminum engine) with a 5-speed. It was a very nice car, although not as responsive as my ’73 Vega GT. Pretty much a bargain basement GT tourer.
Probably the best comparison was that the Vega did 3 seasons of SCCA B-sedan autocross. The Monza was never used for anything more serious than local time/distance/seat-of-the-pants rallies.
Both cars were very positive experiences for me, both ran and held up well (probably not hurt by my trading cars in every three years for a new one back then), and I’ll always look back at them fondly. It was the ’79 Monza Kammback that turned out to be the One Vega Too Many – the worst car I ever owned.
The engine choices weren’t all that odd. If anything, it was the only way you could differentiate between the two, er, three cars (almost forgot Oldsmobile). Chevy got the cheap-o four, and the “powerful” eight. Olds and Buick split the difference with the sixes. At least GM was trying to not quite badge engineer on technical grounds.
My ’75 Monza 2+2 had the destroked 4.3 SBC and a 4-speed. Ton of fun…brakes were obviously an issue, a once a year ritual. Can’t imagine how often you changed them on automatics…
Get rid of the chrome roof wrap, add rear window louvers and repatriated turbine wheels, and that critter would be a dead ringer for my four-banger/4 speed ’76 Monza. Thanks (ugh) for the memories.
As I’ve mentioned before, my sisters first car was a brown 77 Skyhawk (aka the Poopmobile). Worst. Car. Ever. In the 6 years she had it: the 3.8 rusted; it wouldn’t go uphill (she needed to get a running start to get it up our driveway); the heater core got plugged up so the passenger footwell was filled with several inches of water; and it routinely stalled.
When we traded it in, it had no more than 40,000 miles on the odo.
Like so many other cars of that era, the concept was fine but the execution was awful.
I liked my 1980 Chevy Monza four cylinder notchback coupe. Like Syke, I did a little TSD rallying in it, and found it reasonably quick and comfortable. Adding KYB gas shocks to the front worked wonders for the stability and handling. The little Chevy sure had an appetite for heater cores, though. It was going for its third when I traded it in 1987.
Not that I am an avid Skyhawk follower, but I believe this one is a ’77 or ’78, as it has the divider between the quad lights and the bigger eggcrate grille. Still a P.O.S. no matter how you slice it, but they seemed to have tried to add more “Buick identity” than the true Chevy clones offered in ’75 and ’76.
When my older brother was car shopping for his first car in 1976, he test drove the Oldsmobile Starfire version of this (don’t ask why, just suffice to say my family had an Olds at the time so he gave it a look). I remember the V6 shaking pretty violently at idle, as I am sure it did in the Buick application as well.
Here is the face of the 1976, straight from the Buick catalog:
Yep that was a rough engine. Really a very different motor than the 3800 V6 everybody seems to love so much.
actually I have been driving a 77 skylark for almost 35 years now with 231&380k miles on it,still stock motor&trans.more reliable than any camry or Altima that my friends owned.
A memory provoked by the first photo:
“Foggy windows/Feet on the dashboard/I found the meaning of love.”
— The Screaming Gypsy Bandits, ca. 1971
110hp for 3,000 lb. may not have been much to write home about, but in my 2,200 lb. Vega, it was quite a thrill! Nice thing was that engine mounts and suspension bits were all direct bolt-in swaps.
My brother and his friend did a 225 Fireball V-6 swap in a POS ’71 Vega notchback. Kept the Powerglide. Headers, Holley 600, Offenhauser manifold. Straight pipes back w/glasspacks . . . . . ran like a bat out of hell. I could hear him coming from two blocks away. He had Cal. vanity plates that said, “Dr. Doom.” Killer!
It’s interesting to note that this car and the red one in the brochure photo underneath both have what is possible the Skyhawks most unique option, the wide silver band around the B-pillar identifies this as a possible SkyRoof Skyhawk, the SkyRoof was a clear Plexiglas panel over the drivers compartment, a la Mercury Sun Valley/Ford Starliner. It was a Buick only option as far as I can tell and fairly low production from 75-80.
Ah; this:
There we go, I did a quick Goooooogle search but couldn’t find a pic, but I knew there had to be one deep down in the interwebs somewhere.
When i was a kid my neighbor had one of these skyhawks with the solid roof. He cut the roof off over the drivers and passengers seats one weekend. It was like a targa, but i guess he got the idea from this. He never drove it much after the sawzall job. This had to be 82 or 83. I always wondered why he did it, i guess this clear roof was his inspiration.
The GMHS cars, as they were code-named internally, were originally conceived in 1971 in response to the perception that a smaller, GT oriented car with exceptional handling would be popular in the marketplace. Ed Cole pushed the H cars who also pushed the Vega as a corporate wide project. This was from the similar line of thinking that produced the Mustang II, as Lee Iacocca was not the only one in Detroit that was thinking that the muscle cars were getting too fat and bloated, especially since insurance costs were now taking a big bite out of sales.
They were not originally conceived to be economy cars, but as we found out with OPEC, virtually every car began to be thought of in some kind of economy terms with even the full size boats getting token economy-minded gadgets like the fuel economy meter on the dash and green and orange lights on Cadillacs.
The RWD H cars were originally designed around the rotary motor, with the Oldsmobile Starfire slated to receive exclusive use of the GMRC motor with availability across all product lines in future years depending on sales of course. Like with the AMC Pacer, the H cars were altered to accommodate piston motors nearly at the end of their development cycle. Clues to the expected use of the rotary motor can still be seen with the bulge on the center of the hood, even the quad popup-like headlamps were designed to conceal the necessary styling elements to accommodate the rotary. Design tweaks in later models of the cars were done after GM abandoned rotary development, like altering the cross-member of the transmission tunnel, etc. The other divisions were to get exclusive motors such as the Pontiac Iron Duke, the Buick V6, etc. plus the expected styling and trim differences associated with each division.
The H bodies, like the Vegas, were more than competent handlers. Contemporary testing at the time showed that a Monza with the V8 was reasonably fast 0-60, but also had class leading shalom and maneuverability times.
Not surprisingly, the Chevrolet and Pontiac versions were the big sellers, while the Oldsmobile Starfire and Buick Skyhawk models registered modest sales. Mostly due to the fact that, at that time, most Buick and Oldsmobile buyers wanted medium priced larger cars.
The Chevrolet Monza was originally supposed to be called the Chapparal from the successful Chapparal racing cars from the 60s and 70s that were mostly Chevrolet powered. Licensing and other legalize ultimately caused a last minute switch to Monza. The cars were popular on the SCCA circuit and with the burgeoning GT market it was expected to have spillover effect on the H cars. Of course, as we have seen, modified and beefed up H cars (as well as Vegas) were quite popular for a time both on the straight-line drag strip as well as on road courses. To this day, as in this past weekend, I see Vega and Monza bodied cars with modified engines plying the car show circuit.
Ed Cole was a big proponent of GMI, of course as an alum he would be expected to be, and the Vega and the H cars were popular test beds for educational purposes. Since Oldsmobile was expected to be the launch division for the rotary engine, and being a budding powertrain engineer, I expect that if the rotary would have lived, I probably could have been able to write a book about it by this time.
“…class leading shalom and maneuverability times.”
Don’t remember mine wishing me peace. Unless it was Peace Of S(omething).
My ’71 notch handled like it was on rails with nearly perfect f/r balance. The V6 swap made it bit nose heavy, but not to the point where I wasn’t afraid to toss it around still.
Craig – I’ve read rumors to the effect there was a V8 option planned for Vega as well, and possibly one prototype… Any truth to that?
I really do not have an answer to that. Vega was introduced in 1971, I came on board in the fall of 1972 and as a full time employee in 1976 so by the time I got in the mix everything was all rotary and Monza. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chevrolet engineers built one or two V8s for shits and giggles, but it is highly unlikely that the car, Vega and even the H bodies, were originally designed for a V8. The rotary was supposed to be the big play, so much so that there was even talk of Cadillac getting a 4 rotor design for the new smaller car that eventually became the Seville. The 262 Chevrolet V8 was conceived to deal with the loss of the rotary. As was the case with so many things in Detroit post OPEC, everything became a “whatever we can make work” situation since the rules were being rewritten as we went along.
Ed, I know GM made a few boo-boos, but would they really have designed a car with a V8 engine that required loosening an engine mount and jacking up the engine to change the spark plugs? That to me is proof enough that the V8 was not originally planned to go in the Vega. And why would it? That would have been totally outside the brief of the Vega’s original purpose and mission.
In the late sixties, when the Vega was designed, the Nova could be had with all manner of V8s, and it wasn’t all that much more expensive.
But I’m hardly surprised to hear that some Chevy engineers did drop a V8 in; what else to do in their spare time?
Great post, did you do much work on the rotary? Was the rotary an Oldsmobile project or a GM corporate project? I always thought it was a corporate program.
None, the rotary program was all but dead by the time that I graduated from GMI. However with Oldsmobile expected to be the launch division and me being sponsored by Oldsmobile at the time (all GMI students prior to 1982 had to be sponsored by a GM division) I fully expected to have been immersed in it at some point. With that said, all but the most advanced and secretive designs were widely shared since all the students would be involved in them at some point.
The rotary was developed at the Tech Center in Warren under the auspices of Bob Templin, due to the uniqueness of the design, it had its own staff. Had the engine been green-lighted, it very well would have been turned over to Oldsmobile who would have been the lead engineering division for an in-production model. Most of the engineers that worked on the rotary were from Chevrolet where the rotary was first conceived to be used with the XP-987 project. The original test mule was a 4 rotor mid engine vehicle that used a modified THM425 automatic transmission.
I never knew that Oldsmobile was going to be the launch division for the rotary, but it makes sense since Olds was always the “experimental” division, I thought that Chevrolet was all in on it since they were the ones playing around with potential rotary Corvettes and what not throughout the early 70’s.
Chevrolet was and most of the engineers were from Chevrolet. However when it came to the H car launch, Oldsmobile was selected for the rotary.
What I don’t get about the GM rotary is why AMC, with its limited resources, designed the Pacer around it w/o GM even having a proven motor as yet, & that along with the relatively low-tech Vega debacle as a red flag about GM’s management competence? Am I missing something, or had AMC lost their marbles?
Apart from its early seal problems, the rotary is fundamentally inefficient (see RX-8 EPA figures), as engineers then should’ve known. Smoother running is poor compensation.
Well, before the first gas crisis,the inefficiency of the rotary wasn’t really the concern, what really oohhhh and ahhhhed people about the rotary was it’s smooth running and compact size. Who knows what AMC was thinking, AMC originally planned for the Pacer to be FWD AND rotary at the same time, where were they going to get the FWD components from?
Where would AMC get the parts for FWD?
Uh…in-house engineering? Funded with profits off the new Matador, maybe?
GM rotary was already green lighted by corporate, the line was already in place at Willow Run and the engine was in certification process when OPEC hit. NOx was the big problem with the rotaries (along with fuel economy but that wasn’t a concern before OPEC). AMC already had signed agreements with GM for the rotary. They went as far as making it well known to the public. The next step would have been to work up the marketing. Pricing had already been worked up somewhat. For the most part, the delay was announced mere months. GM wouldn’t have spent $50 million on the motor and designed basically a whole car line around the motor unless the process was real.
Did AMC’s decision-maker have a screw loose? Maybe. I think what happened was that they started the Pacer program on the strength of rosy prognostications that never came to be. First, AMC bought a Wankel license from NSU…with the intent to build it themselves. Then they found the piggy-bank a little light, and put feelers around. IIRC, NSU was building Wankels themselves in those days but their own future was uncertain. So, no sale to AMC.
I don’t recall if Toyo Kogyo, parent company of Mazda, turned down an AMC request or if it didn’t get that far along. At some point, probably about the time GM was trying to buy back the Buick V6 tooling, AMC was invited to bid into the GMRE program.
Obviously, AMC’s input in the decision to terminate it was NOT invited. They were stood up…the Pacer with its empty engine bay; the Matador banged up and needing a medic…the cupboard in Kenosha was bare.
It was not a good place to be; but that’s kinda what happens when you run an industrial enterprise on hope and vaporware.
Look at it this way, aside from bodyshells and engines, by the 1970s, virtually everything else in an AMC was cribbed from the Big Three. So why not license a wankel. Had OPEC not occured, the GM rotary would probably eventually made it into production and Mazda probably would have been a dominate player among import brands.
Hmmm…if the 1973 event hadn’t occurred, we’d have had the 1979 OPEC crisis anyway. These have been, continue to be, political events that come from relying on oil from a very unstable part of the world.
Granted, the GM Wankel might have gone through. But then GM would be even less prepared when political events did come to their logical end. AMC might have tried to go Wankel over much of their car line; perhaps to the point of buying GM engines for Jeep…which at that time would have just been a retreat to what Jeep had been doing a couple of years earlier.
But a delayed OPEC crisis would have probably destroyed Mazda. They were able to bounce back in 1974 because they hadn’t completely abandoned piston engines and had only recently de-emphasized them. In a few years the equipment and knowledge would have been lost, and Mazda as well.
Re: JustPassinThru
Rotary+OPEC did destroy Mazda. Only instead of getting a government bailout they got a Keiretsu bailout. Their banker Sumitomo stepped in, replaced the management, and invited Ford in for investment and expertise. After the recent divorce from Ford, Sumitomo again stepped in to provide funding for Mazda’s new factory in Mexico.
The Rocket Division.
Rocket Rotary. If they could have engineered that Classic Olds sound, that would’ve been very cool.
CraiginNC – your account is spot on. These I recall in my high school/JC days were fairly popular cars, even in import dominated S.F. Bay Area circles. Oddly, it seemed, when the 75 1/2 Monza Town Coupe arrived, it did so in California with the Vega four and a 350 four barrel, I believe putting out about 155 net hp.
A high school auto shop acquaintance’s Mom had one of these and even with a super tall axle, it was the burnout darling of the San Rafael High School parking lot, ca. 1976.
I remember looking at the Buick variant Skyhawk right about the time I’d joined the Coast Guard. Most were dolled up and priced close to Pontiac Formula Firebird/Camaro Z28 prices, which is what I really wanted then – but couldn’t afford the insurance. Things for the Buick V-6 improved greatly with the even-firing 231 beginning in ’78.
CraiginNC –What do know about the B&W T50 5-speed program in these, and BOP X-bodies?
I had one in a ’76 Olds Omega. AFIK vis-a-vis ads of the day, Olds seemed to be the biggest proponent of these among the BOP divisons. They had little tolerance for torque and even the 260 “Baby Rocket” taxed it’s limits. Not only that, but B&W washed it’s hands of them, with no replacement parts available as early as 1982. Was very pissed.
The T50s were put in for economy reasons and give BW exposure in the OD market. Like many found out, the Muncie 4 speed was ideal for most situations until Getrag designed a 5 speed in the 1980s. American buyers generally preferred automatics and that why they were installed in most vehicles. Some transmissions just seem to fit powertrains better, I am sure Honda wasn’t real happy to installed a 2 speed automatic in their cars initially but that’s what US buyers wanted and to not do so probably would have been detrimental to their future sales.
quote: Clues to the expected use of the rotary motor can still be seen with the bulge on the center of the hood, even the quad popup-like headlamps were designed to conceal the necessary styling elements to accommodate the rotary.
Craig I enjoyed reading this post and I’m interested if you can tell me where this information started from on the “bulge” on the center of the hood and headlamps?
I’m not saying this is wrong and have read it before but I would like to find the source. This is the running prototype of the Pininfarina built 2nd gen H body (early 70’s Monza) with the rotary engine installed. You can see it has neither additions for clearance. Brian
Car.
This brings back the same best forgotten memories as seeing the Olds variant of the family. Both could have benefitted from something the Monzas has iirc. The four cylinder chev II engine. I understand it was available in the chev but not the corporate siblings. My 231 was replaced under warranty but the car still died when it shot flames that blistered the hood. It took quite a bit of getting past that even when folks extolled the virtues of the 3800.
I don’t recall salt on the road in Virginia Beach but it sure started to rust anyway. Made me happy to throw money at AMC.
It wasn’t a Chevy II engine, it was the Pontiac Iron Duke, same idea,but different.
Not half a Chevy V8, half a Pontiac V8.
I would have lost money on that. This post agrees with you but also talks about the intent to include the rotary in a chevy. I drove it’s sib but spent little time reading about it till time diminished my memory of it’s deficiencies.
Ahhh the RWD H-Body. It’s a shame these weren’t more reliable and better-assembled, because maybe then they’d be remembered more fondly.
From the very-detailed h-body.org, V8s were available in:
•Monza from 1975-79, excluding wagons and the re-nosed Vega hatchback known as Monza S (which I have seen only ONE photo of, and was only sold for a year)
•Starfire from 78-79
•Sunbird… In ’79 only, and not in the Safari
For a one generation platform, the H-Body has a lot of trivia and rare models: see, Skyhawk Nighthawk, Vega Nomad, etc
As I mentioned in the post above, around ’79 I was looking at Skyhawks and remember coming across the Firehawk. This had the glued on (poorly, I might add), polyurethane flares, spoilers and other associated crap which looked horrible and very much J.C. Whitney glued on by a autistic chimpanzee. The Monza aftermarket attempts looked far better. They had the bizarre five speed with the odd shift pattern of R 1 2 3 4 5, opposite of the normal 5 speed pattern.
Yes, the Borg-Warner T50, I remember it well. I had one in a ’76 Olds Omega with a 260 V8. Beautiful car, black with white guts, I bought it from the original owner who wanted the Omega SX, but without the stripes. He had to order every SX item ala cart, the Rally-IIIs, FE2 Suspension, etc.
The T50 had a very low torque rating, and even the 260 taxed it’s outer limits.
As early a 1982, there were no replacement parts available when it started to act up. Was very pissed.
The wife of a friend I worked with years ago had a ’75 or ’76 Skyhawk, all I remember about it was how incredibly cheap the interior was; the GM beancounters were obviously in full swing by then and it certainly showed by the quality of the interior, which was rather odd since Buick was supposedly in the GM scheme of things the number two division behind Cadillac.
My parents had a ’75 Hawk as a 2nd car for 8 years. Got it when it used in summer ’77. Private party sale and car was like new. To me, it wasn’t tacky, compared to a Vega or Pinto. Though our interior was well worn by ’81.
But me learning to drive stick, and city traffic, wore the clutch out 2 years later. Also had radiator blow a year later. It was Ok reliability, considering it was an H body. My dad drove it exclusively until 1985 and finally dumped it, and had it fixed a few times.
Anyway, the featured Hawk is a 1977-78, with the plastic headlight dividers. Ick! 1979-80 had single headlamps.
What’s the old saying? A camel, is a horse designed by a committee.
And these craptastic blandwich cars were a slice of the fetid mindset that ruled GM in those days.
Not bad, overall? I’ll buy that. But they took badge-engineering to its extreme – they should have just been badged as “Monza” and made available to all divisions, like Neon later was.
Designed to use the GMRE. Then, the GMRE gets cancelled…and its carrier car, goes forward. With whatever engines they can scrounge up. Why did this car even live? Nobody…knows…
My memory of these is that they were hard to get in and out of; the quality was worse than plastic – it was LOW QUALITY plastic. They rusted. They drank fuel like a Nova. They weren’t Chevrolets; or Buicks; or anything. They were…just…THERE. Like bird dung.
It was this sort of nobody-home product planning which sent buyers to the Japanese side of the street. Face it…in the last fifty years, a lot of the appeal of the American brands has been jingoism, and chauvinism for one’s favorite brand. When your favorite marque…surrenders its entire identity…why keep it your favorite? Where’s the Toyota store?
In the list of GM’s Deadly Sins…this is the Damnable one.
I’ll disagree with the Damnable Sin verdict.
The only complaint I had about my Monza what that it felt heavier than the predecessor Vega. With the four cylinder, the five speed worked quite well (thanks for the reminder, I’d forgotten about the backwards pattern). It handled nicely, it just wasn’t as tossible as the Vega.
They were Chevrolet’s, rebadged to cover the other divisions. And never should have been anything else. If anything, they were GM thinking about as well as anybody was doing back then, boxing in the Mustang II very nicely. Real Camaro on one side, Mustang II sized Monza on the other. I consider the hatchback coupe a mild success from those days. Considering the only other things the GM had going good for it were the Camaro and maybe the Corvette.
Now, where they blew it was the notchback coupe. A trunk so shallow that you could only lay an attache case in it. A rear seat so small it would have been difficult to haul groceries, much less small children. However, the hatchback (the original design) was as well a thought out car as anything else in 1975, from just about any other manufacturer who sold under the price of a BMW or Mercedes.
Keep in mind that, back in 1975, Toyota wasn’t “God’s own car” – yet. It was just a somewhat better built small car that rusted faster.
It spread across the other divsions because of the oil embargo freak out, suddenly every division wanted to have a small car, the Buick and Olds additions always seemed like 11th hour add ons, I imagine that Chevrolet and Pontiac were the only ones supposed to have them first.
Buick and Olds got versions because it was generally GM policy to offer full car lines to the divisions, plus it was good economies of scale. Since Olds was going to be the launch division for the rotary, it would have made it unique, but yes otherwise the Buick and Olds versions were less interesting for those buyers. The Buick did help introduce the 231 V6 which of course went on to a long career.
Re-introduce. As the 225 it had a ten-year career in Buicks, Jeeps and OMC Stern-Drive boats. The only thing new about the 231 was the split-pin cranks, which hadn’t even arrived yet.
It was good, solid engineering – the best of Old GM. The times called for a smaller engine and it was to GM’s credit that they were able to admit to a mistake and swallow pride in buying the engine line back
Given GM’s stellar track record with introducing new technology, can you just imagine the fiasco the rotary would have been? Or could you imagine the Pacer program being even worse than it was?
Point taken.
At least, though, there would have been a flow of logic to it…a start, a goal, a purpose.
Wouldn’t it be neat if someone dropped an RX-7 Wankel engine into a Monza or one of its siblings? After all that’s what it was built for.
It was discussed in the H-body forum, and someone did drop an RX-7 rotary into a Vega, but no word on a Monza/Skyhawk/etc. They also linked to the article in the May 1972 Popular Science.
Have any of you ever heard of such an engine swap? Somebody should do it!
Another thread at the H-body forum has this actual NOS badge from the GM project. How cool is that?
I would wonder as to the validity of that badge.
The GMRE program was still a long ways away from production when the plug was pulled. There weren’t, for example, real-world test mules running about. The tooling was modified for automatic-transmission cases…something I doubt they’d have done if they had it all installed and were running off beta units.
That might have been a proposal gimmick floating around in meetings or in the product-planning offices.
There’s a debate over its validity on that forum thread. Allegedly it was made for the detailed clay styling model. Also there are more photos of that badge, which does have mounting pins behind it. Plus a link to some fine pictures of styling exercises and a running prototype badged “Chaparelle”.
It got far enough for the H-body to have a higher driveline tunnel to accomodate it. I’d always heard it was emissions that killed it.
How did the Mazda engine fare, as far as durability? Seems there’s a lead curtain of silence over the RX-7 Experience.
Maybe the engines didn’t last as long as the cars? And maybe what salvage rotaries are out there, are scarfed up by desperate RX owners?
What lead curtain?
One forum poster said “Naturally Aspirated (non-turbo) rotaries are actually known for very good reliability. I’ve got an ’82 RX-7 with the original engine, more than 200 000 on it, no rebuild.”
Elsewhere reports are the early engines had some issues, later engines had great longevity if they were properly cared for (especially oil). Also their simplicity means they are cheap to rebuild, one report said $700.
GM claimed at the time they beat the fuel economy problem, and got the emissions down, but not both at the same time. Mazda rotaries remained well-known for their thirst.
GM got the two rotor wankel up to 18-20 MPG, but there is simply no way to make a rotary engine efficient without creating too much lean, too much heat, and durability issues. That is just a simple inherent problem with the basic design and no real way around it. That is why the GM wankel was dropped once OPEC hit, Mazda relegated their motor to RX duty, and we haven’t heard anything further since. The apex seals were the #1 culprit and still are even on newer Mazdas. There are not a lot of moving parts, so keeping the motor cooled and oiled it would last for a great long time.
I spent many hours under the rear hatch of a 78 Skyhawk, light brown with tan interior, 3.8 5 speed and the more turbine looking wheels.
My Dad traded in a silver 76 for the new brown 78 a few weeks after I was born. He liked the 76 but was, at that time, trading in every two years, and really wanted to get one with the new even-fire 3.8. He said the 78 was trouble free and much smoother than the 76.
I remeber him selling it to a guy in the US Army in the spring of 83. The car was headed from NH to Alaska never to be seen again by us.
That non even-fire V6 always sounded like a V864 stuck in 6-cylinder mode to me. The roofline on the hatch was pretty, like a Ferrari Daytona. Things like the headlamp dividers and brushed metal roof trim came later and spoiled the clean lines. These cars had really narrow cockpits and everything inside – the steering wheel, gauge cluster, etc. – were scaled down to fit. Back in the day that gave it a sense of modernity, especially with a ’76 Electra in the same showroom!
I’d always heard that Chevy called the car the Monza in anticipation of the GMRE and to take advantage of Monza sounding like Mazda, which was pretty much known exclusively for the rotary engine in the early 1970s. Not sure how true it is but I wouldn’t be surprised that marketers would want to take advantage of public confusion.
The Mazda rotaries had the reliability issues licked on the naturally aspirated versions by the advent of the RX-7. Rust tended to take care of most of the pre-RX-7 Mazdas that were left. The early cars had reliability issues but Mazda was working hard to correct them and making owners whole; the gas crisis is what killed sales starting in late-73.
People forget, but unlike Toyota and Datsun, Mazdas were selling primarily on performance. They were not particularly good on gas, but they were less strangled than many of the pony cars of the time, and insurance companies weren’t wise to their performance potential yet. They got a real pocket-rocket rep, but one that stopped being positive once the first gas crisis hit, and no one wanted a subcompact that drank fuel like a small V8.
The Monza was a Chapparal until the last minute due to licensing issues.
Mazda DID sell their rotary vehicles on performance. The problem Mazda had, and granted it took us all by surprise, was that they put all of their eggs in one basket. When OPEC hit, no one wanted a small car that was bad on gas, there were plenty of much nicer big car that were bad on gas. So overnight their business model disappeared, so much so that their dependency on rotaries brought the company to its knees by 1977. The grandson of the founder was ousted, the company went into receivership and was more or less taken over by a bank consortium. Eventually they focused on economy cars like every other Japanese nameplate at the time and began their slow recovery.
Chevrolet used Monza on the Corvair before anyone had even heard of Mazda.
I got a kick out of the Buick and Olds variants of the Monza 2+2, built to satisfy the dealers who all wanted a low-priced car of some sort. I always felt that I had the real thing in my 1975 V8 4-speed 2+2. I liked the handling of it well enough even though it was admittedly front-heavy, but didn’t want to trade the good acceleration and the smooth 80-mph 2000-rpm highway running for the slightly better handling of a four-cylinder car.
I’ve learned a lot of new things here and want to thank all, but CraiginNC in particular, for their contribution to my edification.
I really liked the Chevy Monza Spyder. The graphics, black headlamp buckets and dual outlet rear muffler were cool. You can see the exhaust tips in this pic. I remember riding my bike to the Olds dealer to see the Starfire Firenza when it came came out, it was similar to the Spyder. I don’t remember the Skyhawk ever getting a T-type or similar.
Question asked…question answered.
Calibrick, meet the Skyhawk Roadhawk
Wow Phil I am just… speechless. It’s like a factory version of Steve Lang’s Miata IDK Edition. These must be just as rare!
pretty wild eh…
I’ve seen 1 on ebay, other than that I’m not sure any others survived.
I only discovered them after purchasing a Buick Buyers guide.
Looks to me like these might have gotten the most body modifications of all the special edition H body cars.
The cool thing about some of those RoadHawk and NightHawk package Skyhawks was the reflective decal down the side that would reflect illumination at night.
OH MY GOODNESS…
WHO in their right mind TRASHED the glass on this potential beauty???
They should be SHOT!!!
Notice the “nicely” interrated side marker lights. Looks like Buick had to find some lenses off a different model.
That custom spoiler covered up the corners of the taillight assemblies, so lighting regulations must have demanded the seperate red lenses. The Monza pictures do not show an additional marker light.
Woohoo, my first Cohort feature! Thanks! The damp climate in Vancouver isn’t as kind to cars as drier Pacific NW spots like Eugene, OR but there’s a fair amount of vintage material rolling around here.
I am quite surprised at the sheer number of comments this posting has generated. The Monza/Skyhawk/Firenza were just a GM product burp from the
mid-seventies. I never though anyone besides myself would have anything to contribute about them.
The Skyhawk was a car my father purchased in 1975 (white over red vinyl with a/c, power windows and the same alloy wheels as the one in the picture). It was a car he kept for no more than a year (but then back then he never kept a car for longer than a year). My only specific memory of it was on the very evening in February he took delivery of it, my Dad took me to the Palestra in Philadelphia (I grew up in Bryn Mawr) to watch our Princeton Tigers take on the Penn Quakers in basketball. It was a very, very cold night I recall and the Schyukill Expressway that night was horribly choked with traffic, so the 15-20 minute ride time turned into nearly an hour. I remember the stop and go crawl in that car while we listened to “KYW Newsradio 1060” with the familiar to anyone in the Delaware Valley call sign at the top of each hour: “This is KYW Newsradio 1060. Live from Independence Mall in Center City Philadelphia, here’s what’s happening at this hour….”
At the time I thought the car’s seats were very comfortable and I quite liked it. The doors were extremely heavy and I can still recall the not unpleasant but still quite distinct to this car smell.
Come to think of it, I’d give anything to smell the smell that all new cars from Detroit had back then. Does anyone remember that smell? Wasn’t it different for each plant/division within GM and very different between the big 3? I wonder what comprised that smell (rubber, plastics, machined metal, paint, etc…)
As a veteran of Philly area traffic, I know kyw well. Your post has the makings of a CC story…
Calibrick
“…like a Ferrari Daytona”
Actually it’s like a Ferrari 365 GTC/4….Chevrolet blatantly “stole” the whole greenhouse design for the Monza, et al (hatchbacks)
Just like they did with the Vega, that time with the 365 GT 2+2:
I’m going to be BURIED in mine! lol
Oops…forgot this one.