Cars of the '70s, Decade of Disaster or Delight?

[GMTruckGuy74]

I'm surprised I wrote that Cort and overlooked my love of GM's '73-'79 truck line. Chevy or GMC, I love them both (still would get the GMC though). I know this is about cars but GM's '70s trucks are probably loved just a tad more than their '70s cars I think

[knightfan26917]

LOL!  Ya know, I _almost_ pointed that out, but thought better of it since the topic is titled "Cars" ... thought maybe you hadn't mentioned them on purpose, Roger.....

 

 

Cort www.oldcarsstronghearts.com

1979 & 1989 Caprice Classics | pigValve, paceMaker, cowValve

"The curves around midnight aren't easy to see" __ Rosanne Cash __ 'Runaway Train'

[Drew Dowdell]

^ I have a number of first gen Toro references in my library, but back in the day many mags used 'stopping rate' numbers rather than feet, so I have no distance.

 

'66 tested by R&T recorded 20 ft/sec2, and control was marginal. Rear brake lock-up was an issue here. Overall rating was 'fair'.

Toro gained optional discs for '68, there the braking rates improved to 29 ft/sec2, with no fade.

Tires were a HUGE component in braking back then. A good radial will improve everything vintage today, across the board.

 

Interesting to note : when Buick gained optional discs, they performed worse WRT fade than the drums they were slated to replace. 

'68 Rivie with discs: # of stops from 80 (@ 60-sec intervals) before 20% loss in deceleration rate: 2. Rate was 23 ft/sec2.

'67 Wildcat with drums: # of stops from 80 (@ 60-sec intervals) before 20% loss in deceleration rate: 6 tho rate was a tiny bit worse @ 22.

Buick had the best brake engineers @ GM in the '50s/60s.

 

If you read a lot of vintage road tests you find braking performance is all over the charts. I have 1 test that's still a high water mark; 91' 60-0, '68 Olds 442, IIRC.

Must've been a lot of production variances....

 

It's interesting because from all my Toronado talk in other places, the original drums in '66 were scary bad with fading and just overall insufficient for the size of the car.  Many '66 owners seem to retrofit (futurefit?) their '66 with later model disks that swap over exactly. 

 

On my car, the issue is the opposite.  The rear drums are fine, the rear disks are fine, but the rear calipers tend to leak and fail easily.. and sometimes people will swap them from disk to drum... (the rare oddballs like me who likes the '79 - '85 model)

[Frisky Dingo]

With the exception of a few years at the beginning of the decade, the 70's were pretty bleak for Americana metal.

 

The Europeans and Japanese were building some fantastic machinery, however-

 

 

 

 

 

 

[oldshurst442]

My dad bought himself a 1970 Pontiac GTO

In Lemans Blue...I think the paint colour was called.

 Kinda like this one.

 Then he bought a 1974 2 door Impala. Dark red with a white vinyl top.

 

It kinda looked like that car above.

but their was no 3/4 window at the back...like this one.

 

Then we bought a 2 door coupe 1979 Impala...same dark red as the 1974 Impala.

[SalesmanSean]

Say what you will about '70's cars, I would take just about any one of them over almost any car from the 80's.  On design alone they stand head and shoulders above their next generation of descendants.  It seems like for an entire decade, maybe more, car companies forgot about making interesting and attractive cars and just put some ugly square boxes on wheels and called it a day.  There's a beautiful '79 Corvette Stingray on the lot here that gives me goosebumps to look at though, it could maybe use some mechanic work at the moment, but the looks....  About the only '80's cars I could say that about would be maybe a Lambo, because what kid in the '80's didn't lust after a Lambo?