Not mine, and no vinyl roof, but pretty close. Except for that front end…
In the summer of 1984 I had made it through my first year of college unscathed. I had saved $1000 and was scanning the Bargain News ads every week for something less boat-like than the Kingswood Estate. Those restyled 1975 and newer Novas looked nice. Used, downsized GM A-bodies were out of m price range, but maybe a GM Colonnade coupe like my older brother’s Grand Prix would fit the bill. However, age 18 the reality was that a coupe was a non-starter for insurance, even with my parents’ insurance agent magically making me a part-time driver on my full-time car.
My father was not enamored with his youngest son being surrounded by less than two tons of sheet metal on the road. An acquaintance of his was selling a red 1977 Caprice Classic for $1800. If the car checked out he was willing to chip in the extra $800 for me to be in something he considered to be safe. One of my older sisters has bought a 1978 Caprice Classic as her first brand-new car, and he was fairly impressed with it. It was definitely smaller than the Kingswood and nothing else was coming up in my price range, so I agreed to take a look.
Now, despite my father’s best efforts I was not mechanically inclined. I could rotate the tires and change the oil, but really, I knew nothing about engines. Car styling and model-year changeovers were my wheelhouse, however. I knew grille texture and taillight changes, particularly for GM products, backwards and forwards. I’d eagerly pore over the Fall issues of Motor Trend and Car & Driver and commit to memory that, for example, the 1981 Riviera grille now had an egg crate texture instead of vertical bars. Cutlasses were a special challenge. Calais? Supreme? Salon? I rather prided myself on my entirely useless ability to tell them all apart.
It was in better condition than this, but mine did have those semi-segmented taillights.
We went to my father’s friend’s house to check out the Caprice. It had obviously been sitting for a while, but it started right up. It had the 350 engine, not the weak-kneed 305 or (heaven forbid) the 250 six. The red, vinyl front seat was a bit torn up and the vinyl top had seen better days, but it otherwise seemed cosmetically seemed fine. Except…
I pulled my father aside. “Dad, he says it’s never been in an accident, but ahead of the fenders it’s got the grille and front end cap of a 1979 Caprice. The taillights are 1977, but that grille is wrong!”
My father trusted his friend, however. We never got into exactly why he didn’t believe me. My only guess is that he didn’t think that his book-smart kid would know this kind of thing. His certainty made me doubt myself, enough so that I agreed to buy the car.
1977 (top) and 1979 (bottom). It’s not just the grille texture. The headlights are segmented on the 1979 and the cap above the grille is blunt instead of the waterfall effect of the 1977.
I was still stewing about that front end, though. A few days later I went to the town library and came back with photocopied pictures of the 1979 and 1977 Caprice front ends to prove my point. My father shrugged it off. The photocopies weren’t as clear as I wished they were, and even so, what were we going to do about it?
The wondrous pages of the JC Whitney catalog provided a new front seat cover and a new vinyl top. The top was a darker than the original (more of a maroon than a red) but it was better than sunbaked pink. Missing wheel covers were replaced with chrome wire hubcaps from Caldor or Bradlees. They suited the car better than the cheaper plastic ones they sold. I’d have to get a new set every year or so, as they would either rust or I’d lose a few going too fast over bumps when late for class. I should have bought a set of factory hubcaps from the “hubcap guy” the next town over.
The Caprice was a bit light in the rear and I took to keeping a 100-pound bag of sand in the trunk during the winter for better traction. On one occasion I hit an icy patch and the car did a spontaneous 180 degree turn. I found myself going backwards on the wrong side of the road as I screamed my head off. Thankfully, there was no oncoming traffic.
Only now do I appreciate a nice, colorful interior.
Other than that my experience with the Caprice for the next four years was unremarkable. It just worked and never gave me any trouble, true to the legend of the B-body. It got me to school, my part-time IT internship at General Electric, graduation, and my first year of work coding COBOL.
After a year in the professional world I had the money (well, the credit) to buy my first brand-new car. It was going to be a GM product, to be sure, but I was going to learn the hard way that GM was not what it used to be.
Your dad most likely thought he was doing both of you a favor. Kid gets more car, friend gets the cash dad knows he needs. I’ve never seen strategy like this this go south whatsoever…
Pretty decent cars, I now think. And the successor was okay too. If you squint you can see a likeness between the Caprice and the Rolls Royce Silver Spur (1980). The Caprice has good proportions. You see them around here now and again and they don´t seem too garish at all, no worse than a Jaguar XJ from the same period.
IMHO, the Impala/Caprice of this era was one of the few decent GM cars, period. My mom bought a ’77 Impala, cloth interior, A/C and power windows, 350 engine, and that was about it. No vinyl top, thankfully. The dealer had like 50 of them, almost all identical, in the back of the lot. She had it 5 years and it had two issues, the alternator went out, and the replacement rebuilt one did again soon after I installed it, a second one was OK, and the trans needed rebuilding at 101K, and I had them add a shift kit. All in all, I liked the car a lot, even though I hated the light blue interior and exterior. We thought about driving it back when we returned to Ohio, but with two big dogs, we needed more space, so it was traded on an ’82 K5 Blazer. The 4WD came in very handy when the blizzard caught us in S. Dakota.
I always though these 77-79 B body Chevys were beautifully designed cars for the times. The styling held up through the ages.
Growing up in Brooklyn NY, my neighbor hood was filled with B and C body cars, and the Pontiac versions were not as popular as the others.
Due to the straight lines of these cars, they all looked good in “deluxe two tone paint”, where the body was painted a contrasting color from the top of the car, with multi color pin stripes separating the two colors. This varied from the standard two tone paint, where just the roof was painted a different color separated by a molding.
The deluxe two tone proved to be very popular, especially in Brooklyn. I’d say more then 1/2 of these cars featured this look. It’s interesting to note that the Pontiac design featured the two different colors wrapping up and over the roof, which kind of look awkward from certain angles, but distinguished.
There was a dealer special version of the Chevy B’s called “Blue Cloud Editions”. The lower body was painted a nice shade of medium blue, while the top section was painted a silvery color. Interior was light blue. I’m not 100% sure if they were painted at the factory or the dealer did them. They also had this unique Blue Cloud Editions emblems on the front fenders. I have a feeling that these cars were only sold in Brooklyn or maybe the tri state area.
I can never find any info on the web about these cars. I do have the dealer fold out brochure somewhere in my collection.
Does anyone else remember these cars ? I’m very curious to know if they were offered in other states as well.
I live in NJ and had a 78 Caprice in what I think is the color combination you describe. But it didn’t have any “blue cloud edition” emblems. I wrote a COAL about it here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1978-chevrolet-caprice-classic-coming-of-age-car/
Hey I just read your post on your 78 Chevy. I noticed one of the comments was also about the Blue Cloud Editions.
I will continue to try to find any info on these as it i would like to know more about it. I know I must have the dealer foldout somewhere. I also remember the ads for them in the news papers.
My dad had a 79 Impala. Dark blue the bottom, lite blue the top. Steel top. Blue cloth interior. Weak 305. Power lock’s, tilted steering, cruise, light group, digital clock, not in radio. AM- FM stereo. Remote mirror both sides. A/C, Bumper group. Nice car. He traded a 74 Impala, Caprice sound package, clock, A/ C. . Remote mirror both sides. First year I think. All the outside crome. Bumper group. 350 V-8.. nice car. Buckle up, or no Start.
I think the Pontiacs in general did not sell as well as the Olds or Buick variants. As in Brooklyn, 50 miles away in Suffolk County, Long Island, the story was the same–these 77-79 cars were very popular.
Personally, I prefer the 77-78 Caprice front end to 79. Our neighbor had a 79 coupe, maroon, V8 (I don’t know which), very nice car.
I didn’t care for the 1980 restyle. The only positive I saw was that, per Consumer Reports, the 1980 (1981?) Caprice 305 with the new FOUR speed automatic managed 30mpg highway–that impressed me.
The ’77 & ’78 two door coupes with the wrap around rear window were the best; especially with the handling suspension and V8.
GM struck a nerve with the ’77 down sizing as well as the “A” body down sizing of ’78.
After that, GM lost its way because it didn’t understand the compact and sub compact markets making some major blunders which led to continued US market erosion. Roger Smith only compounded the demise.
The ’79 downsizing of the E body personal luxury coupes continued GM’s winning streak, and those cars continued to sell well right to the end in 1985, before the mini-me redesigns of ’86 brought their previously brisk sales to an abrupt halt.
I had an ’81 Bel Air. I only kept it for 2.5 years or so, and got rid of it due to reliability issues under the hood. A very comfortable car, and great on long distance trips. Roomy too.
I’ve never even test driven one of these “down sized”, sheer Impalas, but from their intro I thought GM had created a very well proportioned, fresh design. Compared to many of the BIZARRO looking, gaping MOUTH things with oversized wheels and tires beneath them now being sold………well these Chevys are simply beautiful!!! 🙂 DFO
I don’t know if this counts as the CC Effect or not since it was last Friday (the 13th), but cutting through a neighborhood I had not gone through in years, I spotted a ‘77 or ‘78 Impala or Caprice Coupe with the backlight-glass-bent-over-a-wire look that I really liked about these cars back in the day.
Echoing what some others above have said about the deluxe-two-tone paint on these… yeah, for my fantasy garage, make mine black-over-silver with red pin-striping and a red interior. These were just gorgeous!
Is the car in the photo the long missing styling studio “hard top”??
Either that, or someone did a nice job of photoshopping it.
Nice!
Such an iconic car and style. From sometime in the 1940’s or so (I wasn’t there but I am just looking back and taking a guess), there was always a Chevy or two in the model lineup that was timeless in style and function. From the ’50s on, it might have been a Bel Air, an Impala, a Chevelle, a Caprice, or a Malibu. They were sturdy, dependable, and would never embarrass the owner or the driver. The style and features generally aged well, parts were easily available, and repairs were straightforward. Other GM divisions, in their own way and with their own quirks, often did the same, but the Chevy was the champion of consistency at it. This Caprice is a full-fledged member at the tail end of that run of Chevies. Somewhere in the FWD changeover, the thread was lost, never really to be regained, though the occasional big Chevy RWD sedan would show up for a few years, now and again, to remind us of how things used to be. The loss of that string of winning cars came together with the fall of GM as a perceived world leader in the field, through indifferent quality and a sense of their not really being responsive or really caring about providing the many little things that buyers wanted in their new cars. Put another way, the GM cars didn’t provide the little pleasant and happy vibes that a good feature or a particularly nice styling or assembly job would give a showroom visitor, a test driver, or a new owner. This Caprice was one of the last of those that still did that, at least in small ways.
That “not mine” lead pic might be even closer than close; the car appears to be painted Carmine Poly (PPG № 3096), which was available in ’78 and ’79—my folks’ ’78 was Carmine Poly—but the ’77 metallic red was a noticeably lighter one called Firethorn Poly (PPG № 2811).
So the car in the pic might well be a ’78 repaired with ’77 upper and lower grilles, or a ’78-’79 repaired with ’77-’78 header panel and ’77 grilles.
I still smile when I see one of these ’77-’79 Caprice 4-doors. It’s a really, really good design.
You would thing that on something as common as a Chevy B-body at the time they would have been able to find the correct parts. Something less common it isn’t that strange to find a little mixing and matching based on what is available.
“At the time”…? At what time, d’you reckon? That pic looks to have been taken at a parking lot car meet/show, maybe a cars-and-coffee type of thing, and the quality of the image suggests it’s from recently (and then a bit of quick googlery turns up the original, which confirms it was taken in 2016).
Also note the mismatched paint on the Caprice; there’s a different paint colour from the RF door forward. And the condition sill trim. And the wheel covers missing their centre emblems. This is a nice old Caprice, but it was about four decades old when the pic was taken, and it’s seen some years, miles, and knocks. In that context, a bit of pick-a-mix doesn’t surprise me a bit in parts that are fit/function interchangeable like this.
Or did you mean the OP’s ’77 with the ’79 front end parts? Eh, still not onside with such a repair being unusual. The purchase took place in the middle of 1984 when the car was 7 years old. The average age of a car on U.S. roads was 7.2 year in 1983. Seems perfectly logical to me that an owner of such a car would save a few bucks by accepting a perfectly good repair with used parts that fit and work just fine even if they slightly differed to the originals in appearance.
My first car was 1983 Caprice Classic sedan, I got it in February 1990 for $2700 with mileage about 74k miles. I didn’t know much about car then, my friend did tested drive the car and bought it.. i used the car to practice driving — After I got my license, I didn’t get many chances to drive, my parents were immigrant and didn’t know how to drive and we didn’t own automobile. Anyway, this is car putting me into mobility . I drove it to Montreal to finish my last year of engineering school. Then it had transmission trouble, its overdrive failed after my friend borrowed my car for few weeks. I was graduating and ready to go down to US. I got the transmission rebuilt in Nelson Garage of Montreal for $750 Canadian Dollars and drove back my mother place in outside Philly. I used it for looking for job and went to work with this car. It was declared total after I was hit by a dump truck from passenger side, damaging both doors. I got the check for $2000 from insurance company and went to junkyard to get two silver color doors from 1980 Caprice, — mine was two-tone burgundy color. the mechanic next to the Junkyard installed the doors for me for $75. I drove it few months and moved to NYC with car for a real engineering job. Although it was not very reliable, but it served me well in the beginning of my career, and I always like its very formal looks like the 1980 Toyota Crown, maybe Toyota copied the GM looks. I sold it to a guy in Queens for $1250 in 1992. After i got a 1986 Accord LX sedan. The mileage was 98k mile, total 24k miles of operation mile in two years with net profit about $500.
This was a car you had to get early in the run to get a decent engine. One of these with the common 305 was ok, but with the 350 it was really nice.
It sounds like you never solved the mystery of the front clip? Could it have been as simple as fixing a broken plastic grille with another that was close enough?
My dad owned one with the six for a short time. It made his old Rabbit Diesel seem fast.
Still a design of great elegance, not to mention skill. It was not meant to look narrower or higher than the predecessor lest the horses be scared, and doesn’t, but is. Perhaps a current Mercedes designer could have a look at the car-long curving arc on the side just above the door handles – an important curve on a sharp-folded car – and learn how to include such subtlety to effect such that Merc wasn’t making banana-esque designs that greatly resemble a shoe. After all, the great GM itself had the humility to get a bunch of this design from Pininfarina.
That said, I have always felt that corporate forces must have put in their oar at the front, the very clip which features in this COAL, and the result is the rather heavy, frowny visage in chrome that never seemed as good as the rest is. On the development clays, the front had no heavy panel above the grille but more of a thin perimeter vaguely like a tiny (unchromed) loop bumper ala Fiat 130, and the bumper itself was within that (no clunky side turn as produced). Perhaps most of all, the whole sloped forward slightly. In that form, the elegance is completed appropriately: as made, in ’77 or ’79 for that matter, it’s all a bit chromed and weighty as if from the earlier gigantic style. Perhaps the great American middle might not have bought a subtler (and much more coherent) look, and as this thing sold enormously, I can’t say the decision was wrong. But aesthetically, it was, shall we say, not brave, and for me that failure of nerve mars this great design to this day.
Ah, a fellow geeker-out about B-body design details!
I actually like the Caprice version of the ’77-’79 face (the Bel Air/Impala version looks deliberately cheap and ugly, to me), though I see what you mean about heaviness. I think most of it’s down to the massive, chromed front bumper which creates sort of an underbite effect, and the giant vertical guards accentuate it. Perhaps it would have been better had they gone with this in-house technology for low-mass body-coloured bumpers instead.
But I still prefer this ’77-’79 face with its straight-across bumper over that goofy drop-centre bumper they adopted for ’80.
I wonder if it was a conscious decision or just happenstance that GM abandoned annual styling changes. The new-look-every-year era seems to have peaked in the late 1950s – that was before my time, but the impression I get is that it was de rigueur to have a markedly different look every year if you wanted to sell any cars back then. Even little AMC and Studebaker managed to dole out facelifts each new year. The annual restylings weren’t as dramatic by the 1970s as money had to be diverted into meeting safety and pollution standards, as well as each brand now having numerous distinct models. Still, you could count on a new grille texture, a new taillight shape, and various trim changes to mark each new year. The annual changes seemed especially important on the larger, more upscale cars; it was important for people to be able to tell not only that you were driving a Cadillac, but also that it was a new Cadillac.
And then, around 1982 or thereabouts, the annual styling changes stopped. Cadillac, which wouldn’t be caught dead in the ’50s or ’60s having the same look two years in a row, sold the same Fleetwood Brougham for over a decade without so much as a new grille insert to denote the new model year. In fact, when they did change it, they went back to an old grille at least once – would anyone even notice? Ford and especially Chrysler were less gung-ho about yearly styling mods, going to every two or three years typically by the seventies. But it was the imports (from all countries outside the U.S.) that seems to have sealed the fate. People were buying Toyota Camrys despite them looking just like the ones they made one or two years ago. Did buyers even know, much less care, how long it had been in production in its current form? If Mercedes sales kept rising despite this year’s 300SD looking like the one from three years ago, why should Cadillac spend money constantly redesigning their cars? If Toyota buyers didn’t care about yearly freshenings, why should Chevy buyers?
My neighbors down the street had these cars and when we were teens in high school we used to go for drives all over the country side in both a 1978 Impala very similar to the red one in the first picture and then later a 1983 two tone blue Caprice Classic. Both were great cars from what I remember and both were equipped with a 305. The 1978 car made 140 HP and the 1983 was rated for 150. The newer car felt a tad quicker due to the 4BBL and 4 speed auto with 2.73 rear gears. The 1978 car had a 350 trans and 2.41 gears. His father said the 1983 got better highway mileage and would crow on about seeing high 20’s on their annual trip to Florida. Both cars remained in their fleet well into the 90’s and had a gazillion miles on them. The 1978 did need it’s cam and valve seals replaced at around 100K but was otherwise relatively trouble free otherwise. His dad really like the 1983 and always referred to it as the best car he ever owned up to that point. Ironically both cars were eventually replaced with a later 1990’s Mercury Panther in light blue but that car suffered a transmission failure along with needing an intake manifold replaced and something with the EGR system and plug wires being defective from the factory causing all sorts of weird running behavior issues in the humid weather.
Only car my Father bought out of the showroom…a ’78 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Wagon, it had the same red vinyl (but nice vinyl) interior with the circular gauges one of which was a fuel economy gauge. It had the 302, but was otherwise loaded, except it was a 6 not 8 passenger. It was kind of a tradition in our wagons, we prized the storage space underneath the wagon area for camping, also it allowed my sisters (still young at the time) to sleep. It had the AM/FM (no cassette nor CB), power windows and locks, (first car in family with power windows, prior wagon had power locks and AM/FM stereo the trailer towing package, an air conditioning (only 2nd car in family to have it). Had the requisite woodgrain on outside, and finally they adopted the Ford-like 3 way tailgate (in fact my Dad considered a Ford Wagon, but they were new in 1979 (he bought the 78 in October, guess it was a left-over) and he didn’t like them as well, though I’ve forgotten why.
Didn’t know about the grill change, but looking at the pictures the later grill seems familiar to me, so I think that’s close to what he had on his His didn’t last too long, it moved with us to Texas in 1982 but met it’s demise on a trip with relatives to Fredericksburg (we seldom had relatives visiting, as we’d moved 1700 miles from most of them, my Parents never living near them after they married). It was hit in Johnson City, and my Father didn’t get it fixed up, instead trading it in for a 1984 Pontiac Sunbird, which was easily the worst car he ever owned, with 2 new engines in about 80k miles. Interestingly the relatives visiting also had a B, a ’77 Impala, lower trim.
Darn great story, fuzzyman! Thanks for sharing this. The B and C bodies were marvellous tried and true vehicles. So many things affected the following generations of GM cars, from the cost cutting, as well as the need to focus on emissions and fuel consumption that forced the company to do everything from the ground up. And the tendancy of companies in the 1980s feeling the need to diversify into unrelated areas by buying up other companies and creating a Frankenstein’s monster of businesses and associated cultures under one corporation. I think fondly of these cars, and remember all the people I knew who had one. I did get to drive the ’83 LeSabre that my parents inherited, and it was solid and smooth, though had wind down windows! On a full-sized Buick? All the other big GM cars I experienced growing up save Chevrolets had power windows. These would have been a good investment several years ago, but prices have risen possibly due to lowrider or donk trends, and simply more than I would want to spend on a car like this. I think I missed the (B-Body) boat.