The Chevy Vega has a well-earned reputation for being an unmitigated, steaming pile. The car managed to rust away when still new, the engines overheated, and when they weren’t overheating, they had leaky valve stem seals and piston rings wore off cylinder coatings. Oh, and they had taillights that were liars. They were, charitably, garbage. Initially, Vegas were only sold as Chevys, but soon these “H-platform” cars were available to GM’s other marques, including Pontiac.
Pontiac, somehow, got two of them, the Astre and the Sunbird. Who did Pontiac piss off?
Initially, in 1973 and 1974, the Astre was only sold in Canadian Pontiac dealers, but American Pontiac dealers were soon blessed with these heaps in 1975, when they also got the Pontiac Sunbird, which was itself a badge-engineered variant of the also Vega-based Chevy Monza.
Really, these were actually kind of nice-looking cars, nicely proportioned and detailed. Looks weren’t really the problem with these.
I’m not really clear what the difference was supposed to be between the Astre and Sunbird; I think the Sunbird was supposed to be a bit sportier? The Astre is up there, in that parking lot with those terrible wire wheels, and as you can see it has round sealed-beam headlights and a typically split Pontiac grille made of vertical rectangular segments. Let’s look at a Sunbird now:
There it is, being laughed at by people on the damn bus, the worst possible humiliation and the likely mode of transport for that Sunbird owner in the near, grim future.
As you can see, the Sunbird had a flatter hood and front fenders, quad rectangular sealed-beam lights, a honeycomb grille pattern and other styling changes. Under the skin, it’s still a vague Vega, though, so don’t get your hopes up.
Of course, you could get a Sunbird with a vinyl roof, this one including a “formal window,” according to the caption, which is what I guess Pontiac was calling opera windows for their cars that had effectively zero chance of being seen at an opera.
Also, what the hell is going on in this picture? Did that dog walker get so excited by that Sunbird that he had to, what, look in the passenger’s seat? What’s he looking at? And what’s he wearing? Is that yellow-and-green cap and stripey-back vest some kind of dog-walker’s uniform? Those blurry dogs are kind of hard to read, but I think one is one of those narrow Afghan rich people dogs. And I do like that 1966-ish Mercedes-Benz 200 behind the Sunbird.
Look at the carmel-colored wonderland of the interior here. I remember these interiors, with their wood appliqués and fussy plastichrome trim and seats that in the summer would adhere to bare thighs with the tenacity of a lamprey on a whale. Even when near-new, everything in here felt like it was about to fall apart. And usually did.
There’s an interesting illustration/photo composite in this brochure, showing an Astre hatchback in the middle, surrounded by subscale paintings of its competition. Let’s see if we can identify them all! From left to right, it looks like we have an AMC Hornet, a Volkswagen Rabbit with a funny grille, a car I thought was captive-import Dodge/Mitsubishi Colt, but now I’m not so sure. What is that? A Datsun? Hm. I’m not certain.
On the other side, things get even weirder. That first car next to the Astre looks kinda like a..Pinto? The next car is even weirder; I swear it looks kinda like a Peugeot 504 Coupé. But that would be ridiculous. Next to that, it looks like an AMC Matador? Maybe a Chevy II? And next to that could be a Chevette or even a Ford Fiesta with a weird grille. I really can’t tell, but I’m still certain almost any of those are a better choice than the Astre.
Two! Pontiac was trying to sell two versions of this heap! I guess Chevy was doing the same thing with the Vega and Monza, but still, what a weird time. A weird, kinda delightfully crappy time!
The Monza, Buick Skyhawk, Oldsmobile Starfire, and Pontiac Sunbird were all designed around the GM rotary engine. The rear of the Monza fastback was even styled to evoke the shape of the rotor.
GM got stuck with tooling to build a bunch of cars without the engines to go with them much like AMC’s Pacer which was designed around the same engine.
My first car was a 77 Sunbird, orange like the Formula in the brochure. I really wanted to make mine a Formula too, with the air dam front and spolier rear, plus the decals. I spent hours pouring over the paper debating about what letter tires to get – 13 in wheels but then still a lot of selection – usually about 4 for 125 or maybe 150. General XP 2000? Radial TA? Many to chose from.
Unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of extra cash for the Formula treatment. It was a good car, handed down from my grandmother, though I did pay her for it and paid for insurance, maintenance, etc. This was around 1988 or so that I got it. It had the 3.8 V6 but no AC unfortunately. Not good in snow, fun at times, scary other times.
I drove it for quite a few years then my mother made me get rid of it as rust had taken hold. Strangely, the front springs compressed to the point that they needed to be replaced, GM must have cheaped out on their Radial Tuned Suspension.
The answer to most of these questions, because it was the 70’s, is cocaine.
The Dog Walker is apparently an Oakland A’s fan.
I was thinking Green Bay Packers
My brain went to CA, maybe this guys is a Reggie Jackson fan. I don’t think he was with the Yanks yet
I can’t sit here and let you all bad mouth the Vega!
I know we were the anomaly but my parents bought a 71 Vega 3 speed manual off the showroom floor during the 70/71 GM strike. We never had a problem with that car except when my Dad did a tune up and put the fuel filter in backwards. It stranded Mom about a mile from home. Apparently there was a check valve built into it.
Of course the Vega rusted out horribly in Upstate NY but it made it 15 years/125k miles and my brother and I learned to drive in it.
Your Dad’s oops sounds like something I would do. Long ago during a late-night brake pad replacement on Wife’s minivan, I managed to put one in backwards. Still get teased about that.
The quad headlight treatment definitely looks better.
It’s amazing to me how of the design styling of the Ass-turd and the Sun-turd crosses over with the AMC compact cars from the mid-70’s to early 80’s (Hornet/Spirit/Concord/Eagle/AMX).
From henceforth I shall pronounce Las Vegas as “veygahs” in homage to these vehicles.
Unless the interior was modeled after a town on San Francisco Bay, it has a caramel interior, not carmel. It’s a verbal pet peeve of mine when people pronounce it “car-mel” with two syllables instead of three, but it’s totally unacceptable in print!
Yep, same here. The top of my list has to be when people add a ‘T’ to the word ‘across.’
There’s a town in Virginia called Carmel Church (most notable for its truck stop these days), and my cousin always used to write it as Caramel Church. Drove me nuts.
That’s Monterey Bay.
Ah crap, you’re right. I mixed it up with Sausalito.
Right, those have bits of chocolate and macadamia nuts.
Carmel is also a town in Putnam County NY. I am also peeved at people who drop the l in almond.
If early Tarantino films taught us anything, Vegas, though cool on their own, come in pairs.
Kevin in accounting: “Hey Frank, everyone knows now that the Vega is a putrid festering pile of Satan’s snot, but we still need to move a few hundred thousand more.”
Frank in product planning: “Kevin… do you think customers would notice if we just changed a bit of sheet metal, call it a Pontiac and dump it on them?”
Kevin: “I like that idea but enshittification hasn’t even been invented yet!”
Frank: “Oh ye of little faith”
You have no idea how freakin’ cool rectangular headlights were in 1975. I was about 6 or so when they came out, and it was like science fiction….
My neighbor had one of the “Formula” Sunbirds when I was little. I loved the look of that think. I still do, actually. I was very disapointed to find out in my later years what crap they were.
A friend in college had a Sunbird back when it was only 4 yrs old or so. This statement is sooooo accurate!
Also, I’m thinking that the car in the illustration that you surmise is a Matador is actually a Maverick/Comet.
The quad-light Euro car looks to me like a Maserati Biturbo. While comparing the build quality of the Biturbo to the Astere is logical, any other comparison would be idiotic. But then again, we’re talking about the LSD/pot/coke years of 70’s Madison Ave, so anything is possible.
“I Don’t Really Understand Why Pontiac…” could be the theme for a near-endless series of posts.
That Sunbird with the “FORMULA” graphics sure seems to qualify for Glorious Garbage.
I mean, I don´t really understand why modern OEMs need three different ¨crossover¨ SUVs all built on the same platform and sized within about four inches of each other either, but here we are.
Don’t forget the “coupe” versions, where you get less cargo space and headroom for more money
Bingo. I was thinking the same thing about today’s semi-redundant CUVs as I was reading the article.
I always saw the Astre as a “1st Gen” and the Sunbird as a “2nd Gen” when it came to the H-Body cars. Curious that they offered them both at the same time for a little while, but it’s not unheard of for car companies (especially GM) to do that in order to offer the older one as a cheaper value car. It also didn’t help that the import market was eating GM’s lunch when it came to small cars, so they probably figured that two small cars in showrooms were better than one.
Also, the Sunbird Formula was one of the coolest cars in late 70’s Pontiac showrooms. You could get them with a 305 V8 and a 4-speed, making it sort of a mini-Trans Am.
Pontiac’s twist on the Vega Monzq emergency evolution.
For added fun there were 350 SBC in them in California of all places.
Not for homologation, but Caliemissions IIRC.
I would have loved to see a Pontiac-flavored Monza Mirage with a Trans Am-derived W72 400 under the hood. That would have been a real ripper!
Somebody showed up at our Cars and Coffee earlier this month with a Monza Mirage. It was mind blowing to see.
I had always thought Monza and Sunbird were intended as do-over fresh starts to overcome the negative reputation of the Vega, in true GM tradition of constantly renaming cars (as opposed to, like, Honda and Toyota sticking with the same small car nameplates for a half century because they never screwed them up), but the Monza in particular overlapped quite a bit with its predecessor. Also, despite its poor rep, Vega sales volumes never really suffered from it, they actually posted gains after the rust and engine problems made national news, people really seemed fine with overlooking that stuff, unlike on the later Citation, which fell off a cliff immediately and never recovered. I’d guess they were trying to aim for different market segments, post 1973 oil embargo, when it seemed like small cars would just completely take over the whole market so automakers would need multiple models optimized for various narrow niches to replace all their lost big car sales. Monza and Sunbird seem somewhat vaguely upscale or sportier from the original models, which were probably intended to continue as the bread and butter options
For all their reliability issues, Vegas were pretty good cars to drive for the time, and made good platforms to modify. The Citation was just dismal in every possible way.
Which is sad, the Vega was pretty good looking, too, sort of a miniature Camaro thing going on
I used to work with Wayne Gapp’s son, and he would drive cars he scrounged from his dad’s shop. For a while, that was an Iron Duke-equipped Sunbird from the seventies. That was a crappy car. It was in perfect shape, but it was crappy.
I kind of read the styling the opposite way. The fastback Astre is more sporty, the notchback Sunbird more formal, even without the vinyl top and opera windows. Also, you time traveled in one of your references, calling the Sunbird a Sunfire. That was a different heap.
This was a matter of “in with the new, keep making the old”. GM made a habit out of continuing to produce an old generation even after a new one was introduced.
And since every GM dealer HAD to have what every other GM dealer had, you get crap like this.
But Jason, look at the stunning almost squared-off edginess of the Sunbird compared to the fuddy-duddy rounded off roof and headlight barrel contouring of the Astre. The Sunbird was in a completely different league with all of the looks and none of the sizzle.
It’s simple really, one had the piston engine and the other didn’t have a Wankel.
It’s really quite simple:
Astre competed with Pinto, while Sunbird competed with Mustang II.
The only competition there was which one would get to the scrap heap first.
I mean, you say heap, but I really think you mean pile
Pontiac. We build excrement