U.S. Automotive History and the Chevy Vega

by the 1970s american automakers were feeling the pinch from foreign competition japanese and european automakers were producing small fuel-efficient cars that face the domestic challenge in the american market but that all changed in 1971 when the newly coined sub-compact market was taken by storm by the chevrolet vega it was an innovative design that won motor trend magazine's car of the year award car and driver named it the best economy sedan three years running the chevy vega transformed the american auto industry and eventually would become legend but not for the reasons that gm might have hoped the cautionary tale of the automobile that popular mechanics described as the car that nearly destroyed gm deserves to be remembered throughout the 1950s and 60s general motors was one of the largest companies in the world in 1956 it was twice the size of the second largest u.s company standard oil at the time dm's divisions were run as essentially independent companies totally under the control of their division heads they controlled their engineering marketing production and even dealership networks divisions rarely shared engines parts or designs but worked on their own the vega was unique from the start was one of the first cars designed by general mortar's corporate and then given to the chevy division to build and market the vega was proposed by pioneering automotive engineer ed cole then gm's executive vice president of operating staffs and beat out proposals from the chevy and pontiac divisions engineer james g musser who had helped develop the popular chevy nova and camaro models was in charge of the vegas development and said that the car was the first vehicle where one person was in charge the car was specifically meant to utilize the new technology of die-cast aluminum engines starting in 1968 chevy put musser in charge of the car's development to fast track its development and get it to the market in two years there was another wrinkle in the vegas design though gm wanted to sell it as cheaply as possible they wanted a price point around two thousand dollars that would keep it competitive with the ford pinto and popular foreign models like the vw beetle and the toyota corolla one of the ways they kept costs low was a new kind of transportation 18 vegas per rail car fit on top level auto racks so chevy came up with a new way of transporting the car the virta pack the virta pack transported the cars vertically nose down and allowed each rail car to carry 30 cars reducing transportation costs by 40 percent but chevy also wanted to deliver the vehicles with topped off fluids which meant that designers had to engineer solutions to prevent liquids from leaking during transport they created a special oil baffle battery caps and a special tube in the carburetor to prevent oil from leaking the vega retailed for two thousand ninety dollars when it was first introduced about thirteen thousand dollars in two thousand twenty dollars in 1969 john delorean yes that john delorean became the division head for chevrolet after a four-year stint at pontiac it was under delorean that the vega was handed to chevy a nearly complete car over which chevy would have little to no design control they were only expected to sell it delorean would devote an entire chapter to the vega in his 1979 book on a clear day you can see general motors in which he said the car produced a hostile relationship between the corporate staffs and chevrolet from the first day i stepped into chevrolet the bagel was in trouble he said well gm had high expectations there was practically no interest in it in the division delorean said the engineers only went through the motions this was not their car and they did not want to work on it the chevrolet engineers also had troubles with the design delorean described the engine as noisy and said the engineers were embarrassed of it when they went to test the new car after just eight miles the front end fell off delorean said it must have set a new record for the shortest time taken for a new car to fall apart engineers added more weight to fix the problem none of the chevy engineers enjoyed ed cole coming by to check on progress and believe that he was rushing production cutting cost and weight everywhere they could they cut out plastic fender liners to save just two dollars and 88 cents per car despite these cuts the car still came out more expensive than they wanted and was several hundred dollars more than the vw beetle gm lauded the car calling it innovative with a simple design that would introduce a new era in the auto body building it had fewer parts than similar cars in a much touted six-stage rust proofing process gm chose the name vega as one had said after a star of the first magnitude brightest in the constellation lyra they called it the little car that did everything well even the lawyer went to bat for the car saying the vega would be built at a quality level that has never been attained before in a manufacturing operation in this country its popularity was helped thanks to the oil crisis which drove up demand for small fuel efficient vehicles the vega got an excellent for the time mpg of 28 city and could get as high as 40 miles per gallon on the highway when the car was released in 1970 it came in several designs including a two-door hatchback and a two-panel delivery version despite troubles including a strike at the lordstown ohio plant where it was built in its first year the car sold well almost 300 000 were produced for the 1971 model year and the next two years saw sales over four hundred thousand the car quickly took over american roads was well reviewed in addition to motor trends car of the year road and track said the vega was beyond a doubt the best handling passenger car ever built in the united states but problems weren't far behind in april 1972 a recall affected 129 000 vegas because engine backfires could damage the muffler which could cause the car to overheat which could start a fire in may another recall affected 350 000 vegas because a loose part could cause the throttle to be jammed open and in july a recall affected 500 000 vegas because the rear axle could become detached one writer noted that by the end of 1972 95 of all vegas had critical safety flaws several other problems haunted vega owners the aluminum engine had a tendency to shake which broke valve stems and the engine got so hot it frequently warped instead of steel sleeves the engine cylinders were coated in silica but the heat distorted the cylinders which caused the silica to wear off causing the engine to guzzle oil or even fail completely chevy offered a number of fixes to owners at no cost like a coolant overflow bottle and a retrofitted electronic coolant meter but the problem stressed both chevy's bottom line and their reputation vegas also quickly obtained a reputation for rusting because the six stage process had numerous issues when the frame was submerged for coatings chevy failed to account for air pockets that prevented full coverage the lack of the plastic fender liner and thin metal exacerbated the issue one worker recalled that it was his job to touch up rust spots that occurred before the car had even left the lot ralph nader founder of the center for auto safety described the vega as sloppily crafted unreliable and unsafe along with its design flaws the car unfortunately faced production issues the lordstown ohio plant where it was built was billed as the most advanced and automated production facility in the nation delorean instituted strict quality control and even fixed the cars as they came off the line but in 1971 gm put the plant under the gm assembly division and hundreds of workers were immediately fired including quality control workers morale at the plant was notoriously low and workers apparently were doing sloppy work or even sabotage as production attempted to reach 100 cars an hour problems with the workforce led to a 22-day wildcat strike in march of 1972. lord's town syndrome became a term that represented particularly bad labor management relations the source of many of the vegas problems was its rushed production cars magazine said that tests which should have been done at the proving grounds were performed by customers necessitating numerous piecemeal fixes by dealers chevrolet's bright star received an enduring black eye despite the continuing development program which eventually alleviated most of those initial shortcomings but those fixes were slow in coming was until the 1976 model chevy attempted to fix most of the engine issues jim was so confident in the new durabilt version of the cars they had nine drivers take shifts to run vegas non-stop for 60 000 miles and none of them overheated but it was too late by 1976 it produced only 160 000 cars and that number was less than half that for the cars final model year in 1977. even was selling well it never outsold the ford pinto delorean tried to sell a souped-up version called the cosworth vega for two years which had a twin cam cosworth engine but the car was too expensive for the time recession and inflation made the car twice as expensive as the regular model unattractive and only a few thousand cars were sold the whole model was retired in 1977 although re-badged versions like the chevy monza continued for a few more years despite its individual failures the vega itself was not catastrophic for gm jim was a huge company and it was making plenty of money to absorb what it lost on the vega one writer noted that checkered history only reinforced the belief that gm made inferior small cars this legacy would prove far more important than any direct impact the vega would have on gm profits vega became synonymous with bad a reputation that stuck to gm this is true for other american subcompacts built to compete with imports as well such as the much maligned fort pinto and the amc gremlin it was also emblematic of the changing times no longer would each division be controlled like a self-running fife dome but each would work as parts of a whole sharing designs parts and even engines the pontiac aster and the chevy monza were both based on the vega frame today many cars have twins that are altered and rebranded cars that use the same parts all of this reduces overhead and makes it easier for consumers to repair their cars the vega was an attempt to produce and release an inexpensive car by taking advantage of new technology but the new technology was insufficiently tested and inexpensive seemed to mean cheap providing a fertile ground for imports like the toyota corolla the beetle the honda accord and many others that are so common on today's roads some 2 million vegas were produced in the 1970s but they disappeared from the roads almost as quickly as they had appeared the vega represented significant changes not for just general motors but for the american auto industry as a whole as the trends that drove the vega more foreign competition rapidly changing technology and the demand for more fuel-efficient cars drove the industry for years to come to be fair the vegas still does have its supporters in 2010 motorton classic magazine said that well-maintained examples are great-looking nice driving economical classics like baltic avenue with a hotel but actually for the most part the car's reputation is almost comically dismal and they're very frequently make the lists of worst cars ever built car and driver magazine described the vega as one of the most embarrassing award winners in automotive history and said the vega that the only time anyone ever saw a vega on the road when it wasn't puking out oily smoke was when it was being towed i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section i will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe

Channel: undefined

Views: 348,403

Rating: 4.9648547 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, us history, automotive history, chevrolet vega, chevy, vega

Id: pN1uWf2_t_g

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dtrav001]

Oy-y-ye, I owned one of these, a '76 … at least it was a start for US small cars, but yes, a few problems: a steel motor using aluminum inserts for the pistons, impregnated with silicon nodules to give the aluminum resistance against the drag of the pistons … not. Did not work, engines blew up prematurely, as did mine. Solid rear axle, as opposed to independent suspension, gave the car 'interesting' handling characteristics under harder cornering, they were prone to crashes, as was mine. How far we've come!

[u/Coneskater]

The history guy deserves to be remembered.