I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be a kid today. Everyone has a smartphone, social media is everywhere, and it’s practically impossible to escape technology. Cars have also gotten wild, too, and it’s easy to buy something with ridiculous horsepower. Apparently, back in the day, you were lucky to just have opening windows.
Jason wrote a Cold Start about “fixed picture windows” in old GM cars, and readers had some great comments. Sid Bridge:
By 1979, the United States had learned from its heinous mistakes in Vietnam and thankfully put an end to the draft for what we hope to be forever. Thanks to this patriotic development, General Motors was indeed able to offer draft-free ventilation.
A. Barth:
How do you like your gall? Unmitigated?
Sometimes that’s the only option. It’s so rare to find mitigated gall anywhere these days. Whole Foods stopped selling it and the stuff on Amazon is just blobfish spleen with a little bit of food coloring.
5VZ-F’Ever and Ever, Amen:
I’m writing this comment from the back of a 1983 Bonneville, where my scrotal flesh heat-melded with the vinyl over 40 years ago. Doctors gave me the option of removing my entire lower half or living in the car. Given the incredible views from the picture windows, I chose the car.
Canopysaurus:
Rumor has it that when these designs were first shown to management, the back door window appearance did not please the CEO who told the team to “make sure they got those windows fixed.” So they did.
DysLexus:
I hear you Jason:
My parents bought a special ordered 1978 red Buick Regal Wagon, sans A/C. I spent the next decade suffering in the back even with my horrible car sickness problems. I distinctly recall my mom saying that the rear window didn’t roll down because of it being a safety feature per the salesman. I thought all new cars had this feature. Even as a 9 year old, I knew it was a pile of bogus crap. Not one of my friends ever fell out of a back window even once!Years later I realized that No, this factoid wasn’t true and ALL other cars had functioning rear windows. One of my many childhood experiences that scarred me.
Jatkat:
Mmm, yes Mr. Dealer, I’d like to order my Buick diesel with a vinyl roof, and those windows BETTER NOT BE FUNCTIONAL
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Top graphic: GM
I guess we should be thankful GM kept the doors functional.
Small victories…
Well, crap! Here it is Monday and I’m only getting around to reading the winners of Friday’s COTD.
I distinctly remember a hot summer afternoon in 1981 Pensacola Florida with my parents 1980 Malibu Classic with those dreadful “picture windows” that was absolutely dreadful. It was either open the door to be bombarded by mosquitoes (was parked at the time) OR hang my face towards the puny rear vent window and hope for the occasional breeze coming thru the slit.
It was better than the ’75 Vega that we owned previously but not much.
I very distinctly recall from an article in one of the buff books back in the day that the reason for the fixed rear windows on the g-bodies was some EPA fuel economy testing bullshit. Cars in those days were dyno tested by weight class, and by leaving out the rear window mechanism and some other stuff (I think a rather small gas tank too) they snuck the cars into the next lower class, resulting in an artificially higher MPG rating – which of course was irrelevant in the real world.
I would love if somebody could dig that article up. I don’t think I am AI-style hallucinating this, my brain tends to be pretty sharp on this sort of useless trivia from 40 years ago.
Hmmm… interesting, but wouldn’t having the same MPG in a lower class make them look *worse*?
No, they were able to advertise a slightly higher mpg number, and it was used for CAFE purposes. But in the real world it made no difference. I think you are misunderstanding what the “class” here meant. It was just how the dyno was setup, not a grouping of cars or something. It was a “cooking the books” situation.
Got it…. I was thinking of it exactly as a grouping
2 door coupe, 2 door hatch, 4 door sedan, 4 door hatchback, 4 door wagon, 2 door pickup… the g body was impressive.
See the contemporary Fox body for comparison. Or the much maligned K-Car.
The fastback Olds and Buicks were, alas, not hatchbacks. Buyers in that size/price class didn’t really expect them to be at the time—some other fastbacks of the era, notably the Lancia Beta, which GM studied closely at the time as they were developing the X-bodies, weren’t hatchbacks, either—but those buyers also didn’t really like their cars to look like they might be hatchbacks, especially when they offered none of the practicality. Big flop, and gone within three years.
Dang I did not realize those were not hatch backs. Thanks for the info.
A 2 door fast back would look cool with a light restomod
And yet they did oddball stuff like the hatchback RWD Novas etc (I don’t know GM body codes) that preceded these cars.
X-body is the code for the Chevy Nova, Oldsmobile Omega, Pontiac Ventura, and Buick Apollo. They offered a hatchback in 1973 and 74 in all of them. I’m not sure if they continued the option when they redesigned the X-bodies for 1975.
I have a ’74 Apollo that is sort of back on the road, and getting closer to being properly roadworthy. Mine is not a hatchback though.
Thanks! My great-aunt Marge had a Nova hatchback when I was a kid, so it has stuck in my mind all these years.
Cool! Happy to help 🙂
Rear AC (not to mention rear windows that go down) is a real luxury feature for kids these days. To help my kids not sweat and complain as much I put 2 12″ electric radiator fans mounted to a molle rack of sorts in the back seat of my truck. It moves enough air to mess up the girls hair on the way to school on a AZ day. Semi-OEM switch on the dash and a relay under the hood. Makes the anemic AC in a 3rd gen Tacoma more bearable, but maybe I’m depriving my 3 little girls of things to bitch about later in life
It would probably be easier to just put up a barrier between the front seat and the second row that would not only muffle their complaints but keep all the AC up front. After all a thermally sedated kid is a compliant kid.
That was gold! You had me legit cracking up with that beauty !!!
If I had complained about being hot in the back seat I would have been booted out of the car to walk home. I was thankful to be getting a ride somewhere at all, rather than peddling or Shank’s Mare locomotion. My folks were NOT in the business of shuttling kids to and fro.
-Gen-Xer
We were blessed that dad paid extra for A/C.
We did NOT have A/C at home as a child.
Late Gen-X
LOL – I’m from Maine. NOBODY had A/C at home (maybe a window unit in the master bedroom, kids sweated – electricity wasn’t cheap), and the majority of people still don’t other than window units. And people who say you don’t need it in Maine are NUTS – it’s insane how often it is hotter at my place in Portland ME than it is at my place in Port Charlotte, FL all summer long. It’s just more consistently hot in FL. It’s only becoming more common with rise of heat pump systems, because you get A/C effectively for free. I think I was nearly 40 before I was in a house in Maine that had central A/C, and it belong to the owner of an HVAC company.
A/C in a car was *crazy* expensive back then – it was something like an $800 option on a <$7000 car. More than 10% of the base price. Like paying $3K for A/C on a Camry today. That was actually the first car my grandparents ever bought with A/C.
I’d really love a chance to drive one today to see how it feels after all these years. Sold it to my first college roommate in 1988.
Summer 1988 dad broke down and bought window A/C units for the bedrooms. It was the hottest, driest summer in memory at the time. He put in whole house air when I was in college.
I was about 15 when we got an AC unit installed in our dining room. There were massive fans upstairs in the bedrooms. Then again Northeast Pennsylvania had at most a week or two of hot weather back in the Jurassic when I was a kid.
Car AC? I was away in college when my parents got a car with AC, let alone power anything.
“After all a thermally sedated kid is a compliant kid”
With severe dehydration, plenty of secondhand cigarette smoke and a touch of carbon monoxide poisoning.
And leaded gas was a thing until I was well into college.
Our family car growing up was a 2-door ’89 Oldsmobile Trofeo, and those back windows were fixed shut too. Not even a little vent window like the G-body sedans had.
And both of my parents were heavy smokers. I’ve never taken so much as a drag off of a cigarette, but many cartons worth of Winstons went into my lungs.
Dad bought a Fairmont in ’81 specifically because the rear windows did not roll down on a Cutlass. Yes, he spec’ed AC and an I6.
I love the “mitigated gall” comment. It reminds me of one of my top 100 movie quotes: “can you ever just be whelmed?”
Only if you can also be chalant.
Cars (or suvs) that are wagon / box shaped in the rear that have the rear glass windows that can go down have 1 main issue
Aerodynamics. The swirling air behind the vehicle especially.
If you lower that rear windows (assuming you Have that option), you get the to inhale spent exhaust fumes in to the back of the car.
Problem solved if the car is electric
Just don’t open it on a dusty dirt or gravel road or you’ll choke on dirt/dust instead
My parents 82 Subaru GL had the infinitely retracting seatbelts that just got tighter and tighter as you ventured farther from home.
Someone thought that combining the worst attributes of a Chinese finger trap and quicksand into a safety belt was great for the 80’s. My little sister also whacked me over the head with one of the buckles once too. Hard enough that I can’t remember if the windows could go down or not.
Michigan summers weren’t too bad anyway, and by the 90’s there were so many rust holes the car was well ventilated anyway.
Minus the seatbelts, I loved everything else about that car. They dash’s orange glow, my dad letting me shift the transmission for him and as soon as I was old enough to read I read through the car’s manual front to back and discovered some cool things my parents were not aware of.
Unless it was a hatch, the rear windows went down, even on the coupe (which was a pillarless hardtop). On the 4-doors, the rear windows tipped down more at the front to get as much vent as possible while accommodating the vertical travel limitations imposed by the rear wheel well. The hatch’s rear windows popped open to vent.
Thanks for the info, it was a 4 door. I have a few pictures of that car, and even have the key chain that came with it, found in a drawer of my dad’s old nicknacks. Other than that, just memories.
My first car, a hand-me-down from my grandmother in ’86. Maroon GL sedan 5spd with dealer-installed A/C, but no power steering. Gram was a tough old bird. I certainly don’t recall this feature of the seatbelts though.
Most Japanese car rear seatbelts STILL do this today – I have been scrunched in the back of sooo many Ubers this way. Super annoying.
I had no idea those seatbelts were still a thing. They were just the lapbelts- no shoulder straps at that time and my dad was one of those who refused to wear a seatbelt, which I could totally unfair being slowly squeezed to death in the back seat.
I didn’t drive the EA82 without PS, but the manual steering EA81 cars were fine. My ’83 had slightly wider tires (still only 185s, IIRC) and a smaller diameter steering wheel and was only a little stiff when parking and trying to turn the wheel while stationary as long as you weren’t low on air. It was a good analog tire pressure sensor.
Yes, my ’82 had 185s as well. It was a light enough car that manual steering was fine, like most compacts of the day. But still a bit of work for a little old lady who was 100lbs soaking wet. Subaru did offer a “power package” option that got you power steering, windows, and locks, but that car didn’t have it. I am amazed they sprung for air-conditioning.
Maybe I moved up to 195s, then. I found a rare set of alloy 8-spokes (rare enough that I’ve only ever seen one other set online) and I think I bumped the width up, though I know my wagon was 175 (and $35 ea. from Costco).
From my junk yard scourings, AC and PS were rare as I imagine few people wanted any further drag on a 73 hp engine and were buying the car because they were cheapskates. Then again, I didn’t see many DLs, so maybe it was more about preserving the power as those old compressors were hogs, plus AC wasn’t really needed up here back then. I might have seen 3 GLs with AC (IIRC, a convertible that I looked at had it. That wasn’t in a junk yard, but probably wasn’t far from it). My mother’s ’87 had power steering. I didn’t like it.
A/C was a very expensive dealer installed option. It really made very little difference in power – though of course the GL had the mighty 1.8L… The power package was VERY rare, though a cousin’s GL wagon had it, plus an automatic for extra slow going. At one point there were 11 of that generation Subarus in my extended family, my grandparents having bought the first in ’79 when the new generation debuted. Nobody bought another one after the rampant rust though.
Amusingly, the Subaru dealership for Portland Maine was originally a corner of the Mercedes-Benz dealer, though by the time they bought the ’82 they were doing enough business that they built a stand-alone Subie store down the street that had just opened. They picked up the franchise when the ’80s came out, so not many of the older ones roaming around even back in the day. No idea where the next closest dealership was, probably Boston.
If there was nothing else in between, the closest dealer would have at been Salem, MA, which was owned by family friends, also dealers of MB (and Saab). In the ’90s, Subaru had some demand that their sales and service be separate from any other makes, so they had to move Subaru across the street with Saab taking their old spot next to MB. And, at that time, Subaru wasn’t doing great (either pre-Outback or just after launch), so it seemed like an odd demand.
Yeah, it is amazing how stupid automakers can be like that. Like Fiat insisting that Fiat dealers have the idiotic completely separate “Fiat Studios”, rather than just letting every Chrysler dealer sell the things. And Acura’s demand that they be completely separate from Honda really hampered their growth for a long time.