I love getting my monthly hagerty magazine for all its great articles. My secret though...I'm always looking for a mention of what seems to be -the most unmentionable car in all automotive circles. Its like once you mention these cars...you've mentioned everything, and it's time to change the subject. That car, dare I say is the, nearly extinct, GM Hspecial clones..The Monza, Sunbird, Starfire and Skyhawk. In this article, I knew I had a gleaming hope. Just a few pages earlier.. In the same issue, in the Mustang article on Pg.76, the lowly Mustang II was receiving some quite controversial, yet much overdue praise and ranking. So I turn the pages and heres a deep and detailed story about the Mazda rotory engine. Surely they must be mentioning the period around 1973/74 where it was going to be GM"s new big deal for a new futuristic small car! A few pages in and it looked like perhaps that had been deliberately glossed over...strange, but like I mentioned I'm no stranger to my favorite "likeable lookalike" to be completely overlooked. But then....There it was... I see 'GM' in the paragraph and I think I've struck literary gold.. Then .... fools gold! They mention the car GM was going to put it in as the Vega and also mentioned the amc Pacer, for some hoopla, and to get gracefully passed having to mention the MONZA! MONZA MONZA! C'mon... Isn't it a great name when it's a race track in the hills of Italy, or a Corvair model? Maybe not so much for a swoopy new disco era subcompact. That almost had a different name (see below) Wierd coincidence that it sounds close to Mazda. (anoyingly so to the uninitiated observer who says Chevy Mazda? when I have to explain what my little Spyder decaled car is). Now... Technically, the article IS correct, in saying it was for the vega... The Vega -Chassis-. GM's Irving Rhybicki & Bill Mitchell, had super slick new body style penned up. Bearing styling cues, fully ripped straight off of a Ferrari 365 gtc+4. Rumour has it that a Vega chassis, and the drawings ( and perhaps the swoopy new clay models) were shipped over to Pinninfarina, to see if it would be possible to manufacture that new shape onto the vega chassis, at the assembly line speed of the Vega. They sent back a working prototype..(pictures are on the web including shots of the prototype engine installed, and a few years back a rare rotory front emblem for the car went up for sale on ebay). And the rest is history. Well almost.. As the article stated, GM canceled out of the wankel, with the factory tooled up and ready to produce the 'MONZA'...(To a bummed Jim Hall, who almost got a dollar per car with what it might have been called the 'Chapperal'). The only thing left to do was offer the Vega 4cyl...and Lucky for enthusiasts, and probably because of the success of the Mustang II... a Small Block V8! There is a remaining vestigal of this rotary endeavor GM bailed on, to be seen on any of the near extinct examples, if you can find one still sporting the stock hood. A 'Power bulge' as Dodge coined the term to a similar shape years later appears in the center of the hood of the Monza. It was supposed to have a low porsche-like center section, afforded by the low keg like shape of the rotory..but now has an unusual center bulge to clear the forward pully of the tall Vega OHC 4 cyl. In pure Italian esq flair, it's not unlike a 'camel toe' worn loud and proud on a hood with enough shape to harken to Ferarri's produced decades later. Quite a bold bulge for a somewhat modest and conservative stable of Chevrolet's at that time, maybe a bit embarassing enough for people to just want to overlook that uber sexy..'sex sell's design from the outlandish era of the disco themed mid to late 70's. Or maybe just customized shaggin' wagon Van's were all the rage. Finally, like most GM design's the final product would likely have also been a bit heavy for the Rotory, likely stalling any performance that could match its good looks. So Lucky for hot rodders like me, the Small block Chevy found it's way into lightest chassis ever. (shoehorned in, but there nonethelss) First a tinier than the original 265 v8 at 4.3 liters and 262.5ci and later a mightier 305, for the later years. California models even got a detuned 350 for the first 2 years).. And still Great for the Camaro to! (See article on Pg. 80) ...Having had that unique torque arm solution to all that torque in such a light duty unibody structure, surely helped pave the way for the future of a modern Camaro from 1982 and beyond, which utilized a nearly identical design right up through the 1990's. But Camaro guy's will never admit their root's are in a Vega based Monza, instead of a 69. Cheer's..
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