This story comes from when I was just recently a self acclaimed car guy. At 17, I had seen a silver 76 Corvette Stingray in a backyard in VA (I'm from CT) about a year prior, and then hit the books and the internet to learn about this old car. Needless to say, bought it. (not running for five years, sat in a field for 14 years. this becomes important later). I fixed it up over a year, with no budget basically, and finally took it to Mark's Classic Car cruise in June, 2017. Rightfully I felt outclassed, with about 750 cars looking better than my own (which they told me to park next to all the new C7s LOL, what a privilege). Now here's where the action happens. I motioned to leave because my front left tire was losing air fast (old car, new problems), fire up the 160,000 mile chebbie 350/TH350 with open 4" side pipes (180 net horsepower, 270 torque factory. anemic), and people look then turn away as they hear the low compression thud and blat of the mid seventies. I get to the road and come to a stop light with a half mile straightaway ahead. Next to me is this (Insert Buick green color here) kind of puke green trishield car that slides to a stop to my right at the light. I make the mistake of looking over to my right, and this mid-fifties man peers back over his land yacht, compared to this small corvette. Convertible buick lesabre? At that point in time i didn't know the difference. We locked eyes, and he had that sort of confidence that says, I've already won. I could barely hear his car over my own, and when the light turned green, I gave it half throttle and the buick hooked with no spin and glided past me, on rails. I knew I would be stupid to challenge him so I kept it at half as we crested 40 then 50, he was in front by 4 or more by now. Neither of us ever smashed the go pedal, and I assure you his stare caused that. That is partly what caused me to look into Buicks, and damn Im glad i sold that corvette on a friday(but wow when I hit 100mph on the interstate at WOT on the way to the buyer i felt inner peace lol, never heard an engine like it before or since) and picked up the 67 Riv hours later on saturday. I would have been embarrassed, and now i have the gift of embarrassing others
I knew somebody years back with the same car, save for the disco mag wheels. Rode well, but lacked the pull of earlier models. The mid-70s were not great years for GM.
All cars started going downhill in 71, it was a terrible time for enthusiasts and dailies alike. The new cars that we have available today are light years ahead in engineering,performance,build quality and safety. In my opinion it’s because of two major things. One is a lot of our kids who went to electrical /mechanical engineering school and are very computer fluent which runs most of the systems on current cars,two is Cad/cam manufacturing to make build quality what it is today. Look at the current Corvettes 650 hp. Who would think in the mid 70s that they would ever see a car with that much power and still get near 30 mpg?
