As we endeavor to document the Glorious Garbage cars of the world, certain themes become evident. By far the most prominent connecting thread of these various cars, all glorious and all garbage, is the thread of being all show and no go. All filler, no killer, writing checks your butt can’t cash, all that sort of thing. Cars effectively wearing the costume of a more potent and capable vehicle are perhaps the most tried-and-true formula for entry into the Glorious Garbage tribe, and today’s entry fits this concept with delirious precision: the Chevrolet Monza Mirage.
Starting off as a steaming pile, the Monza Mirage version takes inspiration from a truly impressive race car and transforms that steaming pile into a steaming pile with big plastic crap stuck to it. And stripes. Let’s dig in.
To understand the Monza Mirage, we need to first understand the two cars that, well, not really combined so much as one kind of tainted the other? Contaminated? Infected? I’m not sure. The first car was, of course, the Chevy Monza, the first car Chevy built with dual rectangular sealed-beam headlamps.
Oh but there was more to the Monza than dual rectangular sealed-beam headlights, if you can imagine that! It was a car kind of doomed from the start, being a derivative of one of GM’s biggest embarrassments, the Chevy Vega. Like the Vega, they were actually quite attractive cars, but also like the Vega, they kinda sucked. For what they were – conventionally-engineered rear-wheel drive cars that could have a V8 – they came too late for the muscle car era, instead being birthed into the cruel world of the fuel crisis, where whatever power they could have made was sacrificed on the altar of half-assed pollution controls, and more often than not came with the sad but earnest Iron Duke four-banger.
GM had bigger dreams, though, with plans for an NSU-sourced rotary under the hood, sharing the same doomed dream as AMC with their rotary Pacer plans that also never came to be.
They did look pretty good, especially the fastback body style with its big hatch, but these weren’t great to drive, they weren’t particularly efficient, the build quality was phoned-in at best, and overall they were fantastic cars for being an overworked person in the late 1970s and having, say, a heater control knob come off in your hand, causing you to just sit there, staring blankly at the gaps in your ill-fitting dashboard, wondering why life had to be so goddamn hard all the time and why couldn’t you just once feel really loved and what happened to the America you were promised and then before you know it, you’re sobbing and you just can’t bear to drive back to your empty apartment and prepare to go through all this yet again tomorrow. You just can’t.
The marketing for the Monza included such things as floating heads telling you things that just weren’t true, like how the Monza represented the car of tomorrow. Because it very much did not. The ones with the goofy jingles were a bit better:
Overall, pretty grim, right? Well, it wasn’t all that bad. The Monza design was appealing enough that it became the basis for a “silhouette”-type of race car: a bespoke tube-frame chassis that bore the look of a production car like the Monza. That car was the IMSA GT Chevy Monza, and it was no joke. Here’s how Hemmings describes these cars:
Spearheading the effort was DeKon Engineering and its fleet of chassis built by racing legend Horst Kwech and Lee Dykstra. Each of the DeKon racers left the shop with a fabricated A-arm front suspension, four-link Panhard bar rear, 17-inch tires, a Ford 9-inch rear with an aluminum center section, a four-speed transmission and a Chevrolet 6.0L V-8 capable of 570hp. Of the 17 chassis assembled (chassis #1013 was not built), all but three were dressed with removable skin based on a production Monza.
These things ate Porsches on a bun with brown mustard and washed it down with the driver’s beer. They looked and sounded incredible; see for yourself:
Fantastic, right? As you can imagine, Chevy saw an opportunity here to have an IMSA Monza-inspired street car version. To do this, they hired British Overseas Racing Team (BORT) from Grand Rapids, Michigan to design a kit of parts that could be added to normal production Monzas to evoke the IMSA Monza. Then, Michigan Auto Techniques Corporation (MAT) was hired to actually make the parts.
Really, the more you think about this, the stranger it all is: Chevy made a race car that was effectively wearing a Chevy Monza costume, and now they wanted to make a costume for the Monza so it looked like the race car. There’s some strange ouroboros shit going on there.
The parts that MAT ended up making were as follows, with fenders made of injection-molded polyurethane plastic and pop-riveted to the body:
-
Front fenders (2 pc.) -
Rear fenders (2 pc.) -
Front spoiler (3 pc.) -
Rear spoiler (1 pc.) -
Extrusions and end caps (6 pc.) -
Decals and striping (17 pc.) -
Blacked-out headlight and lower front grille openings
So, if you wanted to get a Monza Mirage, you had to order a white Monza 2+2 hatchback, then get the dealer to order all of the Mirage body crap, which they would rivet and sticker on.
That was it! There were no actual performance upgrades offered to back up those wide fenders and patriotic stripes! You could have one of these with a three-speed automatic transmission and the base 2.3-liter inline-four that made all of 70 horsepower, granting yourself the dizzying joy of driving a very aggressive-looking (from, you know, 20 feet away) race car with a worse power-to-weight ratio than a stock VW Beetle.
Of course, you could order it with a four- or five-speed manual transmission and the biggest V8 available, the five-liter with the two-barrel carb, but even then it’s still the mid-1970s and you’re looking at about 140 hp. We’re still very much in the all-show, no-go camp here.
Of course, plenty of carmakers had their looks-fast-but-that’s-it cars, but what really pushes the Monza Mirage into Glorious Garbage territory is just how half-assed all the add-on bits actually looked and felt.
From a distance, the overall package looked pretty good! But as you got closer, it was pretty obvious it was all big chunky plastic stuck on the car, and the plastic trim that hid the lines of rivets somehow drew more attention to the afterthought nature of the whole thing. Plus, as you can imagine, those riveted plastic chunks were perfect rust traps, which means if you actually manage to find one of the 4,000 or so Mirages actually made, it’s likely going to look like this:
That’s a Monza Mirage seen in a BarnFinds ad, and you can see the iron oxidelightful results of slapping water-trapping plastic outer shells on your car, especially on that rear fender area up there in the lower right picture.
I’ve gone on a lot about the Garbage aspect here, but I don’t want to neglect the Glory, because it is there. The Monza was, without question, one of the better car designs of the 1970s, and the wide-fendered version definitely has appeal.
If you had one of these today, in reasonably good shape, you’d make most healthy, well-adjusted humans smile at least a little when they laid eyes on this. It’s such an artifact of an era, all full of (maybe forced) Bicentennial optimism and brash charm. It’d be a pretty easy car to drive and live with, once you dispelled the idea that you’d be winning any pink slips at stop lights, because who cares? It’s got that blood-red interior and it velourishly comfortable and you know whoever drives this thing has some fun stories to tell and is down to have a good time, because how could they not?
So, with that in mind, I’m happy to welcome the Monza Mirage into the Glorious Garbage fold. It’s a steaming pile, sure. But a steaming pile of fun.
One of these with a BORT license plate needs to happen.
First of all, please take this as a compliment to your unique eye: the devil, and the artistry, is in the details, and you do see things that wouldn’t register to a sane person.
BUT, i feel like i’m always commenting on some detail of your story rather than the meat of the matter. I’m too weak to resist or too scatterbrained to focus.
In this case, your whole first paragraph feels like a tautology: without the chintz, all the GG cars would just be everyday garbage; if they weren’t garbage, we wouldn’t be here.
AND
“overall they were fantastic cars for being an overworked person in the late 1970s and having, say, a heater control knob come off in your hand, causing you to just sit there, staring blankly at the gaps in your ill-fitting dashboard, wondering why life had to be so goddamn hard all the time and why couldn’t you just once feel really loved and what happened to the America you were promised and then before you know it, you’re sobbing and you just can’t bear to drive back to your empty apartment and prepare to go through all this yet again tomorrow. You just can’t.”
is exactly how we got to the “GREED IS GOOD” 80’s. The total beatdown of spirit, with the Bee Gee’s as hell’s siren.
Sometimes, you know you are being lied to.
Even as a kid in the 1970’s, I felt/knew that this was just a bunch of stickers and tinsel on a Monza.
There’s an old saying, “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter”…
Half the weight and only 40 HP less than the same year Corvette, these things were actually kind of the thing for the era that saw graphics and all sorts of street freak add on’s from JC Whitney. the biggest thing though was with a V-8 already in the bay, fitting a rowdier version or even just righting the wrongs of the engineers was simpler. correct the retarded timing, put a spread bore carb on and empty the gravel bed catalytic converter and these were legitimately quick for the era.
now liberty walk will overcharge you to do the same thing to your crap car
If you ever had any doubt that Torch is one of the greatest automotive writers of our time this….this will settle that issue:
“These things ate Porsches on a bun with brown mustard and washed it down with the driver’s beer.”
That, to me is right up there with “Good Tires….”
I like the “(maybe forced) Bicentennial optimism” the most.
“Good tires”, Bob mused, casually lighting a cigarette. “But certainly not great tires”………..
Yep, one of the best Peter Egan Side Glances ever. A picture of “Bob” on the side of some back country road and below him lies his Ferrari BB512, having slid off the road and down a steep incline amongst the dirt, weeds and trees.
Appreciate your comment, it made my day!
Well… Its no Pontiac Sunbird Formula…
Or a Pontiac Can AM
Oddly enough, Monzas are sought after in land speed and drag racing because they happen to be unusually aerodynamic by muscle car/1970s standards. So they weren’t entirely crap, they got one thing right.
I meanso are 82-91 Trans Am’s but they were mostly slow but cool for their day.
17.5 sqft frontal area, but a 0.40 drag coefficient. Brought down to 0.30 by the full IMSA kit, not this tacked on one. The kit was that good because the Monza was the first car GM designed in CAD
I don’t disagree with any of your criticisms. And I still have wanted one ever since I saw my first one as a little kid. The problem is in finding one that hasn’t either disintegrated into rust flakes, or been hacked into an eighth mile car, circle track car, or similar.
Lack of power? Not with a different SBC in there – if Chevy offered it with one, that means you could replace it with another. Apparently this means that you have to pull the engine to change the two rearmost spark plugs. Which means you hot rod a Buick 3.8 V6 to go in there instead, which was another factory offering, which would not only be easier to service in that tiny engine compartment, but weigh less. There are lots of ways around the lack of power in this car, but by now, the real problem is finding the car in the first place, for all the reasons you described.
I had a Monza Spyder with the 305 and a 4-speed. The previous owner swapped out the intake manifold and was running a Quadrajet. It was actually a fairly quick car for the times. And you didn’t have to pull the engine to change the rearmost plugs. Those were easy (enough) to access. The #3 plug (second one from the front on the drivers side) was right behind the steering shaft (required a 90º boot) so the easiest way to change that plug without removing the steering shaft was to put a chunk of wood on a floor jack under the oil pan, remove the driver side motor mount bolt, and lift the engine an inch or two to be able to swap out the plug. Once complete, lower the engine back down and reinstall the bolt. The rest of the plugs were relatively simple. (and easier to reach than most of the transverse V-6 GM motors in the Cavaliers, Berettas, and other FWD “performance” cars that followed.)
My problem with both Monzas I owned was once you increase the factory power on the V8, the unibody can only take so much. My Spyder cracked where the front sub frame connected to the rest of the unibody and my 2nd Monza, a 2+2 hatchback, (which I swapped in the V8 from the Spyder, cracked around the rear suspension mounts. I gave up on unibody cars after that.
JT I appreciate your knowledge and opinion but you are just too young to appreciate the 70s generation of cars. Yes they all sucked but due to government over regulation and union total control. Frankly due to laws you couldn’t build anything fast. I mean 8 cylinders and 135 hp? So with years needed to invent a solution plastic crap instead of metal was the answer. I meayou ever wonder why JCWhitney was so successful then all of a sudden wasn’t? I truly enjoy you making fun of the Monza as probably the only car person who owns and has owned multiple cars all of which were worse than the plastic street Monza. I mean changli, beetle, to name a few. Neither could rum, last, hit speed of the asmatic Monza.
JC Whitney went bankrupt in 1979 right smack in the middle of all this, they recovered to financial health during the 1980s by dumping domestic suppliers and traditional car parts and accessories product lines and sourcing more novelty gadgets from low cost suppliers in the Far East, which over time, did their brand, but they still hit peak revenue in the early ’90s, then the founding family cashed out and sold to private equity like 10 years later.
The Monza was a John DeLorean joint. He wanted a sporty thing that “looked Italian.” Inspiration was drawn from recent Ferraris–there’s a clear “fun-house mirror” resemblance to the 365 GTC/4.
Circa 1979, a co-worker had a V8 Monza; another drove a Mustang II Cobra. Both made my Slant 6 Barracuda look like a Formula 1 car…
Wonder what V8 the Monza was, because that slant six had to have been boosted to the moon to come close.
I love these. I’m sorry.
I like how they think just saying the word “efficient” a lot is enough to make it so, the Monza V8 with a manual was EPA rated at 16mpg city, under the overly optimistic test procedures of the era, would probably get 10-12mpg.with the optional air conditioning on. Even at the time, that wasn’t great, there were full-size cars that did about the same
I disagree.
Well, the EPA rated the V8 Caprice, which was a full 3 sizes larger than the Monza, at 14 city, so a 2mpg improvement from a substantially smaller and substantially more basic car isn’t exactly significant, and is within the margin of error in real-world driving conditions. Incidentally, the 6-cylinder Caprice was officially rated dead-even with the 8-cylinder Monza. Trying to label it as a fuel efficient small car was certainly a reach, you have to give admit that much.
The 305 in my 1978 Camaro in high school got 13mpg in city driving, 12 with the air conditioner running. I swear, if you turned on the air while you were moving, you could literally feel the power being sucked out of the engine. It was like throwing an anchor out the back. I told my friends that the sensation from behind the wheel was like “nitrous in reverse” – it wasn’t the go-fast button, it was the go-slower button.
But it (kinda) worked the other way, too: if you needed a couple of horses back, you shut off the A/C. It was like the poorest man’s turbo!
Ehhhhhh… “power” is relative here, LOL.
I had a base Monza notchback. It was the first car I ever bought brand-new – I even ordered it. The build quality was exactly as described here, but back then, that was typical build quality for the Big 3. You would get your new car, drive it for a week or two, then bring it back with your list of things that needed fixing straight from the factory.
The Iron Duke was not a great engine, but at least I did not have to have my engine pulled just to replace the spark plugs as in the V8 (which was shoehorned in as an afterthought).
Mine left me stranded on New Year’s Day while driving from Detroit to Ohio for a friend’s wedding (transmission issue with the manual – would not go into any gear). Being a holiday, nothing was open, so my Dad drove down (I was very near the Michigan-Ohio border) and towed me back with a tow strap with his Lincoln.
All in all it was not a pleasant ownership experience.
I am dumbfounded we never see this generation of cars bragged about 12 month 12,000 mile warranties. Heck dealers more often than not had to perform fixes and repairs on vehicles when they were delivered just to make them accessible for test drives. The best thing to happen to the American car buying public was quality built Japanese vehicles that tore into USA built cars because quality was job none.
So…I actually own a ’77 Monza. It’s not a Mirage, however it has all the very ‘best’ you could get in a Monza – 305 V8, ‘handling’ package, instrumentation package (pretty much a rev counter and an ammeter), the sports mirrors, front and rear spoilers and the ‘Spyder’ appearance package (side stripes and a massive Arachnid on the hood/bonnet).
I bought it late last year and drove it three hours home, realising early on in the trip, that it wan’t going to work as a daily (and I walk to work!). Despite the retrofitted Holley 4 barrel carby and manifold it wouldn’t pull your Grandmother off a cast iron piss pot. That lump of cast iron in the nose is so heavy, that they absolutely demolish engine and transmission oil pans as they bottom out. It’s 47 years old, so there are a lot rattles and broken trim, but worst than that, the design and execution itself is just plain cheap and nasty. It was a car of its price.
Despite all that they do handle ok. The front suspension is loosely based on the Vega, however they are fitted with a torque arm from the diff to the gearbox, dramatically improving the way they drive. So much so that the system was fitted to the Gen 3 and 4 Camaro’s (I bought an ’01 Z28 to replace it).
It now sits in the back of my garage, awaiting a heart and brake transplant, however even that’s not straightforward. The V8 was an after thought into the Monza, so a ton of parts are unique to the car (such as exhaust manifolds, sumps etc). The wheel stud pattern is 4 x 4″ meaning aftermarket wheels are almost impossible to source without doing a 5 stud conversion from an S10.
The biggest issue though is that I live in New Zealand. It’s one of two road cars I know of here. (there are more Monza race cars here than road cars). As a result, parts availability is difficult, however everyone loves it out on the road so we’ll soldier in with it – I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the end…
I love it when they write about a mildly obscure car and someone chimes in with “I have one”. Thanks for sharing.
Maybe David Tracy will fly out and help wrench on it…. he loves that part of the world. Didn’t there used to be a membership level that included David (or was it Jason) that would come out and help work on a car…. that level seems to be mysteriously missing from the most recent membership level post. Too many weirdos or not enough?
Maybe he can bring some of the parts you need in his luggage.
I have one too, a “rare” (to sound like a Corvette boomer) factory 350 car. I don’t know where these people are coming from, they weigh nothing and are stupid quick for what they are. Even in general, they’re not slow.
I was kinda impressed with you until the last paragraph – New Zealand! Dayum! You actually get no credit, since even Kiwi doulas and pre-schoolers know how to weld.
350 Monza owner here! Glad to see another one. My 75 has the bonus of One Year Only parts on top of the usual Monza weirdness. Thankfully there’s a fair bit of parts available for brakes and axles and such. Wheels are a pain but there’s no reason not to swap them lol. I am a bit concerned about your 305, because my stock goodwrench 350 with a dual plane and a 670 4bbl will knock you back in your seat in any gear except third, but that’s from lack of HP not lack of torque.
Wow. Pop rivets. That’s backyard rust fix jankiness right there. Straight from the dealer with the approval of Chevrolet. That’s indeed glorious and garbage.
Yes! What could possibly go wrong?
“…those riveted plastic chunks were perfect rust traps” over aluminium rivets in holes drilled through mild steel, the perfect galvanic corrosion set-up.
And Chevy recommends the “BR70-13” raised white letter radial tires as an optional upgrade!
Geez, what were stock tires? Maybe AR78-13s? Or A78-13 bias ply tires?
The sad fact is that this was a desirable automobile in the Malaise Era.
Ah yes, the “cladding” era. Mattel and Hasbro had their outsourcing factories going full tilt boogie.
Watch for one of these to go for huge $ on BARF, er… I mean BAT.
OH jeez, what a steaming pile! My parents bought me a new 1975 Monza during my senior year HS IIRC, with the little V-8 that couldn’t get out of it’s own way. Fell completely apart in just a few short years, so I can vouch for just how bad these cars were built. Just compete garbage. Couldn’t hold an alignment, wandered all over the road at speed, no handling what so ever, and rattled like a spray paint can being shaken. I can’t even imagine having one with all that crap riveted to it, just god awful.
I’m a few years younger than you – by the time I got to HS, these were popular as cheap used cars with a V8. To change the plugs, you had to jack up the engine, so in the auto shop at school, we’d cut out the fenderwell and put some heavy rubber sheeting over the hole, secured with sheet metal screws.
I’d forgotten about the plugs! Nice solution your auto shop came up with, wish I had done the same.
262 car, eh? What a mess that engine was. I got lucky and my 1975 is a factory 350 car, but yeah the rest kinda tracks. Mine did sit for 15 years in the CA sun so build quality could just be age on mine but 90% feels solid on it. It sure doesn’t like 80 but with the little bit of play in the steering wheel from my halfassed power steering loop delete…
Smart of GM to kill the Vega name and refresh the H platform as the Monza. Few buyers knew the Monza was just a warmed-over, albeit good looking, Vega.
I guess they were out of BORT license plates.
Someone already had it, so they had to settle for A BORT on their personalized plate application.
They would have fit right in with the Top Gear guys driving through Alabama with those plates, with predictably similar results.
My company is also named Bort.
I like the “before” Monza’s lines so much better. Looks almost ’60s streamlined in a Euro way, as opposed to the totally ’70s American look of the Mirage version.
But I have to say it: “BORT?! Who on earth is named Bort?!” … “Come along, Bort.” “Are you talking to me?” “Hmph…no, I’m talking to my son, who’s also named Bort.”
There’s Blake Bortles…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Bortles
BORTLES!
I always thought the Vega vaguely resembled the sporty little early ’60s 2+2s like the Ferrari 250 and the Aston Martin DB6.
It was a great look to emulate but, unfortunately, the build quality was ridiculously bad. I mean literally deserving ridicule! It was the Amber Heard of automobiles, “So pretty, yet so broken.”
Sam here. To me, the Monza has some early ’70s Lamborghini lines, esp. at the rear hatch. But yeah, the styling was perhaps the best part of the package.
If I squint I can almost see a 1982 Camaro in that front end.
I always though that the Monza was originally designed to replace the Camaro, the same way the Ford built the Mustang II off their new 4 cylinder compact, but then plans changed at the last minute (the way the Probe was supposed to be the new Mustang at the time).
Same rear suspension, so the 3g camaro is actually a 2g monza. Also, the monza had a 350 in 1975 and the 3g didn’t get it until 1987
I wonder what it would look like if you were rebellious and put the white fenders on something that wasn’t white. Like black with white pop rivet fenders.
And space the stripes out a bit, et voila! un boite a merde francais!
I think it would look like you were part of the amateur tuner scene in the early 2000s. 🙂
Kind of like a Zero candy bar!