After my soliloquy on a "pillared hardtop", 1976 Buick LeSabre coupe, thought I'd do a quickie on a 1975 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe, General Motor's last "true" full-size, hardtop coupe. I knew it would be a challenge to find one and it was. There aren't that many "pillared" 1974 and 1975 Impala "Custom Coupes" out there either these days let alone these "hardtop" coupes. I hope you like green.
Technically, all automobiles that have a fixed roof are "hardtops", but in automotive terms, a "hardtop" is a car with a fixed roof that has no center pillar or post emulating the look of a convertible with its top up or closed. The Big Three, well, Three and Half if you count AMC, built hardtop four-door sedans and station wagons as well.
On paper you'd think the differences nuanced but they're really not. Here we have two 1975 Chevrolet Impala coupes, the one on the left is a 1975 Impala "Custom Coupe", note the upright post behind the passenger door. The one on the right is our vomit green "Sport Coupe"; there's no post behind the door. Buyers paid a $51 tariff for the post. It's a matter of taste as to which you prefer.
I thought the pillared coupes made the hardtops look dated when they first came out. Not unlike how the rubber nosed third generation Corvettes made the chrome bumper models look quaint. Funny how things age.
If there was any upside to the pillared coupes, it gave the cars much needed rigidity. They still weren't bank vaults, though. If you've spent any time behind the wheel of any 1971 to 1976 GM B- or C-body, you know how they shimmy-shimmy, cocoa-pop. The hardtops in particular. The convertibles were a shuddering joke. 1976 Impala Custom Coupe pictured above from a Chevrolet brochure with its suspension lowered to give it a more sporting look.
For an Impala, this green machine is as well optioned as a Cadillac. Power windows, door locks, air conditioning, tilting steering column, a six-way adjustable power driver's seat and a 180-horsepower, 400-cubic inch, 4-barrel V-8.
Naturally, the interior is color-keyed or matching and shows off General Motors injection molded plastics prowess at the time.
You haven't driven a mid-1970's car until you've driven one with a vacuum actuated fuel-economy gauge. The thinking behind it was simple and subtly brilliant; the more vacuum the engine has the better the fuel-economy. Go heavy on the gas pedal or floor it, reducing engine vacuum, and the gauge will let you know how bad you're being.
I know I'm not alone in feeling this car's styling suffers mightily from the five-mile-per-hour safety bumpers fore and aft. Like the so-called pillared hardtops, though, it seemed progressive, evolutionary and modern when first introduced. Most of us car wonks who are fans of GM's heavy-iron 1971 to 1976 full-size models think less of them now. Upside, though, the big bumpers, which have shock absorbers behind them, did help protect cars from damage in low-speed collisions; something you can't say about today's vehicles that suffer $2,500 of damage of front or rear end damage by just breathing on them.
Chevrolet introduced their first two-door a hardtop in 1950 which they dubbed, "Bel Air". They built two-door hardtops through 1975, a four-door hardtop was added in 1956 that they built though 1976. When GM downsized their full-size cars in 1977, there were no hardtops.
At the height of their popularity, or at the height of production where buyers had few options, hardtops accounted for nearly a third of car sales in the United States. Hardtops fell out of favor in the mid-1970's due to manufacturers concerns over government mandated roll-over safety regulations, that never materialized, and shifting consumer tastes.
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