That isn't "bad", it actually is decent. Really though, the only people who give the 1971-76 Big Chevies any love are the Donk crowd who alter these things with their 26" wheel, rubber band tires, and interiors done in bright primary colours.


Having said that people don't really care about that generation, guess who has been busy doctoring & restoring brochure images of these things? Me! Why? Because I remember them new, driving them new (o.k, not legally since a little underage), and collecting all the brochures when new. In the brochures, especially the Canadian brochures where they would airbrush one model into another very crudely, it was actually disturbing to see some of the really crappy pictures that came in them. To wit:

Wtf?

Seriously, these cast-offs were prominent in the brochures. You don't even want to see  the Bel Air coupes.

I knew I could fix it. Besides, I like the challenge to see what I can crank out.

I had to change the proportions of doors, windows, sail panel, headrests, used a production nameplate, created door frames, and watched the body contours. I did most in one day but after 3 days I was 1800+ edits into it. If you check it against the picture Todd posted a few day's ago here you can see the proportions are the same:

Actually GM used an Impala Custom Coupe to create that blue, hideous '73 Biscayne. I have seen it, they didn't move a thing, just attacked it with an airbrush. Even if they were in a hurry, I did better than them in 1 day.

Probably the reason I was attracted to those particular pictures is that they were taken right in the Warren Tech Centre, and the scene looks just like I remember it at Hamilton Golf & Country Club circa 1972 when I rode my bike around to look at all the fancy cars.

I'm a big fan of the cars of this 71 to 76 era. Wonderful highway cruisers. When the shock absorbing bumpers came in 73 these things were battleships. Hard to find nowadays though. Stock cars and demo derbys ate them up and they're first to go to crush at the wreckers due to their weight. Then the donk thing happened. I recently caught one at a local wrecker just by chance as a friend happened to be there when it arrived. It's a 71 sport coupe, a particular model I've been looking for. Plus it's a Bel Air, the US didn't offer a Sport Coupe in a Bel Air. 2,793 produced according to Vintage vehicle services.

Cheviac summarized things nicely regarding these cars.

Since you are looking for a '71 Bel Air and the one in the brochure is a poor picture, I modded the Impala Sport Coupe picture from the 4 Impala spread into a Bel Air. I even got the seats & door panels for you.

CdnGMfan wrote:

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Dad had a 1974 Biscayne from new. It had the GM-spec radials. They were designed to be interchangeable between manufacturers. Our car had Uniroyal Zeta-40 radials. All had their belts shift within 1 year and they got replaced under warranty. The replacement Uniroyal Zeta radials did the same thing, wicked belt shift, within 1 year. Dad told them they could keep them and went with Michelin X radials. He drove it 50 metres and could tell the difference. They stayed with the car until we sold it for $175 in 1986 to a guy who wanted only the engine & transmission.

They were nice riding cars and had tough frames (especially the 1973+ wagons, the darling of the smash-up derby).


And then there was this thing that belonged to a friend's parents:

 

A 1975 Pontiac Laurentian wagon. It was powered by an orange Chevy 400 4-barrel small block. I was surprised, especially when dad's friend arrived at our house in the fall of '75 in a '76 Laurentian wagon that had a blue Pontiac 400 under the hood.

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Cam, i'd be surprised too if that 400 was a blue block. Looking back at a 2008 thread.....

"I first saw that brochure in the fall of 1975 when a friend of my father's drove over to our house in Ancaster from Oshawa in his brand new 1976 Laurentian Safari 3-seat wagon. It was light blue metallic with full wheel covers. luggage rack and bodyside moldings. Under the hood was definitely a brand new orange Chevy 400 4-barrel. A few months later I got my own copy of that brochure from Douglas Pontiac-Buick-Cadillac-GMC in Hamilton (later it became Hogan).

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Here is mine.Parents bought it out of the showroom.

Lets make one thing perfectly clear, Cutlass of that vintage were no slouches either.