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'75 Monte Carlo

My first car, and certainly worth the $400 I got it for. Though I don't think I will ever find a 2 door like this all that practical ever again, there are a number of great features of the old Monte Carlos that I can mention. I do not have any pictures of this old beast, but it was rather unique. Blue....had been painted with a BRUSH! Not an airbrush....a brush with bristles! Gave the plain blue color a bit of a "texture"! Had some blemishes for sure, and, yeh, rust all right! But this was Wisconsin in the mid-80s, so what can you expect!

The story of this car, which intertwines with the 76 Grand Safari Wagon, is an interesting one.

My mother had had a '77 Plymouth Volare for a number of years, but it had given her major problems over the many years she had it and in early '86 when I was doing my "driver's training" sentence, the Plymouth was not running. Thus, the only training I really got on the road was in the driver's ed car. UGH! Anyway.....I had some money saved up and was looking for a vehicle in the $500 or less range for a first driver.

Since my mother's car was on the fritz and come around mid-April and we had no running car, it looked like if we found a car for me IT would be what I took my driver's test in. Well....with my birthday on a Monday, the Saturday morning prior and we still had no car, things were looking hairy for sure! We had my test scheduled for Monday even!

Well...my oldest brother had been helping me look for a vehicle and came over again on that Saturday. I don't recall more than a few vehicles we looked at, but after looking at this Monte Carlo and driving it, $400 was decent to me. Hey...it even had an 8-track deck in it! COOL!!!! At least I thought it was, as I STILL had some 8-tracks! WOW!

Well.....the odd thing is that while we were test driving THIS Monte Carlo we saw an old Pontiac wagon on the side of the road for sale......so we took a look at that for our Mother.....click on the '76 Pontiac Page for details of THAT beast....AND, the story of my driver's test dilemma!

Anyway...back to the Monte Carlo! I was really a novice with vehicles and didn't know much about working on them at the time, so maybe my ignorance was helpful at the time. I drove the car for about 2 and a half years. About as long as a Suburban, it's funny to look at these old cars....you sat over halfway back in the car! For someone short like me, that's a LOT of hood to look over! Still...I sure felt pretty safe.....not like in one of those teeny tiny aluminum cans called "compacts"!

Ride in these Monte Carlos was EXCELLENT! In my humble opinion, Monte's were Chevy's combination sports/luxury type car! Long, big, and luxurious, but also packed with decent power and a flashy look! The "fins" on old Monte Carlos are classic to say the least! The one I had was powered by the old 350 and auto tranny. Manual windows though....thankfully!

I later replaced the 8-track deck with a cassette/stereo and some decent speakers. Didn't really do much work on this otherwise. Had some distributor and battery troubles the first year I had it. Put on a couple better tires, and had a plug in heater installed while I lived in the arctics of Duluth. This was NOT the best cold starting vehicle, but it was better than some for sure! After getting the '77 Cherokee, I parked this old Monte out in the woods at my grandfather's, with a bunch of other old cars. Brakes were shot, gas needle shot, in need of major tune up or engine rebuild, some body repair(as the rust was getting worse), and other things that didn't make it worth it to me at the time. I really needed 4wd and it was late October, so the Cherokee was my "new" vehicle then. BUT......I'll always have fond memories of the nice ride this old Monte Carlo was.......certainly a pleasure to drive!

If you want to learn more about Monte Carlos, check out the Monte Carlo Web Ring!

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