It has been a while since I have purchased my malaise era, 1975 Pontiac Parisienne and I think for most carmakers, 1975 and 1976 were the last years for the two-door hardtop body style.
In terms of sports coupe cars, each one made, from a Model T Ford to a 1976 Pontiac Parisienne, was either a two-door sedan or a two-door hardtop, and the car sales form Ford, Dodge and General Motors (GM) from the early to mid 20th century showed that two-door hardtops were a more favourable purchase over a two-door sedan when looking for a sports coupe.
This massively changed during the 1970s, when the big three American automakers, being Dodge, GM and Ford, changed course on how to deal with the import car market.
Fisher was GM’s coach builder for a few decades and during the 1970s, they transformed muscle cars into fake European sports sedans with design inspirations coming from landau/cloth top cars of the early 20th century.
The results were terrible and in 1977, when production of two-door hardtops ended, the only American car that embodied the rebellious sprit of ‘60s muscle cars was the Chevy Camaro.
Ford faired extremely well during this upheaval because their Mustang, which was introduced in 1964, was based on the British Ford Cortina and that was a small, fast and good-handling car, and luckily for Ford, import sports cars in the ‘70s were based on the same concept.
GM and Dodge, however, like Ford, had European sister companies with small sports car concepts available for revamping and introduction into the United States, but that never took place on a large scale.
That is partly because there wasn’t enough of a market share for GM and Dodge to do so. Consequently, the majority of their cars during the ‘70s were personal luxury cars designed for cruising with ugly upholstery and landau tops.
Also, the cost cutting that the big three undertook on their cars during the ‘70s was brutal. They were experimenting with recycled steel, making body panels thinner, making frames thinner, using less iron in the construction of their engines and the list goes on and on.
Additionally, the government-mandated emissions control systems on cars from the ‘70s turned 1960s powerhouse engines into gas guzzling underpowered junk.
By 1977, every car made by the big three was a prelude to the horrible half computer operated, half vacuum operated small unibody throwaway cars that dominated the 1980s car market.
The only thing that was good about them is they were very good on fuel, but by the ‘80s, the Japanese, Italians and Germans were making some of the best sports and rally cars the world would ever see, and once again the big three were struggling to not get left behind by their competition.
My 1975 Pontiac Parisienne, or its identical brother the U.S Pontiac Catalina, purchased as a base model with a big engine, shared a lot of qualities with its ‘60s muscle car ancestors and that’s what made it a good car.
You could get air conditioning and cruise control on a 1975 Pontiac Parisienne, but with a 400-cubic inch V8 with a four-barrel intake, it was a fast car as well and more importantly, it was a fast rear wheel drive two-door hardtop embodying the reckless fun that you got with a 1967 Pontiac Parisienne.
Reckless fun are the key words. Doing burnouts and driving at 130 miles per hour into the sunset is what a lot of American cars were about in the ‘60s and the last of them were the 1975 and 1976 models that were replaced with slow, super safe gas guzzlers, and as such, the American spirit that made muscle cars cool died.
It wasn’t just the body design of a two-door hardtop and what you might use it for that made it special, but up until the late ‘70s if you bought a car, it was your car. You could fix it yourself and it was built to make you happy, not some polar bear in the artic or a politician looking to get votes from environmentalists.
With the reintroduction of that concept with the Dodge Demon, Chevy Camaro ZL1 and the Mustang Shelby GT500, it is nice to see American car companies get back to what they are good at, which is simply building fast cool cars that are meant to make only the owner happy.
