The ride had been going for a little while and we had already exhausted small pleasantries. It was now time to catch up on what each were actually doing with our lives. On her case it was family matters:
- Well, my grandfather passed away recently, and…
She hesitated, as if I were to disapprove of what was coming next. She continued in a measured way, as if testing the waters.
- Turns out he left us this old early ’70s Chevy…
By this point I must have raised an eyebrow, in perfect Roger Moore manner; “An old Chevy you said, ma’am?”
It had been a while since I had last seen my YMCA swim instructor, and it came as a pleasant surprise to come across her that chilly morning at the SF Bart Station. I had always liked her easy going demeanor, as she embodied attributes I associated with a certain portion of the American psyche: she was unassuming, straightforward, accessible, friendly and professional. Always accommodating in our lessons, making an effort to be fair and understanding; yet methodical and aiming for results. Under her guidance my swimming had considerably improved from ‘will drown shortly’ to ‘fair and sufficient.’
Yet, in all the months of lessons, casual exchanges had been few. I was glad to finally chat with her at ease. And now, an old Chevy had popped into the conversation?
Why did I sense she was a bit reticent when the ol’ Chevy was brought up? Had too many acquaintances told her to get rid of the damn thing? To hand it away to the first high schooler with a couple hundred to spare?
Little did she know she had found a sympathetic soul.
- An ol’ Chevy? And what are you going to do with it? – I queried.
She then cautiously rolled the words:
- Well, I’m kinda working on it…
And then the dam broke. My eyes must have gone wide as I abruptly cut her off:
- It’s fun! Isn’t it?
- Yes! IT IS!!
Attagirl, that’s the spirit!
By the time the ’71 Chevrolet appeared, it certainly appealed to those qualities my instructor seemed to embody: straightforward, accessible, easy to deal with. It was professionally presentable, and unlike my instructor, a bit ostentatious. Though in the discrete stylish manner only a Chevy could do. A restrained Cadillac of sorts.
And by the early ’70s, if anyone knew how to deliver those qualities, it was GM. A LOT more of those qualities indeed, as their vehicles growing sprawl showed.
It’s obvious GM was in ‘cruising mode’ by the time the ’71 full sizers were conceived. Just like Genesis in the ’80s (more drum machines, more ballads!), or Kenny G in the early ’90s (let’s keep that mid-tempo going!), GM had found the secret sauce that the public craved. And GM was more than willing to keep providing the more of the more they had been selling thus far.
Like those mid ’80s Genesis records, the ’71-’76 GM full sizers elicit strong divided opinions. Much of that has already been covered at CC, and will certainly be fodder for time to come.
Back in my teenage days in Puerto Rico, these full sizers always appeared in beater condition around my high school’s streets, perpetual cockroaches. Their peculiar proportions seeming to come from a distant planet of mutants. And that’s what most of these models meant to a good number of Gen-Exers like me: cheap beaters that had stuck around for too long.
Yet, even if I’m no fan of US vehicles of this period (as I mentioned recently), deep down I haven’t met a car I wouldn’t rescue. Even if being a mutant.
Talking about those high school days, it didn’t help matters that the ‘luxury trimmings’ of GM full-sizers didn’t have the most lasting of qualities. “There’s a great future in plastics… Will you think about it?” said Mr. McGuire to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. And how right he was. There was a future indeed, but a tortuous one.
And in my youthful days of the ’80s, all those faded and cracked plastic trimmings made any surviving sample look… well, cheap. Instead of ritzy images of classy gatherings evoked by period advertising…
All I could think of was Uncle Buck’s ride (Yes, I know it was a Mercury).
It was a hot and muggy afternoon this past Holy Week in San Salvador when I came across this high-school-of-yore beater; coincidentally sitting in the corner of one of the city’s better known high schools. An almost eerie reminder of those old clunkers, down to the absent hubcaps and missing soft bits around the front bumper. It was now time to revisit those old high school days, in the metal.
The encounter occurred just in the midst of a heat wave, with the sun just fierce when taking these shots. The view on my screen was nil, and the street vendors soon started to glance at me with suspicion. Or was I hallucinating the whole thing due to heat exhaustion? Better to take the shots quickly, which I could barely see anyway.
With the neoclassical front being the car’s most predictable bit, I decided to focus on the back. I found it the most interesting part, as it seemed like a shape that shouldn’t work.
While not getting many kudos in the styling department, there’s a lot of careful sculpting on a 4 door ’73 full-size Chevy. The flat esplanade on the back veers awfully close to a formless blob, but Bill Mitchell’s team knew their trade well, and there’s a much attentive shaping applied. What appears at first glance as plain from a distance, under closer inspection evolves into a sophisticated work of subtle surfaces.
Granted, it’s not Toronado-interesting, but there’s more to it than appears at the outset.
Regardless of period criticisms, the ’71-’76 models sold heartedly in the States. Elsewhere, like in Central America, these models ended the run of American-built cars in the region. While comprising most of the local traffic in the ’40s and ’50s, US makes sold in ever dwindling numbers as their size kept steadily increasing; becoming ever more impractical for local conditions. This generation of full sizers killed whatever good will was left towards them. Survivors are rare birds indeed.
So, was the old man’s Chevy in good or poor condition? Unsurprisingly, it sounded like the latter, as my YMCA instructor lively elaborated, going on about the ‘fixes’ she was performing. Not that any of her talk was mechanically inclined. Instead, most revolved around the joys of preserving an old object. The hope to save a period of time; an object meshed with the memory of her grandfather, to be preserved in the metal.
I could almost sense she was looking forward to the future scrapes in her hands.
More on early ’70s Chevrolet full sizers:
Curbside Classic: 1973 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe – The Minnato Connection
Chevrolet sold far too many cars with exposed bumper bolts in the mid 70s. It announced half their customers (and all their dealers) were cheapskates.
Considering how awful emission controls were in ’73-4, it amazes me when someone keeps one alive for decades. Our ’73 Century died at least once after every cold start and always ran as if it had a stuffed-up nose. Perhaps they yank the EGR off so the engine runs tolerably. If only it had been legal back then.
Great find. Parked at an opposite side curb like this, and without wheel covers, it looks like a perfect period getaway car.
The only time the Caprice/Impala of this generation genuinely appealed to me, were as ‘black and whites’. TV shows, like The Rookies, Police Story, and The Blue Knight featuring these Chevs weekly. Their best look IMO.
Ontario public service video, circa 1975.
The oddest part of that video is “The Human Collision” song at 4:40. For every song, there’s a writer and a singer – those folks must have struggled hard with that one!
Lol Folk/pop music was huge at the time, and the producers of this video likely saw it as a great ‘vehicle’, for their safety message. Including a singer attempting to sound like Cat Stevens. lol
1975 was the year Keith Carradine wrote and sang ‘I’m Easy’, a song sung in a similar style. Which won him an Academy Award.
A very popular phenomena during the mid ’70s, was for Canadian singers to cover America hits. Many did well on the Canadian charts at the time. Canadian singer Ron Nigrini had a Canadian hit with Carradine’s song. This is the version, we heard here! Probably unknown, to those in the US.
They shoulda got Burton Cummings.
I always kind of liked the 73, especially after the 1974-76 years that all seemed to go downhill in their styling. There were sure a lot of them in my childhood – 1973 was a record-breaking sales year, and many 40 and 50-somethings in the midwestern US chose one of these.
For me it was these years: ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68. By the seventies, they were no longer the same. They should have stuck to being Chevy instead of trying to move up and be whatever.
Too big for me but being a pre smog your friend can easily make it run very well indeed and not guzzle too much fuel doing so .
Plenty of simple suspension upgrades too , all will make it safer and more enjoyable to drive .
You San Salvador find looks in good shape .
-Nate
Bring back the hardtops!
Maybe it’s because my memory is full of cars like this that were, as you said, “cheap beaters that had stuck around for too long” – I never developed much of an affection for this generation of Chevrolet. Another factor, is that I never warmed up to the rear styling. From the front they looked pretty decent (bloated, for sure, but decent), but the rear end just looked like an afterthought to me.
Definitely true that this car represents “cruising mode” for GM. The executives who approved this probably assumed that anything they’d toss out there would sell by the zillions.
Every time I see one of these cars, it makes me think of this one
Once in a while when I was very lucky I’d get to drive one of the very few ’73s that Yellow Taxi of San Diego had. Unlike the six cylinder ’70s and ’71s, it had…a great big stonking V8! (350 2-barrel). Conpared to the sixes, it was a hot rod.
My Grandfather bought a ’72 Biscayne new…light blue, no options other than AM radio…it had the 350. After he passed away in ’86 I got to drive it once…my parents and I had flown in and didn’t rent a car, so we used his car. We never lived closer than maybe 200 miles from them as my Dad moved around a lot for his job. Probably the summer of ’88, we were looking for my Grandmother’s brother…she was in the back seat along with my Mother, my Dad was next to me in the passenger seat. Beautiful day for a ride…my Grandmother never learned to drive; she was to pass away the next June. Never did find her brother he wasn’t home, but we had a nice meal at the Effort diner.
Also got to drive my Aunt’s ’69 Olds 98 which my Grandfather had kept after her stroke. I liked the 98 more than Grandpa’s Biscayne, luxury appointments nonwithstanding.
My Dad didn’t like the GM full sized wagons that came with the clamshell tailgate, so he was a confirmed Ford owner till GM downsized and he bought a ’78 Caprice Classic wagon. He had a ’69 country squire then a ’73 ranch wagon.
What are fuel costs like in your country, Rich? I’m thinking these might be cheap to buy if you could afford to fuel them. I;d imagine these all came equipped with air conditioning – you guys would need it.
Not a bad car to look at, except for the craggy front end which doesn’t really go with the more organic, integrated look from the windshield back. Cool that its survived.
Good point about the 4-door hardtop. I tend to think of the ’73 front on station wagons first and foremost, it flows a bit better on those.
Gas prices over here are California-like, somewhat manageable in general.
I was told by a local collector that this Caprice sat unsold for the longest time. He was surprised when I showed him the shots, finally out in the open. 4 doors get very little love in general.
There is always a way to transform these big barges into something cool ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wamr_k1ZKyM&ab_channel=POWERNATION
The ’73 is my least favorite year, style-wise for the ’71-76 run of big Chevies, yet I’m finding myself liking this one. I’ve always liked the 4-door hardtops, and that dark green is nice. I wonder if that’s a stock color. Chevy had two colors “Dark Green Poly” and “Midnight Green” that year, and looking at the paint charts online (which aren’t always accurate), it looks to me like it could be either.
It actually doesn’t look that bad in the pictures, but I wonder how many sins are hiding in the shadows, of that dark paint. My grandparents had a ’72 Impala 4-door hardtop that was Sequoia green with a white vinyl top. I can remember, by the time it was about 6 years old, Granddad bondo’ing the lower rear part of the front fenders was becoming a spring ritual. I can also remember, around the tender young age of 8 (which would be around 1978) asking Granddad if he’d hang onto that car until I turned 16. He just laughed and said it would be long-gone and rusted away by then!
As it was, they sold it to some friends of the family around 1982, for $600. It had around 100,000 miles on it. I remember the vinyl top was pretty shredded, but don’t remember how bad the rust had gotten. Anyway, they put a new top on it, and sold it about a year later for $700. Who knows, it might still be out there?