In the fall of 1976, General Motors introduced the replacements for their bread-and-butter big sedans — Cadillac, Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac — all downsized for better fuel economy. The era of cheap oil was over and the American motorist was going to have to adapt. When I saw the New Chevrolet billboards starting to appear all over Ohio, I was hooked. Here’s one found online, and it is a gem of a picture. GM claimed its downsized big Chevy was “more like it” for the time, and my 1977 Chevrolet Impala coupe proved them right.
I had stopped working for small typesetting companies and had a great job in an in-plant print shop at a Fortune 500 company. I was always in favor of smaller cars, and experienced driving company cars while I worked here, and they were usually Ford LTD sedans and they may have been quieter than a Rolls-Royce but they were softly sprung, handled poorly, and were unwieldy in traffic.
I was working side jobs to raise money for a down payment on a house. I had signed in February of 1977 to build a Ryan home, cheapest model, in the cheapest area of Columbus metro, and I wanted an FHA loan — but FHA wasn’t moving on my application.
Maybe if this loan isn’t approved, I thought, I can buy a BMW 320i, with a manual transmission. I actually test drove one (same location as the Mazda dealer mentioned a few entries ago). But there went my dreams of a new house. Went to the Ryan Homes area office and said I would like my deposit back, but then something happened and my loan was approved and I moved in, in the fall of 1977.
1977 was the year Elvis passed away, I was working my second job at a Columbus company that did Gold Circle typesetting and color separations and pre-press services. I figured I could afford a new car and a new house — what was I thinking? But I was single with no dependents. The income to debt ratios must have been OK because my loan was approved. And it was a time of high inflation, I was getting COLA raises and merit raises.
Bobby Layman was the new Chevrolet dealer in town, had just bought a Chevrolet dealership on North High Street in Columbus, which looked something like this.
Mary Hartman was a popular TV show at the time, and the 1970s might have been the height of absurd car dealership ads: In one, Bobby Layman hears a voice saying “Bobby Layman, Bobby Layman” and is about to bust the windshield of a Corvette with a giant mallet. A woman stops him, he speaks a slightly sexist remark, and then he talks about the big sale — typical car dealer brashness. (My favorite ads were from Brondes Ford in Toledo; a quick YouTube search confirms my memory.)
My salesman was Bobby Layman, Jr. It was an Impala coupe and had all the bells and whistles common at the time: tilt wheel, A/C, whitewall tires, vinyl bench seats, but still had crank windows and probably the 305 small block V8. Took the car on a road trip to visit family in New Hampshire and it was a great turnpike cruiser. The gas mileage would have been in the 15-20 MPG range which was a big improvement over the Oldsmobile 88 my dad had at the time, which got 10-15 MPG.
I suspect I had an AM/FM radio and I was too busy to worry about putting a tape deck in it, or I can’t remember.
In the fall of 1977, the house was finally finished. I moved in and the Impala proved its worth, as January of 1978 is remembered as the year of the blizzard. The Impala was a great drive in the snow car. We had a lot of snow that winter, and the Impala didn’t get stuck except for one long weekend when it got stuck in the garage because Columbus didn’t place a high priority on getting side streets plowed.
All was well in 1978. I left the Fortune 500 company job and started working at a family typesetting company, which also happened to be a union shop. The leisurely deadlines at the in-plant print shop turned into daily deadlines. I worked second shift and had overtime, which was limited to three hours a day because, per union contract, we were to be paid double time after 3 hours. The summer time days were great: I could go on a bike ride in the morning and take in an afternoon matinee after a good lunch at the MCL cafeteria. I worked on what was then state of the art typesetting equipment and did varied typesetting — brochures, magazines, flyers, newsletters.
And then I was set up on a blind date that summer, organized by my sister-in-law, who taught grade school in Akron and had a colleague who was single. I met her at the dinner and dessert and then she needed to be driven home. By Labor Day, I was planning to move to Akron, as were my parents. We both made money when we sold our respective houses because of the high inflation of those years. We rented a house together which had a barn for my dad and his “stuff.”
The “blind date” girlfriend was in a wedding and I was her date at a rehearsal dinner. I was driving home on a Friday night, after dark, on new, unfamiliar roads when I hit a guardrail.
That’s really not more like it.
The 1977 GM downsized models probably were the high point of General Motors dominance of the US car market and their last truly successful model introduction. They have been extensively covered on this website, and I remember this car very fondly. I wished it had the F41 sports suspension, but even without, it was fun to drive.
Not sure why I traded it in, but my next car was a clean slate model from the Number 2 auto manufacturer in the USA.
Related CC Reading
Vintage Reviews: 1977 Chevrolet Caprice – A Whole New Ball Game
1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Landau Coupe – Bent Glass Beauty
CC Design Shoot-Out: 1977 Chevrolet B-Body vs. 1979 Ford LTD – The Boxing Match
Vintage Feature: 1977 Chevrolet Caprice – Motor Trend Car Of The Year
I do hope you didn’t dent the rehearsal dinner-girl on the guardrail on that trip home.
It’s also good to see your moustache wasn’t wider than your pants, as this was not unusual in those hairy days.
As for the conveyance, the 2-door bent window job was quite the looker (perhaps unlike the pants, or mo). I’ve always wished GM had just stretched a tad further, and made the nose less bland. The cars ended, going from back to front, not with a bang, but a whimper.
A great sketch of time and circumstances. More please.
Thanks for the great period piece. So very 70s. The time you are covering here is right as I was headed to college and anticipating what adult life would be. Economically, it certainly wasn’t a happy time. Not that kids today, 50 years later, have it any better. Unfortunately.
Also thanks for explaining your username. Typesetting. I sense some very interesting chapters ahead as you bring this up to the present. I’m really looking forward to that.
The car…I would never have given these a second look in 1977 as they just seemed like the grown-up cars that regular people everywhere drove. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I do find these bent window coupes rather attractive nowadays and wish that I could see more still around.
Nice car and I appreciate the back story .
-Nate
Typesetting… ah, now I get it; here I thought you were just some guy who was prone to typographical errors…
The “The New Chevrolet” ad campaign confused me. Imagine if suddenly everywhere today there were magazines and billboards blaring, and TV jingles singing about The New Toyota. Which Toyota? Aren’t all the cars in a new-car showroom new? And usually each year at least one model is redesigned and new new?
I miss when builders like Ryan still made reasonably-sized and -styled houses, not huge monstrosities with three or four architectural styles mashed together, gables inside other gables, fake colonial-style windows, etc. They stopped building houses like yours just after the Chevy was new, about 1981.
Well, the full size Chevrolet had been called “The Chevrolet” since pretty much forever.
I was really smitten by the new ’77 Chevrolet, the first time I felt that way about a big American car in a long time. A friend of a coworker ordered a Caprice sedan with all the bells and whistles, including the 350, F-41 and every HD option available. It was the bomb. I could have been very happy with that. It really broke the mold that American cars had been stuck in since 1957-1958. It was the tri-five Chevy reincarnated.
House across the street from the one my brother/sister in law moved into in “81”, looked just like yours. Lot, elevation about the same too.
Had two garage doors though.
Last I saw it, (((many/many years back)) it was grey/blue trim.
Yard really needed attention.
These cars, along with the A bodies of a year later, were out of the park home runs for GM. Front engine, small block and rear drive were what GM did the best.
I vividly recall the introduction of “The New Chevrolet.” It was everywhere, on TV, on billboards, the lot. The ads certainly resonated because GM sold about a bazillion of them.
The two door was pretty rare. I don’t have the exact numbers on hand but they were not common in my neck of the woods, Vancouver Island.
A BC box house. I can picture it exactly. Two overhangs and that entrance. And a boxy car to go with it.
And inflation, I remember that none too fondly. Looking forward to next installment.
That poor Sedan de Ville looks like it’s had a hard life, and it’s only ten years old! Those Chevy coupes were very sharp with the bent glass window. I drove the sedans and they were good performers especially with the upgraded suspension. I had a ’77 Coupe de Ville and it was also a vastly improved version of the earlier mid 70’s models. Unfortunately, GM didn’t quite know where to go from here. They kept the RWD big Chevies in production for a long time. They were good cars, but became outmoded as time passed. Interestingly there was never a FWD big Chevy like the other divisions had. A RWD platform can be improved for space efficiency but the FWD platform has an inherent advantage. GM’s big cars like the Buick Electra were smaller but had more passenger space inside. These Impala and Caprice coupes and sedans are popular with the Donk crowd, and I’ve even seen a few modified for performance, featured in Hot Rod magazines. They were certainly a home run for Chevy.