1974 Chevrolet Monte Carlo 454 - IM SMILN

Unless you remember it first hand, it's all but impossible to imagine how bad the OPEC embargo of October 1973 was. The effects of it were immediate. Literally overnight the cost of a barrel of crude quadrupled and the cost of a gallon of gas nearly doubled. Sales of gas guzzling cars dried up and with the gas shortages that accompanied the price increases, people changed their lifestyles in ways that hadn't been seen in this country since World War II. My children of the depression parents, who took everything to the extreme, kept our house as dark and cold as a dungeon during that very long winter of 1974 because we had to save "N-R-G". Crazy times. One good thing about the energy crisis was that it spurred a little diddy by the Newark Boys Chorus that no one, save for me, remembers.



Makes us wonder if the original buyer of this lovely red on red, 1974 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with the oh-so-rare 454 V-8 option bought it before or after the embargo and if they regretted buying it since it probably couldn't go more than 200 miles between fill ups. The base 350 engine with its teeny tiny two barrel carburetor would have a hard time with that distance too. Maybe they got it for a song since cars like this sat on new car lots for weeks if not months with dealers desperate to get rid of them to make room for 20 mile per gallon Vega's.

It's not like people didn't know that their cars sucked on gas before the energy crisis; it almost didn't matter seeing that gas before the crisis was like 29 cents a gallon. Even before the gas crunch, auto manufacturers were moving away from marketing performance, or the pretense of performance, to focusing more on creature comforts because insurance surcharges on anything construed as a performance car left said "muscle cars" languishing on dealer lots.. Therefore, the 454 was a curious option available on the nadir of the personal luxury car of the 1970's. Originally part of an "SS" package on 1970 and 1971 Monte Carlos, by 1972, again with insurance surcharges and all, the SS nomenclature was gone,. The engine, however, remained an option through 1975. Although, seeing that the beast had been detuned down to 235 horsepower for 1974 and 215 for '75, it didn't make much sense as a performance option. To pull a boat or trailer? Maybe. But as a go-faster option not so much. 



Regardless of what engine the 1973-1977 Monte Carlo had, what made them sell so well was was their styling. The big swoopy fenders were said to emulate the classic cars of the 1920's and '30's but that probably mattered little to the bourgeois; they just loved 'em. Honestly, though, I preferred the conventionally styled Malibu coupe this is based on but I've come to appreciate these as icons of a bygone era; much in the same way I appreciate the styling of our wretched 1977 Corvette. And somehow a set of fat tires and Chevrolet Rally wheels works on these cars too. Note the lack of a vinyl roof. Nice.

You'd think, though, that an automobile as large as this on the outside would have the interior capacity of a small motor home but that was never the case with cars back then. Big on the outside, cramped on the inside. Actually, when GM downsized in the late '70's, many of their larger cars gained some interior space. Sadly, when they downsized their intermediate of mid size cars, that was not the case.

Wonder how many times the original owner of this car stressed that they'd run out of gas waiting in line for gas? Hopefully they found some solace in this handsome interior. These are the famous "swivel buckets" that would "swivel" out for easier ingress and egress. Ridiculous, of course, but it made more sense than Ford's tilt-a-way steering column of the 60's. Other GM A body coupes featured these seats as well. Note the window crank, tilt wheel and console. Along with the 454 engine and lack of a vinyl roof, this is one oddly optioned car. Then again, power windows weren't as prevalent on cars as they are today but this is another example of how it's all but impossible to find two cars of this vintage optioned the same way. That shifter in park looks like it's in another county compared to the driver's seat back, doesn't it?

There are very few if any cars made after 1973 that have any real value on the classic car market today and the reasons for that are as clear as mud. Some say it's because of the drop in engine compression after 1970 while others blame safety bumpers. Others blame emissions controls and whatever. In any event, it is what it is. Cars made after 1973 have less value and that's why you need to be careful not to over pay for anything from what is called "The Malaise Era" - generally speaking  that's any car made between 1974 and 1982.

But if you're going to make the plunge and buy one, you'd be hard pressed to do any better than a 1974 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with the 454. Maybe they'll even throw in the vanity plates.