Would you buy a Supra crossover? How about putting a Camaro sedan in your driveway? This topic of car brands taking a popular model and expanding into never-before-seen body styles seems to be pretty hot these days at the Autopian.
I don’t mean just making a convertible or adding a sloping rear roof to a crossover and calling it a ‘coupe’. We are talking about taking, say, a model that has only been sold as a sedan or coupe and offering it as something totally different like a sport ute. Numerous automakers are discussing it, and some companies have already done it with things like the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross and the Ford Mustang Mach E:
source: Ford
This is not even a remotely new thing by any means. Ford raised eyebrows before by making a four door Thunderbird in 1967, and later even offering a full range of Cougars (even a station wagon) in the seventies and eighties. Neither of these expansions really succeeded, but it obviously isn’t stopping the idea from being tried again.
source: Classic Digest and Cougar Club
The latest attempt at potentially turning a one-body-style car into a series of vehicles involves another American icon: the Corvette. Now nearing its seventieth year in production, the self-billed ‘America’s Only True Sports Car’ has never been offered in anything other than a two-seater coupe form. There was one attempt during the creation of the 1963 Stingray to make a four seat model to compete with the Thunderbird, but it never got past the prototype stage (apparently an executive got stuck in the back seat when the latch broke and had to be freed by a mechanic).
source: Hagerty
An aftermarket firm even converted some into four door sedans called Corvette America. Created out of essentially welding two ‘Vettes welded, if nothing else this dachshund-like solution proves that the idea was not particularly sound.
source: Barnfinds
Will the idea of Corvette sedans or sport utes work? We’ll have to see, but I never thought the Cayenne would be anything but a short lived joke, and now Ferrari is even making a crossover.
Still, for perspective, I thought I’d take a look at what the idea of a range of different Corvette body styles might look like if launched in, say, in the heart of the Malaise era around 1978. Here’s the ‘Vette available that year:
sources: wikimedia and American Muscle Car Museum
Where do we start for our 1978 Corvette Touring Sedan? We’ve already discussed how General Motors rarely created all-new platforms for cars, instead choosing to share platforms between brands with often disastrous results. In the case of the four door Corvette, the likely candidate for a high-performance sedan would be the mid-sized 1978-81 A body which underpinned super-successful GM lines like the Chevy Malibu/Monte Carlo, Buick Century/Regal, Olds Cutlass and Pontiac LeMans/Grand Prix. This thing was later sold as the ‘G body’ after the ‘A’ designation was moved to a front wheel drive chassis and the RWD original refused to die. When I say ‘refuse to die’ I mean it in every sense of the word: if you judge cars based on durability and dependability, these things are likely some of the best cars General Motors ever built. Our own Thomas Hundal actually owned one (which is apparently still running) despite the fact that I am sure he was born after the last one left the production line in 1988. Even in the rust belt today, you’ll see a few prowling the streets like this Chicago Cutlass which was still commuting each day a little while back despite looking every one of its 400,000+ miles (according to a different site that spoke with the owner).
source: Bangshift
The only real crime against humanity committed by these cars was that GM chose to save a few bucks by installing windows on the rear doors that did not roll down. If you’re around my age you’ll remember almost dying in the heat of the back seat of one of these one the way to The Empire Strikes Back.
To be a Corvette, especially in the seventies, you absolutely must have a sloping nose with pop up lights. This creates a bit of a problem with an existing chassis since things like the radiator placement on the A/G are already determined. You end up with a long pointy nose not unlike the Dodge Charger Daytona and Plymouth Superbird. Still, I’ve tried to minimize it as much as possible. Here is the Touring Sedan model:
source: Classic and Sports Car
On the sides, small fender flares will cover the ‘Vette aluminum wheels and tires, and I’ve tried to use the two-tone paint combination to help indicate (read-fake) a flowing fender line like on the original car. You just aren’t going to economically get a sculpted fender on this boxy body in low production numbers, and I refuse to stick on big plastic flares like they did on the concurrent Chevy Monza Mirage; you can practically see the seeping glue coming out of the sides of these appendages:
source: GM Authority
For the design in back, we need to delve into the unfortunate history of some of the General Motors cars of the time, and you’ll not believe what you see. When the General is the butt of jokes, it sadly comes from true-life bad decisions like these.
First of all, you could actually get an A Body in a fastback style on Oldsmobile and Buick models. The only thing is, they weren’t hatchbacks; that’s a standard trunk lid on there:
source: car info and The Truth About Cars
Next, all Corvettes starting in 1978 had a big glass rear window. Of course, this opened up, right? No, you still had to shove all of your cargo in through the folded down front seats. The glass back didn’t open until four years later, and only on top models.
source: American Muscle Car Museum
Lastly, there were two special A/G Bodies that were built near the end of their run in the eighties. GM offered large, sloping glass backlights on versions of the Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix in an attempt to homologate a car that could catch up with aero Ford Thunderbird on the tracks of NASCAR.
sources: GAA Classic Cars and GM Authority
Based on the General’s earlier choices, you’ve probably already guessed that this glass did NOT open, which required putting luggage through a hilarious mail box sized opening behind a tiny trunk lid.
sources: PerfAuto and Motorious
I’ve added this kind of large glass window to my ‘Vette sedan, but it absolutely WOULD open up as God intended it to do. With a fold down rear seat from the wagon, you’d be looking at Saab-level cargo capacity, so this car would at least have a level of practicality other GM A Body sedans never had.
The overall look is rather silly but, at the same time, sort of intriguing in a very disco kind of way. My only regret is that it doesn’t look enough like another dumb car based on an earlier A-body: the SUX6000 from Robocop.
source: Hotcars
Inside, we’d add a dashboard and interior with cues that echo the concurrent ‘Vette, but with the more upright A Body dash (actually very similar to what was in the Pontiac Grand Prix with all of those identical circles). Obviously, lots of GM parts bin items like the window switches, climate controls, and the optional AM/FM 8-Track CB sound system shown.
While we’re at it, we might as well offer the station wagon body as well since you’d just be plugging the new body components on front. It might be inadvisable to offer the rear facing jump seat that was on all A Body wagon option lists, but the idea of a seven passenger Corvette is too tempting. Note that I’ve placed Corvette-style taillights in the tailgate of the Sport Wagon, but we would have taillamps in the existing super-low standard A Body wagon position as well; these act as stop/tail/turn signals when the tailgate is open (the door jamb switch on the lower tailgate would trigger them to work).
Wait, if we’re going A body wagon ‘Vette, you know what that means is a possibility, right? To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean that you should, but we ABSOLUTELY should make a Vette-a-mino! Yup, let’s get these mods onto an A Body El Camino back structure for a Corvette pickup. If it isn’t done in-house, someone in the aftermarket will, and if there’s one thing GM doesn’t like it is leaving money on the table.
As they say, you can’t turn a pig into cheetah, but you can make a very fast pig. Maybe that isn’t fair; honestly, in my experience (admittedly years ago) I found the A/G Bodies to be nicely sized and deceptively reasonable cars to drive. We’re going to do what we can to make this mechanically the Moby Dick of GM Mid Sizers (admittedly the GOAT is the Buick Grand National/GNX).
We could certainly go a long way to improve the ‘Vette Cred of this chassis by adding quicker steering, increasing the spring rates, putting on a rear anti roll bar and make the one up front about the diameter of your forearm. Also, we’d install disc brakes onto the live rear axle.
Under the hood, the same small block options available on the ‘Vette coupe would be on the sedan, primarily a massaged 350 small block with a four barrel. I’d want to make the 220HP L82 available at the time as an option on the Touring Sedan and Sport Wagon, but that might be problematic. The A/G body weighs about the same as the original ‘Vette (maybe less in some cases), and there is NO WAY that Chevy would allow a seven-passenger STATION WAGON to beat the Corvette in a drag race (the Buick GNX drew ire for doing this very thing). Nothing could stop a manual transmission option though, as I’ve seen a number of four-speed equipped Malibus. We wouldn’t be able to make a 528i out of it, but don’t forget that the Corvette (at that point on essentially a 15 year old chassis) was hardly a 928 at the time. Accords of today could outrun it, but the ‘Vette Touring Sedan would easily be one of the fastest and best handling (on smooth roads, of course) sedans you could buy at the time.
Hopefully the upcoming new models proposed today to expand the Corvette line won’t be as inane as the ones I’ve come up with, but the fact is that if General Motors had released this series of A-body based Corvettes in the seventies, they probably would have found buyers. Let’s face it, if people bought a Cavalier branded as a Cadillac, then a faster, slope-nosed four door Monte Carlo should have been an easy sell.
1978 Chevrolet Corvette Touring Sedan
Base Price: $7,230
As Shown: $8,720
Options Shown on Photo Car:
Air Conditioning (standard w/L88)
Power windows, locks, and seats
Leather Upholstery
Cruise Control/Tilt Wheel
Aluminum Wheels and F41B Suspension Tuning
L88 Engine with 4 Speed Manual
AM/FM/8 Track/CB stereo
Drivetrain:
5735cc OHV V8, 4 BBL Carburetor 220HP
4 speed manual transmission
Chassis:
Double wishbone independent front suspension- coil springs
Four link live axle rear suspension- coil springs
Front disc/rear disc
Recirculating ball steering
Performance:
0-60: 6.8 seconds
Top speed: 126MPH
All illustrations by The Bishop
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- What If Ford Had Made The Mustang Mach-E A Torino Instead? – The Autopian
- Corvette Is Reportedly Going To Become A Brand With A Sedan And Crossover – The Autopian
- What Car Deserves To Be Its Own Brand? : Open Thread – The Autopian
- Remember When Automakers Offered Many Different Body Styles Of The Same Car? COTD – The Autopian
“The only real crime against humanity committed by these cars was that GM chose to save a few bucks by installing windows on the rear doors that did not roll down.”
I wasn’t able to track it down, but I remember a long discussion (may have been in the comments at the old place) which came to the conclusion that this was done to get an extra couple of inches of rear seat width in order to classify it for three-across seating. This was seen as essential to marketing. Children being able to breath was not.
Emil- I’ve heard that as well, and it’s a novel way to get extra space. I remember seeing something in the advertising or the brochure advertising this ‘feature’. But similar sized (Fox Fairmont) and even smaller cars qualified as ‘three across’ at the time (I think), and they certainly had windows that rolled down.
I don’t hate these.
Deja Voodoo. Is that the term for making me want stuff that never happened? I’m ready to deep dive for that El Camino version!
I think the easiest and least awkward design would be a Corvette “shooting brake” made by replacing the C3’s fastback window with a breadvan style rear and either a simple vertical hinged rear window, or gullwing side windows foe extra pizazz
Slow Joe Crow- I am pretty sure that there was a company that made those, or at least the fiberglass panel(s) to add onto the back to convert your ‘Vette into such a shooting brake. You could likely fit a miniscule rear seat in there then. Overall, the C3 is a rather large car for something that only takes two passengers and a small amount of luggage.
Callaway did the Corvette AeroWagen.
May have been others as well, but I did check & the AeroWagen existed (even if the spelling bugs me)
TOSSABL- looks like there were a few places that offered kits. I especially like the ones with the curved top side glass since they don’t look as bunker-like as the ones without.
https://www.carthrottle.com/post/wve5636/
I’m with you on the glass: the solid one looks like something a porn star turned serial-killer would commission to transport bodies in. Visually it’s just too heavy in the back.
This Vette Touring Sedan sure looks like the new Cadillac $300k celestiq
I can imagine a Mustang Mach-e Rachero, but I don’t think Ford would take the kind of risk needed to bring that sort of vehicle to market. A e-UTE with a bench seat up front? I’d buy it.
I got a CM Citroen vibe from the sedan
As always, love your work and had a good chuckle at the thought of such monstrosities. I do have to quibble a bit with one feature:
“Note that I’ve placed Corvette-style taillights in the tailgate of the Sport Wagon, but we would have taillamps in the existing super-low standard A Body wagon position as well; these act as stop/tail/turn signals when the tailgate is open (the door jamb switch on the lower tailgate would trigger them to work).”
Fun idea, but there’s absolutely no way GM would have ever paid for redundant tail lamps. The rear view of that wagon is rather attractive, though.
I do appreciate your incorporation of the fastback/bustle-back type styling that was in vogue at GM during the period. And the Vette-a-mino, well, that’s just awesome.
OrigamiSensei- glad you like it!
I fully believe that on the wagon, GM would just keep the standard Malibu tailgate as is with a CORVETTE logo. Or just add round reflectors that LOOKED like taillights but did nothing.
I am down with the Vette-a-mino.
I think John Phillips at Car and Driver called the C3 “the flying dildo,” and I recall that slight every time I see a C3. Phillips (or whoever at C&D) was, unfortunately for C3 owners, accurate.
I think the late 1970s C3 is the perfect era to explore idea of alternate body styles and markets for the Corvette nameplate. The later C3’s muscular styling is ridiculous in light of the abysmal power output caused by analog emissions controls. When it came to performance, the C3 at that time was as much of a pretender at the Mustang II. Why not a wagon or a Vettamino, because a 1978 Corvette certainly wasn’t much of a performance car.
An American 1978 ANYTHING wasn’t much of a performance car. As a 1972 model myself, even now, two decades into the American horsepower renaissance, I still find that my brain is wired to look backwards, not forwards, for “real performance.”
I know for a fact my Honda Accord will outperform nearly every great 60s/70s muscle car by every metric – I just don’t believe it is all.
I would have cut out a bit from the massive cowl and if possibly moved the motor forward to cut out the wasted space in the front overhang as well. probably go with electric fans to free up space. https://cdn.carbuzz.com/gallery-images/840×560/487000/900/487992.jpg
JDE- as I said earlier, the placement of the radiator and such really locks you in to a big nose, just like it did on the Daytona/Superbird.
It’s really, really giving me an Avanti Touring Sedan vibe, and not just because of the shared name. Of course, that was on the bigger B-body chassis
That wagon is tempting. The sedan: I……er…..don’t hate it?
“When I say ‘refuse to die’ I mean it in every sense of the word: if you judge cars based on durability and dependability, these things are likely some of the best cars General Motors ever built.”
Don’t leave the B-body out of that conversation! I currently have been dailying one in western PA for about 3 years now. Absolute beast of a machine
(Yes, I realize that in the context of the article the B-body isn’t relevant, but I just can’t pass up an opportunity to sing it’s praises lol)
Delta 88- there is a reason I said ‘one of the most durable’ and not THE most durable, since that title absolutly goes to the 1977-on B-Body. Post-apocalyptic shows and movies need to show more of them since those are the vehicles that will be surviving, despite us Gen Xers trying to destroy them years ago when they were our parent’s cars.
While I love the concepts, can I say I also love the choice of color – that two-tone choice screams late ’70s…right between the pastels of earlier in the decade and the ’80s monochromes to come.
And those absurdly tiny trunk openings ala the Monte Carlo have also been usually-never-remarked-on Mustang “feature” forever. My SN95 has nearly that small of an opening (though Ford extended it a little on the bottom end, so it’s a touch bigger, but not in any really practical way).
I am partial to coupes, so I am not particularly interested in sedan-ized or crossover-ized (crossed-over?) vehicles. I’d prefer it if car companies started offering coupe-ified versions of other cars.
Give me a 2-door Lincoln Towncar, please. Or shrink down a Chevy Suburban to VW Golf proportions.
The closest I’ve seen was when Aston Martin was selling 2-door versions of the Ford Fusion.
One of my “want, but not grail” cars is a Mercedes Benz 300CD coupe. I’d drop a 392 Hemi in it to make a Daimler-Chrysler from hell.
The Vette-a-mino is a great looking car. Someone needs to Frankenstein one of those IRL.
Remove the bubble rear glass from a late C3 and you’re halfway there.
“[The Corvette] …has never been offered in anything other than a two-seater coupe form.”
For the first decade of production they were all convertibles. The coupe didn’t arrive until 1963.
mdharrell- wrong terminology on my part. I was referring to ‘coupe’ as a two door, two seat vehicle, and as such I was encompassing convertible and closed coupe. I know that isn’t really correct.
AAAAAAAAAHHHHH! Madness. Words now have no meaning!
No, wait, on second thought I don’t actually care that much. Please strike precisely one of the exclamation marks and replace it with a period.
Done! 🙂
I love this shit 🙂
I suppose that by asking for this, I was asking for this.
Yes
Quite explicitly
Good job!
I think if GM had ever gone this route, they’d have borrowed more from the Monza then any of the intermediates.
78 Monza wagon
wheelbase ~97″
height ~52″
width ~65″
78 Corvette
wheelbase ~98″
height ~48″
width ~69″
richardodn- the main issues there are that the Monza didn’t offer a four door sedan, and the V8 barely fit in that car. From what I understand (could be wrong) the motor had to be dropped to get to the rear spark plugs. Plus they suffered from front suspension issues due to the extra weight on the front wheels. Plus in terms of durability and space the G-Body has it all over the Vega (let’s call a Monza what it really is)
The wagon especially was just a Vega with a new grille and an Iron Duke. (No V8 option for the Monza wagon at all, there was a V6 but I’m not sure which one).
That’s correct, the Monza was a true pain to work on, the engine bay was incredibly cramped. I had one (not my choice, long story), a ’76, and what a POS it was. Handling was virtually non-existent at speed, and the weight of the V8 meant hit a large dip at speed, and the oil pan would scrape the ground. How do I know? It tore a hole in the pan and seized the engine. Being young and stupid, we re-built it, put headers on it (don’t even ask, never hammered so much in my life), and then just ran it hard till it fell apart.
I’d say COTD, but, really, this is more like a blurb I would expect on a page titled, ‘Are YOU An Autopian?’ because it captures so much of automotive bad decisions-and the fun we have making them.
Vette-a-mino!
I’m gonna laugh all day about that!
I … I … I kinda dig those. I have a thing for GM malaise stuff anyways, so this is right down my alley, if I’m honest.
I would have been six when this hypothetical car was released, and yeah.
I kept getting a feeling like something was missing from the wagon and the ‘mino and then I figured it out. It’s missing the C3’s wheel arches on the front fenders. Massage those a bit and I’ll take the wagon please.
10001010- exactly, but my point was that it might be a bit much for GM to make unique fenders. I wish they would. That’s why I did the curved two tone paint thing to fool the eye, but I really wanted to go full on ‘fat fender’.
The two tone fooled me, that’s why it took me so long to figure out what was missing.
10001010- remember that we’re talking about a company that made the Cimmaron where they changed virtually none of the sheet metal on a little Chevy. I was trying to incorporate the reality of GM’s maximum profitability tendencies of the time into this.
I’ll take a Vettamino, please.
did you see the Mecum Cadillac Eldomino go across the blocks this weekend?
The Corvette Camino is the one I want. El Corvino?
(Your Vette-a-Mino is probably the best pronounced, but I’m just not sure I like the hyphenation in print. Vettamino?)
Casanova Frankenstein called.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/536632111819846090/
Thanks: that’s worth clicking even if only for the Love Machine (top middle). The stretch Prius is mildly off-putting. As is the 6-door Delorean.