Chevy Tried To Make A Failing Economy Car Compete With BMW And It Was A Hilarious Blunder

For decades, the Big Three have tried to replicate the recipes with which German brands have succeeded. Detroit hasn’t always had the best luck with putting big power into svelte vehicles and some of the messes have been hilarious. One of those misses was the Chevrolet Cosworth Vega. Now, that last name in the model is certainly bubbling up something within you, but the Cosworth Vega somehow managed to be awesome and a blunder at the same time.

For over 65 years, the name Cosworth has been synonymous with speed, fury, and taking home victories. The company was founded in 1958 by Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin and looking at those names, I probably don’t need to tell you where “Cosworth” came from. Costin and Duckworth were formerly engineers over at Lotus and decided to take their talent to their own company.

Just a year after its founding, Cosworth launched its first engine for Formula Junior. Cosworth said this engine was famous for being one of the first to break 100 bhp per liter and it wasn’t long before the engine started winning races.

Cosworth never took its foot off of the throttle, and next came engines like the TA Twin Cam, which saw racing success in hands like Jim Clark’s, and the 1967 DFV, which Top Gear says is the most successful Formula 1 engine of all time. Some of history’s fan-favorite racing drivers, including James Hunt and Jackie Stewart, took their victories behind the wheels of vehicles with Cosworth firepower. Cosworth went on to work with 55 Formula 1 teams but didn’t limit its work to the track. Many older enthusiasts know of Cosworth’s work thanks to the iconic Ford Sierra RS Cosworth while our younger audience may associate Cosworth with the Aston Martin Valkyrie.

The list of great Cosworth-powered vehicles includes legends. The Audi RS4 B5 had Cosworth power, as did the Mercedes-Benz 190E. Don’t forget about the Ford Escort Cosworth and weirdly, even a rare collaboration with Subaru for the Impreza CS400.

Usually, seeing Cosworth in a vehicle’s name means you’re in for a good time. That also includes the Cosworth collaboration you perhaps didn’t know about, and it was the time Chevrolet put Cosworth power into the Vega.

But like so many Unholy Fail entries thus far, General Motors figured out how to ruin something that should have been greatness.

So Much Promise

The Chevrolet Vega had so much promise. It should have been one of the most advanced cars on the market. It should have shown the Japanese competition that America knows how to build a small car.

According to Hagerty, the Vega program kicked off in 1968 with General Motors president Ed Cole delivering a mission down to Chevrolet general manager Elliott M. “Pete” Estes. Chevrolet was to build a small car, but not just any small car. America faced a flood of imports and buyers were flocking to newer names like Toyota and Volkswagen rather than staying with the Detroit establishment.

As the 1980 piece the Downsizing Decision by Joseph Kraft in the New Yorker writes, American automakers had some experience in making compact cars. Indeed, buyers had access to lovable little steeds like the Studebaker Lark, Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant, and Chevrolet Corvair. If you were feeling particularly weird, there were also even smaller cars like the Nash Metropolitan.

While these cars were interesting back then and are desirable today, Detroit wasn’t prepared for the small cars coming in from Europe and Japan. Cars like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Toyota Corona were small in size, big in space, and frugal at the pump. Automakers cited in the Downsizing Decision gave various reasons for not chasing the imports harder at first. Chrysler didn’t feel the market was large enough for everyone to sell a bunch of compacts. Ford thought buyers still wanted bigger cars. American Motors also didn’t feel the market was large enough to keep its smallest cars selling.

The infamous 1973 Oil Crisis would force Detroit’s hand and spark a downsizing trend, but the seeds were planted before then. In 1968, General Motors demanded the creation of the best affordable small car in America and a world beater. This car was to be built from the ground up to achieve this lofty goal and upon its completion, nobody would have a reason to buy one of those little air-cooled Volkswagens. At least, that’s what General Motors was thinking, anyway.

To call the Vega ambitious was an understatement. Hagerty quotes Michael Lamm from the April 2000 issue of Collectible Automobile magazine:

“Every specification, the way the Vega was engineered and styled, its performance, handling, fuel economy, quality, durability, ease of maintenance, comfort, options, body choices, the Lordstown assembly plant—even the way it was shipped—was carefully planned and refined by the best minds in the business. The goal was to make an automobile that would cost one dollar per pound, beat the VW Beetle in quality and value, one-up the Toyota Corona in amenities and performance and outsell what GM knew was coming from Ford, the Pinto … and he wanted it in showrooms in 24 months. This was a brutally short time to design and engineer a new car, especially one that borrowed almost nothing from any other. But timing was crucial.”

The Vega was to cost less than a Beetle, weigh less than a ton, and be built and shipped with the most advanced processes General Motors would produce. Oh, and as you read above, GM wanted it done within two years.

John Z. Makes Big Claims

In August 1970, then Chevrolet General Manager John Z. DeLorean penned a piece in Motor Trend regarding the Vega. In it, he recognized that General Motors faced an intense battle. The Vega’s biggest competition came from Japan and Germany, where, as DeLorean wrote, workers made 25 percent and 50 percent of the wages of the American worker. So, Toyota and Volkswagen could make cheaper cars just because of cheaper labor. But then the Japanese brands were clever by flooding the U.S. market at prices cheaper than the same cars sold for in Japan. As we established above, the compact market wasn’t huge, so GM wanted to own it.

DeLorean continues, saying the original concept for the Vega called for a car that did “everything well” and that the drivers of a Vega would be very impressed at what the engineers achieved. DeLorean said the Vega had handling better than any other car in its class and better handling than many sports cars. He also said the Vega out-accelerated more expensive cars, had disc brakes good for two-ton trucks, and consistently achieved over 25 mpg.

Then, DeLorean delivered a statement that aged like milk in David Tracy’s refrigerator: “By virtue of a number of different things, the Vega is going to be built at a quality level never before attained in manufacturing in this country, and probably in the world.”

In a sense, DeLorean wasn’t wrong. DeLorean noted that by 1970, about 18 percent of a car built in America, Europe, or Japan had welding done through an automated process. GM leaned heavily into automation with the Vega, having 80 percent of the welds of a Vega automated so a worker didn’t have to haul a welding machine around the factory. The thought was also that automated welds were better for quality, anyway. The factory also had a lot less material to deal with as the Vega’s body would use half as many parts as a full-size Chevy.

The Vega even reimagined how cars would be shipped to dealers. General Motors and Southern Pacific designed the “Vert-A-Pac” railcar system where Vegas would be bolted into railcars, allowing 30 vehicles to be shipped vertically in each train car. The Vega featured engine baffles to prevent oil from seeping into the cylinders during transportation, the washer fluid bottle was placed at a 45-degree angle, and the battery’s caps were relocated to prevent electrolyte spillage. Yes, that looked like a lot of work, but the idea here was that GM could efficiently ship far more cars at once because a typical autorack train car held just 18 vehicles.

The automation in Lordstown Assembly went further than welding. GM employed automation in quality control, too. The vehicles underwent automatic inspections and if something was determined to be wrong, factory workers received a notification from the inspection system. DeLorean continued by saying that this alone meant the Vega was built better, but also because the factory workers were subject to a motivation program where GM pointed out the competition and told the workers that they had to beat those cars to succeed.

I highly recommend reading DeLorean’s article in Motor Trend because he makes some galaxy brain takes in his elevator pitch for the Vega. One of them is his view on suspension technology: “Today I would say that at Chevrolet we know more about handling than anybody else in the world. And I mean anybody else in the world including any of the guys that make racecars.”

A few paragraphs later, DeLorean triples, or quadruples down: “There’s nothing that comes within a mile of the Vega for performance and handling. This car will outhandle almost any sports car built in Europe.” DeLorean continues: “I think that you’re going to see the expiration of independent rear suspension on all cars before long.”

If you were a reader of Motor Trend in August 1970, you must have thought the Vega was the hottest car in the world. Printed alongside DeLorean’s boastings were staffer reviews of the Vega 2300 Sedan, Vega Wagon, and Vega GT Coupe. In the review of the GT Coupe, Bill Sanders said the handling of the Vega GT Coupe improved the faster you drove. Immediately after, he said, “[e]verything is always pressed down flat in the corners, there’s no roll steer of any kind.”

As Motor Trend of today notes, reviews at the time had similar positive notes. The Vega was way faster than a Beetle and handled well. However, it didn’t seem like any reviewer went as far as DeLorean did in praising the Vega.

A Factory Rust Bucket

Unfortunately, cracks began showing early on. The first Vegas went on sale in September 1970 for $2,090 ($16,810 today). That price was $172 ($1,383 today) more than a Ford Pinto and $311 ($2,501) more than a Volkswagen Beetle. So much for being cheaper than the competition. Still, the public was interested and Chevrolet managed to sell 277,705 examples in the first year.

According to Automotive News, one of the major faults happened early in development. In the past, GM’s divisions had the autonomy to design their own cars. The Vega represented a shift to where GM management designed the cars with its own team of engineers as opposed to the engineers at independent brands. Reportedly, DeLorean claimed that Chevrolet actually had little say in the Vega. Apparently, Chevy wasn’t all that happy about the Vega, and its engineers weren’t jazzed about working on a car they didn’t have a hand in designing.

Apparently, this radical change in development proved to be concerning early on. DeLorean claimed that the first Vega prototype failed after only 8 miles when its front end separated from the rest of the car. The fix was adding 20 pounds of reinforcement to the vehicle’s structure.

Chevy also didn’t like the Vega’s engine. Sure, it was an aluminum block design, which was ahead of its time back then, but it produced a meager 90 HP gross at launch. The hotter L-11 engine in the GT was good for 110 HP. While this was enough power to blow a Beetle out of the water, Chevy felt it wasn’t enough. To make matters worse was the fact the engine lost power as the 1970s progressed. A 1972 Vega had 80 HP net but by 1976, the Vega’s base engine coughed out 70 HP net while the L-11 made 84 HP, less than what the base engine made at launch.

Automotive News continues by naming some of the Vega’s issues:

The new processes for priming the body by dipping it into a tank of primer didn’t work. Sections of the body weren’t coated and began to rust. The aluminum block engine guzzled oil and there were complaints about excessive engine shaking, which caused valve stem seals to crack and leak oil into the cylinders. The Vega was also prone to overheating. This sometimes caused the aluminum block to warp. Engine fires were reported.

Tom Forsyth, then a 26-year-old Chevrolet dealer in Zieglerville, Pa., told Automotive News recently that one of his first tasks as a dealer in the fall of 1970 was touching up rust spots on new Vegas before they were sold.

Chevrolet tried to remedy some of the problems in model updates, but it was too late. The Vega was labeled a lemon. It has been named one of the worst cars ever by numerous publications.

Other issues included defective axles that could separate from the vehicle, jammed open throttles, backfires that could cause fires, warping engines, blown head gaskets, overheating, and more. Yes, the Vega had an issue where the wheels could literally fall off. If you were lucky, the car rusted out before then, and there was a good chance that would happen since as Automotive News noted, they began rusting out while they were on the dealership floor.

Vega sales were a home run for the first four years, but those quality issues eventually began to catch up. It didn’t matter how well the Vega handled when your list of problems involved getting stuck with a rusty car that wouldn’t stop accelerating if the engine even lasted long enough for that to happen.

The Vega Gets Spicy

As Hagerty writes, Vega sales fell off of a cliff and Chevrolet had to do something about it. As it turned out, DeLorean already had a trick up his sleeve.

Back in 1969, DeLorean had this idea of a racing series on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. To facilitate this, DeLorean successfully pitched Keith Duckworth to make a Cosworth version of the Vega’s engine. Reportedly, Cosworth got the engine to pump out 290 HP of fury, but it was so unreliable that the whole idea got scrapped.

Fast-forward to the Vega’s sinking sales and DeLorean joined forces with assistant chief engineer Lloyd Reuss to save the Vega. Their idea? Well, the Vega was supposed to be better than almost every European sports car, right? What if the Vega had the power to match that dream? So, Chevrolet went back to Cosworth and this time asked for that racing engine, but with the taps turned down enough to make it reliable for street use. The hot European cars of the day were the BMW 2002tii and the Alfa Romeo GTV and according to Hagerty, cars like those were the targets to beat.

By 1973, the automotive press began hyping the Cosworth Vega, from Hagerty:

In August of 1973, a GM press release announced the car. Car and Driver read that release and turned on the hyperbole: “A taut-muscled GT coupe,” the magazine said, “to devastate the smugness of BMW 2002tii’s and five-speed Alfa GTVs. A limited run of 4000 machines, each one built away from the tumult of the assembly line to precision tolerances, as a show of technical force by Chevrolet. All of them will be collector’s items.”

Car and Driver had a lot to be excited about. The hand-built engine was originally projected to make 185 HP. Cosworth decreased stroke to make the engine a 2.0-liter and then added its own aluminum 16-valve, crossflow, and twin-cam head. Fuel reached the engine through Bendix electronic fuel injection, a first for a GM car, and the engine also received an aluminum camshaft housing and an aluminum intake manifold.

Inside, the engine has a forged steel crankshaft and forged aluminum pistons. The original plan called for 12:1 compression, but emissions got in the way, reducing compression to 10.5:1, to 9.5, and then ultimately, to 8.5. Power fell from that 185 HP target to 135 HP, to just 110 HP, not much hotter than the L-11 engine that came before it. At least the Cosworth engine revved to 7,000 RPM.

Reviews of the pre-production example were raving. Here’s Car and Driver:

The cam timing and header changes have reshaped the torque curve substantially. In earlier versions it was a straight line through 105 pound-feet. Now the curve has a hump, peaking at 5200 rpm with 116 pound-feet of torque. And the horsepower peak is actually lower, with 130 hp (net) at 6200 rpm, compared with 140 hp at 7000 rpm from the early versions. Even so, quarter­-mile acceleration has vastly improved. The current test car’s 16.2-second elapsed time and 85.0-mph trap speed betters the early acceleration runs by 0.6 second and 2.3 mph.

On the street, you no longer have to keep the Twin Cam at a whir to move out smartly. Response at 3500 rpm is strong enough to use fourth gear for passing without a long wait for the surge that used to be hiding at five grand. Around town you can ignore the gearbox and still do well. Pintos and Opels drop behind in an instant. Mazdas, V-6 Capris, and 240Zs are a little tougher, but fair game. And if you are willing to stir the shifter, BMW 2002 tiis and Alfa GTVs are yours for the conquering. In fact, the only four-passenger coupes faster than a Cosworth Vega have a Detroit V-8 under the hood.

To match that straight-line brawn, the Twin Cam Vega has what it takes to prevent embarrassment when the road begins to twist. With the new optional 16:1 steering gear, you won’t have to move your hands on the wheel except in the tightest of turns. And the suspension is the eminently capable all-coil spring layout from the Vega GT. Spring rates are iden­tical to the less forceful version (this year), with the coils mod­ified to support the extra weight of 5-mph front and rear bumpers. That amounts to 240 pounds over a pre-bumper era 1972 Vega GT, with about 70 pounds of weight saved through the use of forged aluminum face bars. About 40 pounds of weight is eliminated with the all-aluminum Twin Cam engine, so weight distribution is somewhat better than a standard Vega GT. Understeer is still present, but the engine has plenty of torque to drift the rear end out during cornering.

Not Exactly An American BMW

Unfortunately, the production version lost 20 ponies over the ones the magazines tested, which were already down 50 ponies from the original advertised spec. The Vega’s suspension also didn’t appear to be suited for the job. From Competition Press and Autoweek as quoted by Hagerty:

With Chevy development engineer Warren Frank in the passenger seat, we flogged the car around Milford’s challenging “Ride and Handling” loop: “There, it performs admirably, with the only fault being a tricky bump-steer condition, which causes it to lose, momentarily, its remarkably stable and neutral cornering attitude [on] washboard roads. Frank explained that they were still working on shock rates to remedy this, and to keep the wheels on the ground for a larger percentage of the time …”

Then we drove a few hard laps around Milford’s road-course-like “Seven Sisters,” a series of four tightly banked turns followed by three faster flat ones: “…which quickly revealed the CosVeg’s other glaring deficiency in its present state. Unaccountably, Chevrolet has not seen fit to give it a limited-slip differential. The Vega GT suspension, which is otherwise nearly flawless, is just not stiff enough to prevent the car from lifting its inside leg like an impolite dog on the hard, tight turns.

This results in massive wheelspin as all the CosVeg’s considerable power is transferred to the unloaded side, and the car skids helplessly sideways … Then the inside tire falls from the sky, finally recovers its bite, and off you go toward a repeat performance on the next turn. This behavior is barely acceptable in a below-average econobox … inexcusable in a car of this nature.”

So, the Cosworth Vega was touted to be the BMW-killing American compact with Cosworth power, but the engine got the wind taken out of its sails and the car liked flopping all over the track. What else could go wrong?

Well, the Cosworth Vega was $5,918 ($34,174 today), or about twice the cost of a regular Vega and only $900 ($5,197 today) or so cheaper than a Corvette. Chevrolet wasn’t afraid to advertise that fact, either.

Chevrolet expected to sell 5,000 Cosworth Vegas in the first year of production in 1975 before ramping up production in 1976. The response to the so-called CosVega was so poor that just 2,061 examples were sold in 1975 and 1,447 more were sold in 1976. GM then killed the CosVega before killing off the whole Vega program a year later.

The good news is that these cars don’t seem to be sought after by collectors. There are a bunch for sale with prices ranging from under $16,000 to just over $31,000. Happy hunting!

In the end, GM tried to create a holy grail, only to suck the life out of what could have been an icon. Maybe if the Cosworth Vega made the advertised power or maybe if the car were priced at the $4,000 target. There are a lot of “maybes” that should have happened, but didn’t, so the Cosworth Vega went down in history as a car with Cosworth branding that people didn’t really want. But time heals wounds. You could pick up one of these cars today and have one heck of a conversation starter – just be sure to keep it away from road salt.