The last Vega

1977 Chevrolet Vega

This was my last Vega. A 1977 Chevrolet Vega coupe. This was the last of 6 Vegas I owned in the 70's and early 80's. The first one was a 72 Vega Kammback panel station wagon. It was a lease return from the US Postal Service. It was a pretty basic car. One seat for the driver and no side windows in the back. But it was cheap and only had 10,000 miles on it. I took the interior out of a Vega GT that had been wrecked and put in the front and back seats, dashboard, steering wheel and put windows in the back. It turned into a pretty nice car. We drove this until it was totaled in an accident on OR 217.

The next Vega was 74 Vega hatchback, bought as an insurance total and never fixed. I always intended to do all the body work on but never got around to finishing it. We also liked the station wagons better so this was followed by a 74 Vega station wagon with fake wood paneling on the sides. This was the longest lasting Vega I had. It went close to 100,000 miles.

 Vegas weren't known as a long lasting, durable car. Built during an extreme low point in American automobile manufacturing, they had a poorly designed engine that burned oil and had inadequate cooling. You had to keep up on maintenance to keep them running. The plus side was they were cheap to buy used and drove nice. They also got pretty good gas mileage for the times. Chevrolet worked to correct these issues so later Vegas ran better and longer than earlier ones, but they still couldn't totally overcome the poorly designed block and cooling system. 

This was the car my wife drove so I went out and found another station wagon. This one was a 4 speed stick shift and orange. It also had some severe engine issues I didn't discover till after I had bought it. My shortest lived Vega, I drove it for less than a month when the engine overheated and seized. This led to Vega #5, a bright green station wagon. This was probably my favorite one. I loved the color, it ran good and was just a good driving car. My son, Aaron, was almost born in it fighting rush hour traffic to the hospital. It also had the most miles on it when I bought it and once they got up to about 125,000 miles it was pretty hard to keep them going. Once the oil consumption got to a quart every 300 miles it was time to move on. This brought me to the last Vega. 

This was also the last model of Vega I needed to own to have had one of every model produced. It was a coupe with a 3 speed manual transmission. It had all the upgrades Chevy had put in to correct earlier problems like multiple temperature sensors, low oil shut offs and bigger radiators. It had about 30,000 miles on it and was in great shape. It was a great car to finish up my run driving Vegas. I sold it when I bought a new pick-up in 1988.