Photos from the Cohort by Hyperpack.
Last week there was a bit of discussion about my Disco Music car of choice; a 1975 Dodge Charger. What I didn’t say that day was that the theme was a two-parter, since I was still pondering the matter. On one end, I wasn’t entirely sold on the Charger Cordoba as a Disco Music ride. On the other, a car sitting right next to the Charger displayed better the musical shifts of that decade: a 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix. A melange of neoclassical cues, brutalist lines, and overdone hipness that several 1970s music genres seem to fit.
After all, both Pontiac and the Grand Prix nameplate had undergone enough mutations by ’77, that it felt more like the aging rock act adopting new trends. Whether you liked it or not, at the time it worked; this was the most sold generation of Grand Prix ever (’77 being the model’s all-time high at 288K units).
So is this ’77 Grand Prix a Rocker going Disco? Going Pop? Or delving into Hard Rock?
What I do know is that this late Colonnade Grand Prix is Pontiac doing its best Oldsmobile impersonation. Does Cutlass Supreme and Grand Prix rhyme? Not quite. No wonder I’m not entirely sold on this generation of Colonnade Pontiacs.
And as Paul mentioned previously, these Pontiacs were nowhere as distinctive as they used to be just a few years prior. A Medium Prix, as he said. Still better than the Lesser Prix that was coming.
But as I said last week, adapt or die. However, these late colonnades have such a mix of cues, from the classic to the brutal, that I find it hard to pinpoint what tune they’re playing. I guess that was part of their sales magic? Look into the product and project whatever image you want into them?
After all, I can see this Grand Prix embodying the spirit of Disco and Rock all at once. And mirroring Pontiac’s shifting strategies and luck, is this Grand Prix just entering its “Everyone Bites The Dust” era? Or as I remember it, “Everyone Sells To Disco!” as my 1970s rock music pal used to taunt us whenever that Queen tune played at our workplace in SF.
However, an old COAL on the model talked about this generation of Grand Prix as being their Heavy Metal car. That brutalist face does make a case for it, as it is certainly tough-looking and menacing. In my head it seems the right car for the Evil Dead’s Ash to drive, if he could finally get rid of the ’73 Oldsmobile Delta 88 he seems so attached to.
Did I say you could project any image you wanted into this Grand Prix? Just about, but not quite. After all, this car certainly didn’t fit with the understated-luxury crowd that was growing at the time. If you were into Audis and Mercedes, or Alfas, GM had no business with you. Something that would cost the Giant later, but we’re talking about the ’70s here, right? Why look into that gloomy future?
Let’s leave these two Disco-Classic-Rock era cars behind for now, as neither one seems to be in a partying mood. Rock or Disco wise, those parties they attended truly wore them out. Too bad, but such is life. Party too hard, and those tires will deflate and those vinyl tops will crack and peel away.
Still, I know myself and my head will keep playing around, thinking of the right soundtrack for each, though I really doubt any of my favorite Erik Satie piano pieces will fit either. Which is fine, those understated tunes are reserved for the trips on my imaginary Audi 100.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1976 Pontiac Grand Prix — Grand Size, Medium Prize
Back in 83 when I purchased my 77 GP, it was my Rock and Roll dream. I listened to a steady stream of The Doors, Steve Miller Band and Hendrix on my Audiovox ( dreamed of a Pioneer SuperTuner). Disco was for the guys who drove a Monte Carlo or a Lincoln
Mark.
A buddy of mine had a ’74 or ’75 GP handed off by his Dad when he purchased a ’79 T-Bird. That GP was the quietest car I have ever ridden in. This was back in the days when the speed limit was 55 MPH, but we were in a hurry. Seventy-five MPH on a west Texas interstate. Felt like we were idling.
My Grandma Siri had a ’77 Grand Prix exactly like the one in promo shot #4, same color and everything. She was only about five feet tall and I could never understand how she saw past that long hood. It might as well have been a Boeing 777 for how small she looked in it. Whenever she left our house in the Grand Prix, we could count on her throwing up a rooster tail of gravel in the driveway.
As for Grandma’s music, I remember her having a pretty strong thing for Julio Iglesias. I think that matches the car pretty well!
My second oldest brother had a brand new 1976 GP that ended up getting totaled out when he got hit by a drunk driver. Replaced that one with a brand new 1977 in brown/tan. Loved that car. But his wife wasn’t good at keeping the car clean or kept up, so he sold it and got her an older Buick. Sadly, she was fine with that and didn’t care about the cars at all. I remember the swivel buckets seats.
The answer is both. First owners would go to the discos in their fashionable PLC but by the second or third owner into the 80s where PLCs were out of fashion and the paint was no longer so shiny the heavy metal teens would take them to the Judas Priest show
Sorry, but while the Charger is Donna Summer, the GP is a mess of conflicting themes. You mention Queen, and this ca’s styling is pure Bohemian Rhapsody.
I thought the last of DeLorean’s original, intermediate-sized 1969 Grand Prix was actually pretty decent and one of the better malaise-era efforts. Biggest engine was no longer the Poncho 400 but an Olds 403, which was still okay.
But what I really liked about this version of the Grand Prix was the horizontal, quad rectangular headlight treatment. There was simply no comparison with the truly lame, stacked-rectangular headlights of, say, the Monte Carlo or Cordoba.
Things really took a turn for the worse the next year with the formal, upright rear window, slab-sided, and even more downsized 1978 Grand Prix, and it never really got any better as the Grand Prix would eventually morph from a PLC-type coupe to a sporty 4-door sedan which, ironically, would be the same, eventual fate as the Dodge Charger.
These cars capture a time just after Americans burnt out on Disco but it wasn’t yet apparent would come next. Would ’60s-70s-style rock return to arenas everywhere? Would disco get a second wind? Would the two artforms combine, like rock did with folk in the ’60s and with jazz in the early ’70s? Would something truly new like punk appear, or at least throw some influence onto pop? Did hip-hop have legs? Were Americans ready for sounds from far away places like reggae and ska?
The cars here reflect late-’70 uncertainy. There are old designs tyring to stay fresh. GM’s A and A Special coupes astonished me by selling in record numbers against similarly-sized, downsized B bodies with all-new style. The Charger was the last gasp of disco (equivalent to Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown” (the last major disco hit in America?) Those pondering what would sell automotively could look at the Billboard charts and make some inferences: First up:
Suzanne Fellini – “Love on the Phone”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHk_bxfXFVM
Still as danceable as any good disco, but with a distance modernized flair for the ’80s with new-wave influences seeping in. Like those Cabriolet Novas from the late ’70s.
The Vapors – “Turning Japanese”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhD9gyRSz0g
This is pure rock with just a layer of new-age Asian-style riffs and bell-melts toward the end to suggest a mystical land far away, but it works.
Blondie – “One way or Another”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=valVixMpzQY
Blondie’s first hit in the States bore the working title of “The Disco Song” before they renamed it “Heart of Glass”. As subsequent Blondie releases would show, this band was an much at home playing reggae, rap or post-punk as disco, the kind of versatility Detroit could have used in the ’70s fell into the past.
Donna Summer “Hot Stuff”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx0_xHliFNo
Now Donna had to completely reinvent her sound if the “Queen of Disco” would be at all relevant in the ’80s, and did so with tough rockers like “Hot Stuff”
Prince “I Wanna be your Lover”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp8WL621uGM
This song from his second album still has him turning out relatively conventional r&b tunes, of the sort that others in the music biz may have wrote off as a middling talent that would easily get lost in a crowd. Kind of like how nobody in Detroit seemed all that worried about the Honda Accord at first.
Tom Petty – “Walkin’ Around (with you)”
https://www.youtube.com/watchv=LB_eHi7HcTM
This is perhaps closest to what the ’80s gave us. The first new song from his first album from 1976 – from who was this new guy? Not a prog-rocker like Genesis or Yes – the song is only two minutes long. It’s not disco, punk, r&b, new wave, or standard rock. Maybe the soundtrack for what would fill the tape decks of early-’80s American cars.
The GP looks more of a Styx car to me. Lorelai Let’s Live Together sort of a theme. Break some rules as you go along, even if they are rules of physics like weird angles and geometries.
The Chardoba is much more of an Earth Wind and Fire car. Rich melodies, some high notes, not usually out of tune. But as the seventies wore on, their brand of music became outdated fast.
Earth, Wind, and Fire’s ‘Let’s Groove’ was a global smash in 1981-1982.
One of the group’s biggest hits.
People that said that Disco was dead after that terrorist attack in a Chicago baseball stadium promoted by some rock station didn’t realized that it evolved into great songs like this one!
Disco wasn’t dead. It ended up becoming much better dance music in the eighties.
Of course every time I hear this song, I can’t help but think of the “Night at the Museum” movie franchise. 😉
I equate the ’77 Grand Prix with light rock highway driving music.
Perhaps, Firefall’s Just Remember I Love You from 1977.
love that song.
My boss back in 1984 (when I was driving an AeroBird) had one of these in that medium blue color.
He struck me as an elevator music guy, and I’m not taking about the Aerosmith tune about love in an elevator.
So let’s go with that. 😂🤣
The most Disco car of all time is the 1973 to 1977 Monte Carlo, at least in my Queens NY neighborhood. Followed closely by the same vintage Cutlass Supreme and Grand Prix. None would be complete without a set of Vogue tires (drenched in Amour All), chrome rims and wire baskets with chariot caps. Vinyl interior also coated with Armour All to the point where passengers would slide off the seats. Benzi box optional but desired.My ride was the ’77 Monte as described in brown with beige landau top and interior. My favorite car I’ve ever owned.
I know where I’m from in NEW YORK the Grand Prix and Cutlass were king of the disco era with ttops and spoke wheels. They where every where.
I agree with XR7Matt. These PLCs were all discomobiles when new, but by the time we drove them in the 1980s, they were all rockers. My friend had a Grand Prix, I had a Monte Carlo. We both played in a heavy metal band. I do remember it being important to make sure the rock image was clearly projected so that we wouldn’t get hit by any lingering associations with these cars’ original disco vibes. So my car had the proper stickers on the rear bumper to proclaim allegiance to certain bands for anyone who’d care to notice, and my friend’s car would never be mistaken for disco because it was completely trashed and you could usually hear him blasting metal before the car even came into view. There were still plenty of disco guys driving PLCs in Brooklyn in the 1980s, but those guys always kept their cars waxed and polished. And they mostly drove newer, flashier SS Monte Carlos in Bensonhurst by then, not ’79s like mine. In the 1990s, on their second owners, the SS Montes became rock cars, too.
I owned a 73 Grand Prix model SJ with a 455 in the early 80’s. This car was fast and rode like a Caddy. Wrap around dash and tilted console shifter made me feel like a fighter pilot. I loved that car. I will always have a soft spot for the colonnade era Grand Prix’s.
Hi I had the same color Grand Prix is this car for sale please let me know thanks John
When it comes to our favorite car designs, a lot of it is based on how we originally saw it. I was 10 years old in 1965. The first Grand Prix I remember was the 64s. They were big, but they had very sporty looks. The stacked vertical headlights that seemed to be held up by the massive front bumper and the taillights that Pontiac was becoming known for that ran the full width and hidden behind grill work, along with it’s beautiful big bucket seats and stylish dash were my GP standards. But I also liked the daring look of the 69s. To me the 60s Pontiacs were GM’s best looking cars that I gave John Z DeLorean all the credit for. He was good, like Lee Iaccoca, he knew what we liked. He was the best asset of GM but they were too big and heavy to notice his talent.