Chevy Once Thought A Smoking Jacket Was A Great Thing To Wear While Fixing Your Van

The 1970s were a weird time. I say this as someone who began to exist just after the decade started, so I was there, if not particularly alert, for most of it. The ’70s had a sort of weird affectation for a certain kind of velour-slathered formality, a sort of peculiar vision of “class” that involved lots of brown and ochre and booze and thick fabrics and the concept of lounging and probably a good amount of cocaine. Old staples of leisure class sartorial (I never remember that damn word and it was like pulling teeth to drag it out of my brain just now) elegance like smoking jackets regained some popularity, which is the only justification I can think of for why this 1971 Chevy Sportvan Service Manual looks like it does.

[UPDATE: Many are pointing out, likely correctly, that this is actually a drawing of a man in an old-school set of mechanic’s overalls, maybe sort of like these here. Thats probably right. But that tie! And the hair and the languid look! I still prefer my fantasy of a smoking jacket.]

I love that ’70s sketchy art style, and that showed up on all sorts of advertising and on service manuals and owner’s manuals and whatever. That’s not the surprising thing here.

The surprising thing is what the illustrator of this service manual cover chose to have the guy on the cover wearing:

Do we need to zoom in? We may as well. COMPUTER! Zoom and enhance, sectors 2 through 15!

Yeah, that’s a smoking jacket. And a tie. The ideal choice of attire to wear when reaching down into that stubby hood to try and fix the belt tensioner on your 307 V8, right? Seriously, though, what the hell is going on here? Look at that guy – the carefully combed and oiled hair, the oddly calm expression suggesting a certain sort of aloof ennui, that arm elbow-deep in the Chevy’s business – he kind of reminds me of this guy:

That smoking jacket, though, that’s the punctum here. I’m just baffled. I did end up learning a bit about smoking jackets because of all this, though. It seems they’re sort of a strange side-effect of the Crimean War, which popularized smoking Turkish tobacco in the 1850s in Britain. In order to protect a gentleman’s fancy clothes from smelling like tobacco smoke or getting ash all over them, a protective and comfortable outer garment became popular: the smoking jacket.

These were generally worn around the house, kind of like a bathrobe, as one smoked and sat in a big leather armchair, drinking port and reading a newspaper, getting more and more drunk, probably ending with passing out with the society pages of The Telegraph and Courier laying over your face.

It’s not like the van itself was particularly smoking-jacket-coded; these things were for families or young, horny dudes or plumbers or Boy Scout troop transport or things like that; enjoying port and Turkish tobacco I think would be far eclipsed by the enjoyment of Coors and boning by the average ’70s Sportvan driver.

So I’m pretty baffled by the inclusion of Mssr.Classington up there, jamming his fancy smoking jacket sleeves into that greasy engine bay. What was Chevy trying to convey here, exactly? That changing your own plugs in your van was a hallmark of the Good Life?

You know what? I’m good with that.