Our First Cars Week Two: Chuck's 1972 Vega Hatchback

Fair Warning Dear Readers. This may be the most positive review of a Chevy Vega since 1973.

I wasn't even halfway through my 16th year, but it was time to have a car. I had a couple of motorcycles up to then, but the junior year of high school wasn't far away, and I needed a ride.

For whatever reasons, the idea of a small car won out over and large or muscle cars. Or any trucks. I really wanted a '65 or '66 Mustang, but they were just considered "old cars" in 1973. A Chevy Nova would have been nice, but...

The Vega was still new to the car scene, and they were really cool in those early years. The Vega GT was the most fun and racy looking, especially with the sport stripes that were usually found on them.

One day while riding around our little town, I spotted a red Hatchback on a used car lot. We stopped in, and it looked like new. Plus it had some very desirable options... air conditioning (This was July in Tennessee after all), tinted glass, the Custom Interior, and it had a 4-speed. The Hatchback also had wheel trim rings, "bright" metal body side moldings, and the all-important AM push button radio. Immediately, I began to wonder how many gears I could bark the tires in.

The test drive went well, up until the point where I tried to start it. I turned the key and ...nothing, except idiot lights. After a few panicked moments thinking something was wrong, the salesman came over and said I had to push the clutch pedal in... this was the first car I had tried to drive that had a clutch starting safety switch. But the rest of the ride went well, and the air conditioning worked very well on that hot July day.

So for $2,100 and taxes I had my first car... shiny red, less than a year old, and still in warranty... a 1972 Chevy Vega Hatchback with a folding rear seat that made a flat floor. It was in nearly showroom condition. What could possibly make a 16-year-old much happier?

The car's appearance was always well-groomed, but the drivetrain caught the dickens. Getting rubber in the first two gears was always easy, and sometimes even third made a chirp. But one day, just once, I made fourth gear spin some tire.

On March 14, 1974, I drove the car and two lady friends some 40 miles east to Murfreesboro to see my first concert. Elvis Presley was at MTSU's Murphy Center, and performed to a sold-out house. I still have the torn ticket stub and some amazing photographs of The King doing what he did best (They let you bring cameras into concerts in those days).

Here's yours truly being a typical teenager... launching a smoke grenade into orbit via a slingshot. It's one of very few images of me with the car, so I included it here. Don't do this at home, as they say.

Between June of 1974 and December, 1975, I had a new Mustang II. But it didn't have A/C; the Hatchback did, and since it had stayed in the family, I retook the car until it left us for good. I missed the mini pony car, but at least I knew the Vega's history, including its quirks.

The autumn of 1976, my second year of college, started by loading practically everything I owned at the time into the Hatchback. Amazingly, from the foot locker to the Titanic life preserver, I still have virtually all of the items in that cargo space except for the wine bottle.

The car got me mostly through the rest of college; the vinyl seats split several mornings when I sat on them in sub-zero degree weather. That was The Winter Of 1977, a brutal one at best.

We sold the red Vega later that year, then I went to Florida for the summer. But it was time for it to go. The car had seen its best days, and the differential had somehow acquired a bit of play in it. Actually, a lot of play.

Maybe all of that tire spinning wasn't such a good idea after all?

--That Car Guy (Chuck)

Image Credits: The first photo was taken the day I drove the car home. That and the other two are from a photo album I keep that only contains pictures of cars.

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