After successfully downsizing their full-sizers in 1977, it was time for GM’s intermediates to face the shrinking process for 1978. In September of ’77, R&T reviewed those efforts in the form of the new Pontiac Grand LeMans.
The decade had started with a bit of schizophrenia from GM. The launch of their much-tauted Vega compact was to answer shifting trends, while the remaining lineups got larger than ever. A recession and energy crisis later, all of Detroit was transitioning towards efficiency. This meant crucial changes in the traditional way of doing business for the Big Three.
The success of the downsized ’77 full sizers was a promising new chapter for GM. The cars were nicely styled, and had efficient interiors and packaging, all while delivering the goods the public craved. The new intermediates aimed to achieve similar results.
Out of the gate, the new A-Body intermediates successfully met their intended goals. Despite reduced dimensions, the new models had similar interior space as their antecessors, weighed a good 500-900 pounds less, and offered better fuel efficiency. The greenhouses were glassy and upright, with increased height for better passenger comfort. Their styling across the board was rational but still showed some brand distinction, with echoes of the ‘sheer look’ popularized by the trendsetting Seville.
That said, GM’s future troubles showed through when reading between the lines. R&T tested Ford’s new Fairmont in the same issue, and a significant difference was found between the two automakers’ approach: Ford’s new models successfully interpreted the attributes customers desired from imports, meanwhile, GM’s products felt like shrunken versions of their former selves. In other words, there was nothing extraordinary about the A-Bodies’ underpinnings.
Under the reduced dimensions, engines, gearboxes, and suspensions were conventional GM fare. Interior ergonomics and materials were familiar as well, although somewhat better laid out. At this point, there’s no way of avoiding the A-Bodies fixed in-place rear door windows. R&T is polite and calls the decision ‘bold,’ although it struggles with the logic behind it. GM’s defense was that it was a smart way to save weight and add rear shoulder room. Considering the corporation’s later trajectory, it just seems like an engineering brainstorming idea that sounded too good to GM’s bean counters.
In the article, Chuck Jordan seemed rather satisfied with the LeMans’ distinctive styling and there’s also talk about how each of GM’s divisions was trying to keep some mechanical identity. Then again, the Sloan ladder had collapsed by then, and telling one division’s products from the other was getting mighty difficult. Was the new LeMans a decent intermediate? Yes. But was it a decent Pontiac? That’s never really questioned, but hindsight tells us the division was facing serious identity issues.
All said, while we can see signs of future trouble, GM’s new intermediates found much favor with the public. Troubled times were coming, but GM was king of the hill for the time being.
Further reading:
IMO, the ’78 A-bodies were the last truly great passenger car introduction from GM. There were issues, yes, mostly non-opening rear door glass and somewhat fragile overdrive automatics. But after these, GM never really made a great passenger car.
While they can’t be called great cars, the 1982 A-Bodies were a commendable effort. Especially, given they were derived from the X-cars, and yet so distinct and improved. While their quality control was hit and miss, they were solid/strong competitors in their market, at their introduction. Including the K-Cars, the E-Class/600, Granada/LTD, second gen Accord and first gen Camry.
They certainly had a much more challenging market to tackle. And economy, design, and engineering targets to meet. A more competitive segment, with stronger, faster moving competition, and a greater need to incorporate leading technology, than these ’78 A-bodies faced. Why I’d give the ’82 versions, more credit.
Easier to build a perceived great car, when there are less market and regulation barriers.
Cannot agree there Evan– We had a brand new 79 LeMans and later 86 STE, 89 SSE and 91 Regency Elite. ALL of those later cars were FAR AND AWAY superior to that LeMans. I guess you might consider it great if you had absolutely zero experience with later cars.
It was fortune GM logically downsized the full-size and intermediates first. They were able to stretch their dominance to the start of the ’80s, at least. Shrunken versions of what they were best at making for decades. The big car qualities of the GM A-bodies and the Volare/Aspen, provided them traditional buyer sales, where the Fairmont felt like a less substantial car.
I agree but it created a precedent that I don’t believe worked in their favor as the 80s unfolded. The B/C body had similar exterior dimensions to the 77 A body Collonades, then these A/G bodies ended up with similar dimensions to the 78 RWD X body, and then the FWD X body wound up with similar dimensions to the 1980 RWD H body. They created these overlapping redundancies year after year.
They should have stopped with the J body replacing the RWD H bodies but instead they chose to repeat the cycle, which birthed the FWD A bodies, N bodies, E bodies and H/K bodies that all started to blend into each other within GMs ever broader and confusing lineups, even sharing showroom space with RWD G bodies and B/C bodies that got stays of execution.
The real tough decision that should have been made right from the getgo was rather than downsize every single model line they should have cut models loose and focus on better packaging and efficiency for existing ones that sell. Full size was on the decline and intermediates were their best sellers, given the close exterior dimensions would what we know as a 1977 Caprice had instead been a new Malibu, replacing the Collonades and with full size officially retired, have been a bad move? It opens up the lineup, adds packaging efficiency to the existing intermediate footprint and sets a precident for other models to follow without squeezing them into being instantly outdated
given the close exterior dimensions would what we know as a 1977 Caprice had instead been a new Malibu, replacing the Collonades and with full size officially retired, have been a bad move?
Yes, a very bad move. The B/C Bodies were legitimate full-size cars, based on their interior dimensions and even length. The ’77 Chevy was as long (212″) as the classic ’65 Chevy. The ’77 was just getting back to where full size cars had been in the golden ’60s before bloat and 5 mile bumpers. Making it a Malibu would have utterly destroyed its value perception. The same and worse would have been the case with Pontiac, Olds and Buick. And what of Cadillac?
These full-size nameplates had gobs of value; tossing them would have been insane.
Although big car sales were in secular decline, GM grabbed the lions’ share of that market for a number of years with these cars. They were truly successful, but branded as a mid-size car and killing the big car nameplates would have been utterly self-destructive.
Yes, there was overlap and such, and GM made mistakes, but the downsized ’77 B/C cars was not one of them.
It’s an interesting suggestion, in light of the fact that the big cars never merited another really new generation. Whatever they did has to be considered a miserable failure. Did anyone think of the FWD Bonnevilles, Electras and de Villes as more than intermediates? GM was weening people off of sedans even before Ford decided to respond to the 4-door Jeep Cherokee.
I know these intermediates felt like a traditional car, but by 1978, I didn’t want that. I wanted a light, modern feel. We were tooling around in Toyotas, Datsuns, Subarus and Mazdas. We liked those. That was new. What GM offered, wasn’t. So, when I got a Ford Fairmont Futura in 1981, it felt new and similar to my friend’s new imported rides. It was a company car, one of many, so I didn’t choose it. Yet, being from a US manufacturer made me realize that we could make modern cars too. That was revolutionary. It was modern, dependable and roomy, yet small.
These GM intermediates were well received, yet they still felt like a GM car from earlier times. It wasn’t until the X cars, that GM really made a new car that competed. Sadly, it had many serious problems, and wasn’t dependable.
I like these A bodies. They are good cruisers with old fashioned touches and feel.
GM’s success with the 1977 downsizing, probably convinced them a similar formula with the ’78 intermediates, was the way to go. Plus, their existing intermediate brands, were already strong.
It was huge that the domestic compact/intermediate market was well-served by the introduction of the Fairmont. As their massive sales proved. As both the GM and Chrysler choices were conservative.
45 years later, even 45 year old examples of the GM A/G bodies are still desirable cars.
Unlike the cheap feeling flimsy Fairmonts and kin.
I expect that GMs struggles in this era helped to inform Clayton Christensens thinking when he finally wrote The Innovators Dilemma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
We bought a 79 Grand Prix LJ right after they pulled it off the truck. Black with tan velour (of course) interior and 304 V8. i was sent to Germany and we took the GP. 3 years on the autobahns and back roads and we were happy on both. It became my wife’s favorite car until our new 23 Hyundai Calligraphy Turbo. We traded it on an 85 Pontiac 6000 LE, the worst car we ever owned. Never bought another Pontiac, Switched to full size Buicks.
Wow I am amazed they would put a Jeep V8 in it for ya! ;^)
My brother/sister in law had bad luck with the “6000” as well. It did drived nice though.
Not a lot a “station wagon, rattles”.
The thing about these is that they (and the downsized B/C cars) showed just how incredibly oversized and overweight the typical American cars had become. Yet the result was somehow less than totally satisfying. They were a bit like fake meat. The real American car experience also required excess for genuine experience. Whereas the B/C bodies were slimmed down American cars, and were attractive as a result, these A-Bodies were anorexic American cars. Somehow just not really attractive, despite the objective benefits.
Meanwhile, the Fairmont was something new and different: an American take on a European car. And the FWD X Cars were of course all new too, in an international idiom. They (and the subsequent FWD A Bodies) made these RWD A-G bodies look even more dated and irrelevant.
I would argue that GM’s 1973-77 A-body intermediates were style statements as much as they were transportation devices. Even though their dimensions and weight were excessive relative to interior space, especially in the two-door models, they struck a chord with consumers put off by the truly gargantuan 1971-76 B- and C- bodies. The personal luxury car, such as it was, proved to be just right in size and appointments for an awful lot of people in the mid-Seventies.
In contrast, the downsized A bodies introduced for 1978 featured much better space efficiency but at the expense of style. They looked stubby and ill-proportioned, especially the two-door A-specials like the Monte Carlo, which retained the swoopy hips of its second-generation iteration. They can be praised for guiding large segments of Middle America to smaller, lighter, better-handling, more fuel-efficient vehicles, but their historical importance is that of being a transition to future rather than an expression of taste or style.
That said, the LeMans tested here was perhaps the most forward-looking of the GM intermediates, notwithstanding some of the Broughamy touches in the interior. It was rational in size, handsome in a way that the unfortunate aero backs from Oldsmobile and Buick were not, and could be had in its Grand Am iteration as something approximating a European sports sedan. This LeMans struck a note of optimism for the domestic manufacturers at a time when the future was cloudy indeed.
Despite the stubby appearance, the A specials were big sellers through 1984, and the 1981 restyling greatly improved their appearance. The regular A sedans and wagons were quickly outdated with the introduction of the 1980 X cars (almost as roomy and luxurious in the upmarket trims) and the 1982 FWD A cars (wagons coming in 1984), though the restyled 1980 Cutlass and Century 4 doors were very popular for a couple of years with older folks wanting to downsize from full-size cars.
I always liked the look of the Pontiac versions of these and the Bonneville/Parisienne. There were still a lot of the later ones on the road when I was growing up in early 90s as well as tons of other A B and C bodies. Its amazing to think in our more diverse but in some ways less satisfying carscape that less than fifty years ago almost every other car on the road was a GM product. And while in hindsight all the brand and platform duplication was obviously nuts, it grew out of this duplication.
Still the terms of some of these platforms and design seem
insane. The 2 dr versions of these were sold for a decade and the Bs and FWD As had some models last 14 years. Besides the big GM vans I think the closest a recently sold model has come to these types of durations was the Journey right?
I was an absolutely huge car styling junkie, as a little kid. And however impractical their flamboyant design, I loved Colonnade styling. Especially, the rear three-quarter view on wagons. I thought their tailgate designs looked so modern, and space-inspired. And so ’70s. With the taillights embedded in the their bumpers, and the slick air deflectors, such a great rear design.
When I first saw some spy illustrations and early pics of the ’78 A-body sedans and wagons, I remember thinking how bland and conservative, they now looked. After being spoiled by so many boldly-styled domestic cars through the mid ’70s, this generation A-body were probably the first cars that really gave me reservations about where car styling was headed. Their cheap, plasticky interiors and bland more formal exteriors, were somewhat of a turnoff. And the X-cars, turned me off even more, the following year. The proliferation of the A and X bodies, compounded this sense that cookie-cutter styling had arrived. lol
Great view.
The neighbors “76 Vista Cruiser” had this body style. Man that thing rusted bad!!
Wonder if history might repeat itself as it did in the 80s. Could a lot of today’s gas vehicles still be offered with aging designs and tech well into the 2030s even alongside the EVs that are supposed to replace them? I see some parallels (generational split in customers trusting new tech/designs, possible change in economic and political attitudes). Essentially the modern equivalent of the 70s/80s downsizing rounds are a lot of SUVs losing a cylinder or two in recent redesigns (Rogue, Atlas, Traverse).
Downsizing caused a dilemma for GM. In the 50s, lower priced “regular” cars were on wheelbases of 114-115 inches. As they grew to 118-119 inches by the early 60s, compacts came in at around 108 inches, then intermediates dropped into the slot of the older “regular” cars.
By 1976 lower priced GM “regular” cars were up to 121 inch wheelbases, mid sizers at 116 and compacts at 108 (going from memory, but I am close if not exact).
By downsizing the large cars to what had been a traditional mid-sized footprint, now it became necessary to either keep each category and make them smaller, or lose the “tweeners” that had only become necessary when big cars kept getting bigger. We know that killing the Cutlass was off the table, so GM decided to keep all of the prior model ranges. This was fine around 1980 when the company hit a high water mark for market share, but was the beginnings of far too many platforms with far too little differentiation in their sizes – a problem that got worse as downsizing continued.
Like Paul, I never found these cars satisfying. I saw too many compromises. They kept all the things I didn’t like about GM cars, but lost much of what had made GM so formidable in the replacing of durable mechanicals with fragile transmissions and gutless engines (like the Olds 260 V8). The old colonnades soldiered on for a long time as cheap beaters and tended to last longer than these did, at least in my experience.
The NOVA cars (Nova, Omega, Ventura, Apollo) were 111″ wheelbase, an inch less than the regular A body coupes before ’78 and 0.2″ more than the ’85+ FWD B&C. The ’78 A bodies were 108″.
How did R&T get the names of the Buick and Olds intermediate specialty coupes for 1978 so wrong? They listed them as Riviera and Toronado when they should have been Regal and Cutlass Supreme.
Last scan shows that article was published September 1977, so prepared well in advance of that. By then, they may have heard news the Toronado and Riviera were going to change after their model year ’78, while the new ’78 Regal and Cutlass Supreme may not have been announced yet.
As such, I can only guess they may have expected/speculated that the forthcoming new Riv and Toro would replace/merge with the Regal and Cutlass Supreme coupes respectively and become siblings to the Monte Carlo and Grand Prix on the A-Special (later G-Special) platform, rather than remaining separate models as siblings to the Eldorado on the E-platform.
This downsized Lemans was not a bad car, and certainly better in step with the times than the car it replaced. Not bad styling either. The major downside is the lack of openable rear door windows.
I really liked the “75-77 Lemans, coupe”!!
The late 1970s and early 1980s were a confusing time for the American automakers. GM I think thought that the 1978 downsized intermediates would last till 1982. Then the 1982 FWD intermediates would take over. Meeting CAFE standards of 27.5 mpg that was supposed to take effect in 1985 was part of the battle. With the downsized GM cars of 1977 and 1978, the old compact, intermediate,and full sized car categories were blurred. In 1978, Ford sold the Fairmont as both an intermediate and a compact. It also sold the “intermediate” LTD II and “compact” Granada. Chrysler Corporation had the full sized “Gran Fury and Royal Monaco”, the Intermediate Fury and Monaco (which were changed a couple years before in name from the Satellite and Coronet), and aslo the Aspen and Volare. Chrysler also had the “downsized” intermediate cars with the 1977 1/2 Lebaron and Diplomat based on the Aspen/Volare platform. AMC had the Concord and the intermediate Matador which was in its last year.
People and automakers were under the assumption that gas prices would continue to increase. Car lines became blurred when be described by sizes. The rear wheel drive A bodies later renamed G bodies lasted from 1978 to 1988. Not a bad run for a line of cars that people thought would last only 4 years in 1978. Gas prices dropped in 1983 or so. So the older RWD cars lasted for a long time with all the automakers. It was interesting that the aeroback Old Cutlass and Buick Century died after 1979. They were replaced with a Seville styled straight back window sedan. The Lemans of this era was a good car. Many were sold and the Pontiac “sporty image” helped to sell them.
It’s interesting to see how the G body line faded out – with most divisions selling the Special coupes up to 1988 and a clean, if late, break with the wagons switching to the FWD A-body for 1984;
– Aerocoupes were not replaced directly with formal-roof 2 doors but simply dropped after 1980, such was the Special coupes’ dominance. Chevrolet and Pontiac stayed with their light-greenhoused non-Special coupes one more year but there just wasn’t room for both them and the 1982 FWD A 2-doors.
– Chevrolet dropped the Malibu sedan after 1983 at the same time as the wagon.
– Buick kept the Regal sedan one more year with 1984 being its’ last season.
– Pontiac, having rebranded their A/G sedan Bonneville, kept it through 1986 when it was replaced by an fwd H-body Bonneville that was sedan only.
– Oldsmobile held onto the G-body Cutlass sedan until 1987, the last division to offer one, and followed it up with the last of the decade-old G-Special coupes into 1988 with the Cutlass Supreme Classic alongside the GM10 Cutlass Supreme.
– And the El Camino and GMC Caballero made it to 1987 before being dropped with no direct replacement, although the extended cab S10 likely took quite a bit of its’ market (and the S10 program made plenty of use of A/G components).
Lastly, I’ve long wondered if the formal sedan roof designed as a crash program for Buick-Olds was imposed on Chevrolet and Pontiac in an attempt to amortize it in what had been thought would be a short run.
What’s interesting about the fixed rear door windows is that the 1978 model year also brought the 4-door Chevette whose rear door glass *did* roll down from Day 1. Probably not due to the use of common parts with the international T-Cars either – there was no 5-door hatchback anywhere else and the 4-door sedan had a completely different rear door shape and didn’t share the Chevette 4-door hatch’s longer wheelbase.
My best guess is that they expected, and got, a much lower air-conditioning take rate on the Chevette than the A-Bodies.
Buyers expected the Chevette to be small and cramped, which provided an incentive for them to prefer a larger, more profitable model instead if they could possibly afford it, whereas the new A-bodies were replacing much larger predecessors.
To mitigate that downsizing, maximizing interior volume was a priority, so to increase hip/elbow/shoulder room for notional three-across seating in the rear, their rear doors’ inner trim had scooped-out alcoves instead of protruding arm rests, which impinged on the space where the windows would otherwise lower into.
Let’s also add then Pontiac dusted off the Grand Am nameplate for 1978 as well as a more “sportier” version of the LeMans.
Also at Chrysler, it was the introduction of the L-body Omni/Horizon, little we knew they would soldier up to 1990 while Ford menaged to transform the Fairmont later into a smaller LTD until the arrival of the Taurus with derivatives like the 1981 Granada, the “Aero” T-bird/Cougar, smaller Continental and the Mark VII and the fox-body Mustang.
Very few of the “Chevette’s” on the lots had “a/c”.
Especially up north.
Due to common components engineered for the bigger interiors and engines, a Chevette that did have a/c was as much a self-portable refrigerator as an air-conditioned car.
I always marvelled at the chilly a/c in the 2002 Sierra reg cab stepside I bought new, and one day it struck me that they probably used the same exact components as in extra cab and crew cab versions, even Suburbans, so no wonder it cooled down so fast!
This six window sedan IMO is the best looking of the ’78 A bodies. It’s actually a shrunken version of a ’77 Bonneville full-size mockup. Both have a sharp, sheer profile, with slender C pillars. The production Bonneville had an off putting puffiness to it, unlike the razor-edged look of the LeMans. A slightly smaller version of this sheer look LeMans should have been its replacement in 1982. That could have been a true competitor for the Accord.
The lack of opening rear windows was a major fail on the 4-door sedan and wagon versions of these cars and GM never did correct it by adding roll-down rear windows (unlike Chrysler with their K-Cars). Still, the Malibu coupe and the Cutlass Supreme seemed popular at the time and even now. The restyled ’81 Regal also became popular.
I’ve heard that the original 1978 models sold a bit poorly because the styling made them look small. The 1981 restyling made them look larger, but by then the price of gas was higher again and people perceived them as being too large, so they remained comparatively unpopular. GM just couldn’t catch a break.
In my opinion the 78/79 Regal coupes really suffered from having the large single headlamp bulbs, which, combined with the slanted housings and prominent grille just looked strange. Buick improved the look in 1980 with the smaller quad headlamps, but the full restyle of 1981 really improved the overall look of the car, with the exception of the odd way they styled the ends of the bumpers. Instead of wrapping around a bit, GM just chopped off the ends, and they didn’t integrate into the side profile at all.
I loved those “78-9” models!!
Never liked the body style on these cars, Herky/Jerky lines, doesn’t flow, kind of a “connect the dots” and there your car.
I don’t see what the fuss about the fixed door windows. Most of the worlds’ two door coupes managed with flip out windows for decades, and weren’t most Beetles have fixed rear side windows?
Especially by the late 1970s and with the high take of factory A/C by then
Surprised someone didn’t come up with a roll down kit considering the number of model A – G produced by each division. Even if manual, it would have been a big improvement.
The window had nowhere to go down into due to the carved-out door panels. Fully functional windows was literally the ONLY thing Dad’s 78 Zephyr wagon had over Mom’s 79 LeMans when I was a young boy.
One rationale, or excuse at least, for those stationary rear windows that gets overlooked these days is wind tunnel testing. I seem to recall Consumer Reports mentioning that GM did a lot of wind tunnel testing with these cars, and they discovered that you actually got better air flow with the flip out vents than you would have with a roll-down window.
However, I don’t know if they were factoring in those big, “picture windows” of the 1978 sedans, or the wagons, which had the vent window in the door. Those big windows would have only been able to roll down a few inches, at best, as there was simply too much window, and not enough space for it to roll down into.
Also, coupes had been outselling sedans in the Colonade range, even when you factor out personal luxury coupes like the Grand Prix and Monte Carlo. By ’77, sedans were definitely taking a larger percentage, but coupes were still outselling sedans. Most people who regularly used a back seat tended to still go for full-sized cars. So, the folks at GM probably figured they could get away with stationary rear windows in the sedans. Plus, in this price range, the bulk of the cars were ordered with a/c, anyway.
But, in 1978, the sedans started outselling the coupes. If people wanted a coupe, they increasingly went towards personal luxury coupes, but “regular” coupes like the Malibu and LeMans definitely went on the decline.
In the end, I think the whole stationary window thing was overblown, and I doubt it hurt GM’s sales much, if any. If it did, GM would have done something about it. Especially, once all the sedans went to the more formal roofline, that moved the quarter window into the door. But no, they kept those windows stationary, for the entire run, right up through the last Cutlass Supreme sedan in 1987.
Also, I don’t know what the term for it is, but I always called it “helicoptering”. In cars where the back windows don’t roll all the way down, if you open them, but leave the front windows up, you get this resonance that gets worse, the faster you go. It’s sort of like the staccato beat of a helicopter blade.
GM’s ’77 B/C bodies do it, to a small degree. I imagine on the ’78 A-bodies, with those big picture windows, it would be fierce. Of course, all you have to do is open one of the front windows a bit, and it goes away.
Funny thing is, I’d never really noticed it before, until I bought a new 2000 Intrepid. But after that, I noticed I could detect that “helicoptering” in just about any car. My grandmom’s ’85 LeSabre, which had rear windows that went down about half way, did it, although not nearly as badly as the Intrepid. I also had an ’89 Gran Fury, ex police car. It’s back windows went down almost all the way, maybe sticking up an inch and a half. Yet, even in that car, I noticed it a bit. So, it was always there, but I guess my Intrepid really put me in tune with it.
My guess is that in older cars, that are less aerodynamic (and yes, even an M-body is somewhat aerodynamic compared to the old days), it wasn’t as noticeable. And, older cars tended to have thicker window glass, so maybe you didn’t get as much subtle vibration.
I have a fairly decent memory of these A bodies, as my first car was a 1979 Malibu Classic Landau coupe with most of the option book checked off. Mine was equipped with a 305 4bbl… which I believe was the top option, outside of being able to get a 350 in the wagons. I thought the styling worked well. Fairly basic lines that looked purposeful and efficient, and it was proportioned well. We also had a 1976 Pontiac Ventura 4dr in the family, which was very similar in outward dimensions to my Malibu, yet seemed like they were almost trying to waste space when they designed it. Interior room was very tight and the trunk was even tighter.
What I liked most about my car was the overall size, which felt just about ideal to me. There was ample room for my friends, plus a capacious trunk. The length and width cut the line perfectly between tuna boat and sardine can; easily maneuverable and it fit into parking spots and Grandma’s fairly small garage. While the basic design and BOF construction were top notch, there were some big letdowns in component specification and quality. THM200, 7.5/7.625″ 10 bolt rear end, and R4 A/C compressor were garbage. A three speed automatic lashed to a 2.29 final drive ratio made for soggy acceleration from a dead stop… once you hit 25mph, you were golden, though I cringe to think of having any engine with less beans than than the 305/Q-jet. My 1981 Catalina with a 307 and 200-4R was worlds better in this regard, though it wouldn’t do 60mph in 1st gear. Good tradeoff, if you ask me.
In about 1978, I put a lot of miles on new Fairmont and Malibu company cars. The Malibu was the superior car, feeling much more solid and substantial than the Fairmont. The Fairmont felt cheaply-constructed by comparison.
Regarding styling, I think the Le Mans/Grand Am 2-doors were the best looking of the 1978 GM intermediates.
The differences reflect the goals for each car when they were designed. The 1978 GM A-bodies were designed to mimic the ride and noise isolation of the Colonnades as much as possible – hence the body-on-frame construction.
Ford’s Fox bodies were designed to replace the old Maverick and Comet. They used unibody construction. They also tended to have a noticeably lower sticker price than the GM A-bodies (although their standard engine was a four-cylinder, while the GM cars came with at least a V-6).
I may be alone, but I find the 78 4 door LeMans one of the most pleasing designs of the 70’s. Nice lines, wonderful greenhouse, beautifully integrated bumpers for the time, elegant rear and distinctive front (if not quite to the standard of the rear). Inside, a very nice 70’s dash. And it seems the perfect size to me. If I were a 40 year old with a family in 1978 I would have been proud to have one of these in driveway, loaded and with a V8…notwithstanding the poor 0-60. And if the kids complained about the rear windows not going down I would have told them to be grateful they have AC.
In “popular” trim levels, my experience with the A-bodies and Fox-bodies was diametrically opposed to what the press had led me to think. I read and reread the articles on both in magazines from Road & Track to Consumer Reports. I was very prepared to love the Farming and like the A-body.
The first one in my life was a ‘78 Century 2-door that my grandparents bought used. Nice trunk, lots of room, decent space, adequate power from the 3.8. I really disliked the styling but thought it held the road a lot better than our’75 Regal while being quicker, more economical and more comfortable with the same engine. The second was a ‘79 Cutlass wagon with a V6 that belonged to friends. It has most of the same virtues except that it could not be coerced into kicking down to low gear above 10 mph or so. Made for some slow acceleration in traffic in the hills of Pennsylvania, but their dealer insisted all was in speed.
A couple of years later I found myself dating a girl with a ‘79 Fairmont Futura 6-cyl. It was so slow and so hard on fuel that I thought something was wrong with it. Hard to steer in a straight line, too. Driving a similar rental confirmed that hers was not the only one like that. I still thought I would like a stripped, manual Fairmont 4-door 4-cyl best of all. When I finally got to drive one it was 7 years old with 80k miles and had not aged gracefully. It was roomy, but did not refined.
Of all the cars, the Foxes felt like penalty boxes to me while the A-bodies were something I would enjoy driving daily (with the exception of the Cutlass’ transmission). None of them held up very well, though, so I was probably much better off with my HiLux. Who needs seat belts (or seats or upholstery) for the occasional passengers in back, anyway?
I’ll second @not4one on the styling of the’78 LeMans 4-door. I thought it was perhaps the best looking mainstream American 4-door available that year. I’ll take mine with the 231/3.8, though. The car was nicely balanced with the V6, and was far from the slowest thing on the road in its day.
It always bemused me how GM could hit a home run with the downsized 1977 full sized cars and then bunted with the 1978 downsized intermediate cars?
Wonder if history might repeat itself as it did in the 80s. Could a lot of today’s gas vehicles still be offered with aging designs and tech well into the 2030s even alongside the EVs that are supposed to replace them? I see some parallels (generational split in customers trusting new tech/designs, possible change in economic and political attitudes). Essentially the modern equivalent of the 70s/80s downsizing rounds are a lot of SUVs losing a cylinder or two in recent redesigns (Rogue, Atlas, Traverse).