We give General Motors a lot of stick for their constant corporate buffoonery, so it’s important to recognize when they do things well. In the world of car design, the GM back catalogue is stuffed with outstanding work. Given their resources it bloody well should be, but it wasn’t always the case. [Ed note: British spellings with an extra u have been left intact for an authentic content experience. You may also read the piece in the voice of Daniel Craig if you wish.] The Pontiac Aztek was a failure of vision and management – the phone call was coming from inside the building. But how well a company handles external rather than internal turbulence is a good indicator of the strength of their design studio. The mid-seventies in America were very turbulent indeed, but luckily for GM they had one of the greatest car designers who ever picked up a marker leading their studios; Bill Mitchell. Despite being near the end of his career Mitchell still had one more minor masterpiece left in him: the downsized B-body 1977 Chevrolet Caprice. Bill regularly enjoyed a lunchtime martini or three, so shake some up; it’s time for Damn Good Design.
Only seven people have held the position of GM vice president of design. William L. Mitchell was the second, hand picked by his predecessor and the father of modern car design, Harley Earl. Mitchell took over from Earl in late 1958 and was a rambunctious Hemingway-esque figure with a passion for fishing and drinking. But unlike Earl he was an exceptional artist in his own right and in winding back the excesses of the Earl era Mitchell ushered in a sleeker, sharper look for GM cars that from the early sixties until the mid seventies represented a golden age for American car design.
The interstates were endless and gas was cheap. The default American automobile had evolved as a creature of this environment – constellation class cruisers with power everything at your fingertips. Lounges on wheels soundtracked by the backbeat of an unstressed V8. Air-conditioned point and purr as the industrial decline rolls by your tinted windows. The domestic auto manufacturers were masters of their domain, but like Galapagos wildlife, tame and without any natural predators.
Big Government, Smaller Cars
The first Oil crisis of 1973 forced a sudden spike in the price of crude oil and a corresponding rise in gas prices which sent American buyers flocking to import showrooms in search of smaller, more economical vehicles that Detroit was unable to provide. There was also incoming federal regulation. to consider. In 1971 the NHTSA issued FMVSS215 “Exterior Protection” which mandated the ability of a car to withstand a 5 mph front and 2½ mph rear impact, coming into effect for the 1973 model year, along with the October 1972 Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Saving (MVICS) Act. To meet the requirements of these two pieces of legislation, manufacturers would need to add length and weight to their cars, just after the 1970 creation of the Environment Protection Agency and Clean Air Act would force them to consider the unthinkable: downsizing them.
As described by Michael Lamm and ex-GM designer Dave Holls in their definitive history of American car design, A Century of Automotive Style:
“Large cars like the 1971 Eldorado stood for an age that was about to end. By 1971, Cadillac had a 500-cubic-inch, 365-horsepower V-8 that delivered eight miles per gallon. Large Detroit cars with single-digit fuel mileage were common in the early 1970s. So when the first oil embargo hit in late 1973, it sent American car buyers scurrying into small, lightweight, fuel-efficient Japanese cars. That plus a flurry of new federal standards that regulated everything from bumper heights and strength to tailpipe emissions suddenly lifted the engineer into prominence, shoved money toward safety, downsizing, front-wheel drive and fuel economy and pushed the designer into a secondary role. The stylist’s glory days were suddenly and unceremoniously over.
Mitchell, along with everyone else who shaped sheet metal, had major problems with the often contradictory mandates of the new laws and requirements. Fuel-economy standards, for example, suggested smaller, lighter cars, while impact and rollover standards required heavier, bulkier pillars and bumpers. These tough times very much tested the stylists’ skills and, in the opinion of many, made men out of boys. George Moon commented this was the period when stylists became designers”.
Pete Estes was president of GM from 1974 to 1981. An engineer by training he decided GM would begin downsizing its full size cars in two stages. The first stage would be relatively low-risk: the downsized 1976 K-body Cadillac Seville. The 1976 Seville represented the exact opposite of Detroit’s ‘bigger is more prestigious’ thinking. It was the smallest Cadillac at the time, but the most expensive. A good reception and strong sales helped convince GM they could pull off this downsizing thing after all.
Mitchell’s ‘Sheer Look’
The Seville debuted what Mitchell called the ‘sheer look’: crisp edges and unbroken surfaces that looked like they had been created in one smooth movement over the clay. Boxiness provided more interior volume and making them squarer and more rigid looking introduced a formality and elegance that was perfect for Cadillac. Mitchell would next use his ‘sheer look’ on stage two of the big GM downsizing program – the volume seller Chevrolet Caprice. This was part of GM’s Project 77. According to lead project engineer William Collins in an interview with Hemmings:
The mandates for Project 77 were to reduce size and weight, while retaining style, comfort and roominess and improving fuel mileage and ride qualities. “The corporation proposed that development be done in a common location, and the chief engineers of the car divisions chose me to head up the program,” Bill recollects. “One of my responsibilities as project manager involved ‘politicking’ those same chief engineers to get them to agree on a package that design staff could work with.
It was one thing for luxury buyers to accept a more European influenced Cadillac. Whether the American heartland Chevrolet customer could be convinced to accept a more demure, smaller family car was another matter entirely. According to an article in the New Yorker from 1980, the downsizing decision was riven with controversy inside the company and outside in the wider domestic industry.
The new for 1977 Caprice/Impalas were to be 600-800 lbs (270-360 kg) lighter, over 10” (250 mm) shorter and 3.5” (90 mm) narrower than the cars they replaced. Mitchell directed Chevrolet advanced studio head Terry Henline to adopt the ‘sheer look’ to maximize the amount of interior volume for passengers and their luggage. Mitchell was a big fan of European cars, and at the time Jaguar was beginning to think about replacing the XJ, which had been introduced in 1968 (in typical BL fashion the XJ40 wouldn’t appear until 1986). Jaguar had solicited proposals from various external studios, and Mitchell got hold of a photo of Giorgetto Giugiaro’s ItalDesign proposal to show Henline. It had the boxy volumes, straight edges and almost totally flat surfaces Mitchell had introduced on the Seville and now wanted to develop further on the Caprice.
It’s Not Just Three Boxes. It’s Three Stylish Boxes.
Compared to the Seville, the Caprice is less formal in its proportions. At first glance the ’77 Caprice is just a simple three box sedan, but there’s a lot of very sophisticated design going on. The faster rake of the rear windshield tempers a lot of the formal, upright look that was appropriate for a Cadillac but would have looked out of place on a more mainstream model intended to have popular appeal. The amount of restraint shown in the lines of the Caprice are remarkable. It looks almost Italianate in its simplicity and elegance.
The chrome cladding on the rocker panels is proof Detroit couldn’t let go of its old habits entirely, but it’s pulling the old trick of hiding the depth of the bodyside, making the Caprice look longer and lower than it really is. The gentle taper of the trunk starts higher than the cowl at the base of the windscreen. Because the back is shorter than the front, this extra bulk balances out the proportions at the ends of the car.
Notice the gently curving feature line along the tops of the fenders. This again helps lengthen the car but also adds a feeling of strength and solidity. It’s subtle but provides a useful break in the body for two tone paint schemes, as well as adding visual interest and again helps the car look longer. This was important for customers not to feel they were getting less car for their money. You can’t just take a larger car, slap it on the photocopier and reduce the scale by 10 percent. It doesn’t work because the proportions end up being all wrong. Quite often in the studio if you’re making a quarter scale model, you have to cheat it to make it look right – it’s the difference between optically correct as opposed to dimensionally correct.
It Outlived Its Designer
The buying public responded. The ’77 Caprice (and its platform mates) were exactly the right cars at the right time – it was Motor Trend Car of the Year, and sold over 650,000 in its first year alone, up 45% on 1976, the last year of the full size cars. With minor facelifts it remained in production until 1990, outliving Mitchell who died in 1988, a remarkable achievement. The ‘sheer look’ would go on to influence Ford and Chrysler, and it would remain contemporary in American car design right up until the 1986 Taurus instantly rendered everything else outdated overnight. Even so, the third-gen Caprice was very different from the last gasp of the body-on-frame V8 traditional sedan. After Ford revolutionized the sedan form-factor, Chevrolet took those aero ideas and bolted them onto the bones of the ’77 to create the updated fourth generation ’91 Caprice, proving there was still life in the old dog yet.
The 1977 Caprice wasn’t the most glamourous car, but it was an important one. Good design is not a selling point we equate only with expensive products. It’s the process that enables you to arrive at an aesthetically desirable conclusion that fulfills the brief, whether it’s a Chevrolet or a Cadillac. The Caprice is skin to the GMT400 – you didn’t really notice them at the time because they would have been everywhere. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight, and comparing what came before and after that we can really appreciate just how good these were. The kids these days would probably only encounter them on YouTube watching car chases from old movies or TV shows, because like its crosstown rival the Crown Vic, the Caprice virtues of roominess, robustness and dependable V8 power made it the default car for John Q Law. But that association with law enforcement shouldn’t undermine what an outstanding piece of design work it is.
Once again this article would not have been possible without the generous assistance of Kathy at GM Design Heritage, who patiently dug into the archives to bring us these exclusive studio process images. Many thanks for your help.
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Those Bill Michalak renders are gorgeous!
Plus, what’s hanging on the wall in the picture from ’77 (the one with the impala sign)?
A guess would be a Corvette proposal, but my understanding is Mitchell was very protective of the Corvette and it was done in a separate studio.
https://www.deansgarage.com/gm-designer-bill-michalak/
Some other Michalak work including the posted renderings.
“An X body Nova in a cocktail dress. 1976 Cadillac Seville.”
She really cleaned up good!
I remember when these came out – I wouldn’t call it a minor win; it was a bases loaded home run. Overnight, these cars were everywhere. I remember the magazines of the time saying “why buy a midsize when you can buy a fullsize that weighs less, gets better fuel economy and carries more?”
I have a book about the development of the C5 Corvette where the design team gave Chuck Jordan the nickname “The Chrome Cobra”.
Sales numbers for this era always blow me away. On top of the fact that GM was selling multiple full size cars from Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick and Cadillac at the same time.
Can’t really get behind these malaise era cars though, even if you really dig down into their styling. They just have this “baroque” look I never really liked. Plus they’re just a reminder of GM doubling down on selling massive smog dog V8’s by bodging them with low compression while the rest of the world was investing in efficient engines.
This could have been done quicker and better without political morons with no intelligence. And we wouldn’t have so called safe cars of today with the visibility of a WWII submarine.
Wow. I love Bill Michalak’s illustrations. That’s art I’d hang in my office.
There’s a tonne of it over at Dean’s Garage.
GM should have used the design above that had the hidden headlights and the sportier profile for the G-Bodies! What a shame… imagine a Buick Grand National that looked like that.
These B-bodies were a good step ahead on design, and it’s aged well. I just wish that GM had done some other technological improvements under the skin, but, they were pretty reliable during a time when american cars were suffering a bit in that department.
Thank you for pointing out the intriguing details of a car design I’ve always hated.
I still hate it but I appreciate the details.
Love the last pic of what’s clearly a cop-package Caprice. Looks like Michigan State Police blue, too.
While everyone still talks about how they’ve memorized the headlight/marker light profile of the Panther platform Crown Vic in their rearview mirror, I’m old enough to remember when it was the Caprice’s lights you had to recognize. 🙂 They were the highway patrol favorites before the Crown Vic was really a thing.
FINE. Fine. I’ll subscribe.
Same!
I take it we’ll be hearing about the ’86 Taurus next? I am soo here for that!
Also, don’t think I’ve ever seen one of the coupes in the flesh. The sedans work well, but the coupe is where that design really shines to me.
The coupes are rare (technically they’re 2 door sedans) but the really rare one is the 2 door with wraparound rear glass. So cool!
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/coupe-roofline.jpg
Yeah, that’s the one that always caught my eye as a car loving kid in the 80’s, because it looked so different than the sedan.
I haven’t seen one in years, but I remember when I was a teenager in the mid 90’s the 2 doors were popular as budget street rods / sleepers. I always thought they looked really cool, almost mean when done up right.
I feel like I’ve already talked around that car in other articles here and over at the insurance company, but it might be worth telling the story properly once and for all.
Thanks for featuring this late-70’s design, Adrian! During my lifetime car enthusiasts have shifted from lusting after 60’s cars to lusting after 80’s cars, and gave the 70’s a miss entirely. There are plenty of good reasons for that, but I think that in so doing we’ve underappreciated some really good designs.
I’ve always said that a lot of 70’s cars had great design hidden under awful tacked-on jewelry: often to modern eyes the best looking trims were the stripper models that were sold without padded landau roofs and various brougham gingerbread work. But once you strip off the nonsense, there is often a lot of really pleasing body shape and crisp character lines to appreciate.
Yeah, this is true of the Cordoba and the Matador Coupe, too, I think, anyway. There’s good lines in there, but they got too much baroque gingerbread tacked on due to marketing realities
I, of course, have a soft spot for the 77-79 Ford LTD-II platform, where my Cougar is a platform mate with the contemporary Thunderbird and LTD-II. If you go look at the old brochures, the base models eschew the opera windows, padded top, etc… and look fantastic! But I’m honestly not convinced that they ever existed outside of the brochure pictures – I’ve certainly never encountered one in the wild.
Here’s the base Cougar (non-XR7) – no opera window, no half -padded top. Lovely!
https://oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Mercury/1977_Mercury/1977_Mercury_Cougar_Brochure/1977%20Mercury%20Cougar-12.jpg
Here’s the base LTD-II S (with sport appearance package); the stacked headlights always looked goofy to me, but the roof, trunk, and C pillar look much better unadorned like this, IMO.
https://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Ford/1978_Ford/1978%20Ford.jpg
Speaking of Chrysler, I think some of their coolest cars (styling wise) came just before the K-car era, with the Dodge Magnum/St. Regis and the Mirada, for instance.
Agree, I love the basic design of the Cordoba (circle headlights version please), but the “70’s stuff” tend to take away from it.
Although if done right, it can be nice. There is a silver one with a maroon laundau roof on the Wikipedia page. I’d take that one.
They-so was a wild time design wise, but when it hits and stick the landing, boy does it ever
I’ve been saying the same thing for a while. Seventies Detroit did some great work but they killed it with old-fashioned trim and detailing. Wire wheels, whitewalls, padded roofs, mock hinges, opera windows, all that tacky shit.
The GM commercial with the 5mph bumpers was awesome.
“Airbags! Can you fucking believe it?”
Achieving driving age in 1980, it was considered folly to purchase anything made after 1973, with bollixed smog intro. Nice, well written consideration of an era I never did, and the last I would expect you to cover. All the drawings are so superior to what we got.
No way! I didn’t expect to see this here, but I always liked the design of these for many of the reasons you pointed out. They also rode great and the interiors came in lurid colors where everything matched and the upholstery could be had in velour. I was recently looking to see if I could find a good coupe (preferably an aero coupe because it’s fairly rare and a bit ridiculous in a way that I find both amusing and cool, which fits with the very idea of such a large car—even downsized—being a coupe with its massive doors), but it seems other people appreciate them a little more than I do going by the prices out there that I’m not prepared to pay.
Thanks for deep dive. I was in middle school so I remember these downsized cars as being a big deal. As well as looking good they actually handled better than the previous generation. The Jaguar XJ40 connection is new information and it’s interesting to see where different design details ended up. I can see why Bill Mitchell didn’t use a Hoffmeister kink because the previous generation full sized cars and the X body had already used it.
The 1974 two door rendering with larger side window and smaller C pillar looks a lot like a 1978 A body roofline to me.
The rear door and C pillar treatment of the XJ40 proposal look a lot like a Peugeot 504 and the 72 Alfetta sedan.
The lead image is the 80 redesign used from 80-90. IMO it looks worse than the 77-79 version. The closest thing you have to it in the images you used is the 76 clay model.
Here is a 77-79 Caprice:
https://carsbase.com/photo/Chevrolet-Caprice_mp15_pic_51709.jpg
I had to go with what images I could find and use, and didn’t want to complicate matters. You are correct, but the overall sheet metal was the same.
“…but the overall sheet metal was the same.”
Yet that’s not the case.
A 77-79 front fender won’t fit a 1980-89 car because the latter cars had a greater taper to the front where the early cars had a taller front fascia.
The C pillars for coupe and sedan were completely different stampings after 1979 with their upright rear windows.
And the rear fascia has a reverse angle where the latter cars had an upright rear fascia.
Not even the doors carried over, with their higher-placed handles on the 80-89 cars.
Looking at the “Full-size side view airbrush render, March 1974. Image GM Heritage” you can see the 2 door G body…
I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking that. You can see some of it as well in the ’74 clay model as well. There’s a lot of Monte Carlo in that C pillar.
Good catch!
The Caprice clay model from 1974 picture really shows the style line in its flowing beauty. I had somehow never appreciated it before.
Thanks to you, Adrian, I am just a tiny bit less nekulturny.
Great article – but a couple nits here:
You start off your discussion with photos of the facelifted Caprice – The 77’s had a sleeker backlight and shallower fascia Some reference to that would have been good. Also zero mention of the amazing and unique-to-Chevrolet coupe with it’s bent glass backlight. I personally find it amazing that the low-cost brand got the most sophisticated backlight of all the 5 brands – there must be more to the story about this and how it came to be.
BTW – It was the Impala/Caprice. Far more Impalas were sold than Caprices – the trim work was simpler, the base chrome was quite thin, the grille was more complex.
“Also zero mention of the amazing and unique-to-Chevrolet coupe with it’s bent glass backlight”
Exactly! My Uncle had one of these when I was a kid and I thought it was one the coolest design features I’ve ever seen on any domestic car! Very distinctive, I also cannot believe this article did not feature it either!
For those not familiar with it:
https://dealeraccelerate-all.s3.amazonaws.com/ag/images/1/4/0/9/1409/111723_f380fc9e3f_low_res.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/87/80/8a/87808a23719e620dc057fd13bc0f0d90.jpg
In the mid 90’s when I was a broke kid who thought I could build a “hot rod”, these two doors were high on my list since I thought they looked really good and they were relatively cheap compared to a F-Body or Chevelle, etc.
I can see why you wanted to to that!
They were a rare sight when I was growing up, (Coupe) but the sedans were ubiquitous.
See my comment above. We’re limited in what images we can use, and I didn’t want to digress getting bogged down in minor model year changes.
IIRC, it was done for NASCAR, but was never actually raced or didn’t race very long. Same idea as the later Monte Carlo SS aerodeck, though looks-wise, I liked the aero glass better on the Impala/Caprice.
That doesn’t make much sense – as the Pontiac and Buick share a more raked (and less costly to produce) roofline with large rear quarter windows, and Oldsmobile had it’s own roofline with thicker C pillar and more formal rectangular quarter window – with the same back glass as the Pontiac and Buick.
One would think that higher-brow Buick or Olds would have had the more costly rear glass – especially Olds, given they had their own version of that glass window on it’s 77-78 Toronado XSR.
I don’t know what to tell you as I wasn’t privy to GM’s divisional decisions in the late ’70s (or ever). If you look up “Chevy Caprice NASCAR”, there are pictures of them, which fits with them being downsized and, therefore, able to be raced and Chevy probably wanted to show a positive spin on the downsizing, worried as they were about how customers would receive it. Apparently, NASCAR downsized around ’81, so they changed to the Monte Carlo and—just like these earlier Impala/Caprices—Chevy used an aero back for a short time (as well as Pontiac), but not their platform mates that were also in NASCAR.
My parents had the an ’81 or ’82 Buick LeSabre, which honestly is the less attractive twin to the Caprice, with the Olds 350 diesel. Despite the diesel not being a gem (far from it), that car was pretty sweet. It had the sweet blue velour interior, with what may still be the most comfortable seats I have ever experienced in my life. The trunk was also massive, and the thing rode like a dream. I have always considered that the Caprice and its twins, like the Ford LTD, were diamonds in the rough of the malaise era.
While I love Buick, through most of the badge-engineering years, it was the Buick version of each platform that was the ugly duckling.
This is true. The headlight design on the Buicks was absolutely terrible compared to how good the headlight design was on the Caprice. I was just glad that my parent’s LeSabre was optioned with the metal roof instead of the abysmal vinyl top.
On the other hand, the tail lights on the Buicks (especially the LeSabre) were fairly revolutionary for the time, with amber turn signals. Torch would approve.
Did they? I recall the tail light having a ridge that followed the body lines on the corner, but my memory was the light was all red (aside from the reverse light on the side of the light facing the center). I hope my memory is faulty, because amber turn signals are superior.
The early LeSabres (’77-79) had horizontal lighting elements (amber top, red bottom), and a vertical back-up light on the inside edges.
Oh, right! I recall those now that you described them. They were certainly better than the tail lights that came with the early 80’s cars.
For the ’80s G-bodies, I thought the Pontiac GP was ugliest by far, though Buick was up next.
Friends had the diesel Electra coupe with that plush blue interior.
What a great car!
My parents also bought a new 1981 LeSabre diesel. It was 2-tone jade green metallic: dark on the bottom and light on the top. Wheels were the chrome Rallye type. The interior was light jade green velour with the usual fake plastic wood on the dash. Build quality was sub-par. My Dad spent months trying to get the dealer and the GM zone rep to fix the paint, which had dirt nibs all over the place. Even as a 12-year-old I could see that it was cheaply made. My parents liked it, but I thought it was a sled. It rode and handled like a couch. The diesel was as mediocre as you would expect; the dealer said that our car was the only one they ever saw that didn’t leak oil! Still, we kept the LeSabre for years, eventually having an Olds 307 gas V8 swapped in when the diesel blew its head gaskets at 120k miles. The shortcomings of that car, along with my Mom’s 1978 Olds Cutlass Salon 2-door, made me a Euro car driver for a while…until I went to work for Chrysler Corp. in 1994.
My parent’s was also two-tone, but dark blue on top and silver on the bottom, and also had the chrome rallye wheels. My parents sold it in the late 90s with 180,000 miles on it. Despite the general reputation of the Olds diesel, my parents had pretty good luck with it. My dad, thanks to his German upbringing, immediately used it as an excuse to pick up an older Mercedes 300TD, which he then drove to 380,000 miles. I think my dad’s upbringing in diesel-centric Europe helped him to be a better steward of diesel engines than most Americans.
These are such good looking cars. Especially with slick roofs.
Change the TopShot to a Coupe please. While the sedan was certainly gorgeous, the coupe was somehow rectilinear perfect.
I humbly disagree.
But the coupe greenhouse just fit better. That rear glass treatment. The scale. The stance. The sedan was great, but the coupe just nailed the proportions so well. It seems other agree, but they are probably Beatles fans. 😉
BTW, no need for any humility, especially with me. You are a designer and I am pretty much the opposite. A destroyer if you will. 🙂
Like, if you saw the color I painted our kitchen you’d likely lobby for termination of my membership and a permaban. Oh, and Crocs with socks to boot.
As someone who was in preschool when the Caprice was wrapping up production, this was really informative. All the Caprices I encountered as a kid were absolutely thrashed to hell by the time I was old enough to care or notice. Sometimes it’s hard to see the design through the rust, dents, and billowing cigarette smoke that tended to come out of these when the doors or windows were opened.
Really cool photos of the entire design process too!
Fantastic article! Those clay model photos are very interesting. The first 10 years of my driving life were spent in Caprices – first a 78 2 door and then an 88 9C1 police car. Simple, durable, comfortable. The heavy duty suspension in the police package made for a very competent handler with excellent brakes. The lead photo is not a ’77, its from after the 1981 refresh where they further cut weight, lowered the hood, and dipped the front bumper.
As much as I skew Panther because my grandparents had an 80’s Crown Vic when I was young, and as such it’s the first car I loved, GM got it so much more right than Ford here. My exceptionally irrational desire is for the Caprice Eurosport that never existed, even if the whole Eurosport thing was goofy (it’d essentially be a proto-Impala SS, but more pretentious).
Yes, I’ve owned 4 Panthers and 1 GM B-body over the years – what Ford got right was better durability and generally better build quality, but the GM cars rode better and had better packaging, more rear seat room (at least until Ford added the highly belated LWB option), more trunk space. The first generation downsized B-bodies were also much better looking than the first Panthers, but I’d say the second generations are a toss-up.
Overall, the Panther had more of a designed by committee feel, in the more negative sense of that term.
I’d agree with this. GM had the better design, while Ford had the better quality. But this is also one of the rare scenarios in the eternal battle between GM and Ford where I’d ask: Why bother picking one when you can enjoy both?
A Eurosport “what if” OEM-looking ’80s Impala would be a great build!
Like the ’94 Impala SS, but “what if” the previous generation. With how much GM was trading on ’60s muscle car nostalgia in the ’80s on the G-bodies, it’s weird they didn’t think to do something on the bigger cars
There are more than enough magazine articles about assorted box B-bodies the engineering teams played around with (I’m thinking a Corvette-powered Caprice wagon to use as a chase vehicle, or a Grand National-powered Electra), so it must’ve been shut down by the beancounters?
Paging the Bishop, the Bishop to comments section 2-9-24-6…
GM did build this, if only as a test mule.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a42721137/1983-chevrolet-caprice-wagon-corvette-chaser/
Now imagine a modern one with 6.2 liter 430hp aluminum LS and 10 speed. And it would probably get 30mpg at cruise.
I´ve got little to no experience with LS engines but, can they really be that efficient? That´s only a couple mpg´s lower than what my focus would return
Big engines not working hard can be as or more economical than a smaller one working very hard.
High compression, direct injection, 10 speed trans with big overdrive ratio, and a whole bunch of other refinements.