Chevy Monza Spyder: How Bad Could it Be?

Tim Odell

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1980 chevy monza spyder for sale You can always tell someone’s age by their reaction to the GM H-Platform vehicles. Baby Boomers experienced them in real-time, buying new Vegas that scared them away from GM products for decades. Older Gen-Xers experienced them as hand-me-downs or purchased used by parents still determined to Buy American. I’m young enough to have no personal connection to Vega/Monza/et al, but was raised by stacks of Motor Trend that taught me that if it’s rear-wheel-drive, manual and a V8 it must be pretty good. Rationally I know this Monza is terrible, but on some level I want it proven to me. Will the wheel come off in my hands? Will the doors fail to seal?

Today’s example has has appears to be somewhat hotrodded, despite keeping the 307 onboard. For the effort, dropping in a 350 in any condition would’ve been a better starting point. That said, the carb, intake, cam and headers could all be swapped over to a better motor easily. It’s got a four speed, refreshed suspension, brake upgrades off an S10 and a 2.93:1 limited slip rearend. It’s a decent setup that’s probably quick enough to be fun to drive.

You know how “rat rod” type builds are supposedly all about using whatever parts are easily available, prioritizing performance over looks? This is the ultimate rat rod: a car that no one respects, but could easily be built to shame “cooler” vehicles. Embrace the terribleness; add horsepower; achieve greatness.

1980 Chevy Monza Spyder for sale – eBay Motors

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Tim Odell

Tim Odell

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  1. Tiberiuswise Avatar
    Tiberiuswise

    Do these cars make restoring a Mustang II seem reasonable?

    Reply
    1. dukeisduke Avatar
      dukeisduke

      I think they’re okay, but I like the suspension on the H-Body cars better.

      Reply
      1. Tanshanomi Avatar
        Tanshanomi

        My recollection from high school buddies who had them was that the only really substandard engineering was front sub-frame fatigue (especially with a V8) that would eventually bend the upper control arm mounts out of spec. But an aftermarket tubular K-member makes the problem go away and optionally offers a rack-and-pinion mount as part of the deal.
        http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd305/origjmkill/DSC03269.jpg

        Reply
    2. Robert Spinello Avatar
      Robert Spinello

      These cars were rated better than the Mustang II. No contest.

      Reply
  2. Tanshanomi Avatar
    Tanshanomi

    My bucket list includes a Monza Sport: add one Town Coupe roofline to one 2+2 grille, blend and chill.
    http://www.classiccarcatalogue.com/C/chevrolet%201978%20Monza-03sport_coupe.jpg

    Reply
    1. dukeisduke Avatar
      dukeisduke

      I’ve got three of those wheelcovers in my garage. The fourth one passed me on LBJ Freeway in Dallas one evening. I pulled over to look for it, but never could find it.

      Reply
      1. Sjalabais Avatar
        Sjalabais

        I can see how it came to think of getting away as salvation.

        Reply
        1. dukeisduke Avatar
          dukeisduke

          “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last!”
          /sorry

          Reply
  3. CruisinTime Avatar
    CruisinTime

    They were as good a driver as anything else,the one thing I remember is door pins went to hell and the hinges are welded onto the door.And you had to loosen the motor mount and lift the engine one side at a time to change spark plugs.

    Reply
    1. dukeisduke Avatar
      dukeisduke

      On my ’76 Vega, the upper pin on the driver’s door (driven in from the bottom, because of clearance) used to slip down over time, so I would tap it back into place with a hammer. The door would sag a little bit, too, so I would lift up on it and bend it back into alignment.

      Reply
      1. CruisinTime Avatar
        CruisinTime

        The Monza door was a lot longer than Vega,but same problem.

        Reply
        1. dukeisduke Avatar
          dukeisduke

          Tap, tap, tap. When I went shopping for my first car (I ended up with a base ’75 Vega hatchback, yellow with saddle interior, 2-bbl engine, THM250, a/c, AM radio), i looked at a ’74 GT Kammback wagon with a 4-speed. The pin had fallen out, and the dealer hadn’t yet bothered to replace it (and this was at a Chevy dealer). They also had a ’74 Comet 2-door and a Renault 17.

          Reply
  4. dukeisduke Avatar
    dukeisduke

    307? It’s a Chevy, so it should be a 305 (unless he’s recalculated the displacement after re-boring the cylinders). I owned two Vegas, and living in the sunbelt, I don’t have any major negative feelings about them. The things I didn’t like was that the a/c was marginal (unforgivable for a GM car), and I don’t like the cable-operated clutch on the manuals. The cable would wear on the plastic inner jacket, making the pedal harder to push over time. The stress eventually starts moving the firewall where the cable goes through back and forth, back and forth, until metal fatigue causes the firewall to crack.
    The answer is to either figure out how to convert to a hydraulic clutch, or replace the cable when the clutch effort starts going up. I put two on in 125,000 miles of driving.
    The S-10 brake upgrade sounds like a good idea, but I never had problems with the stock discs (’76-’77) that had the ventilated rotors, once I switched to semi-metallic pads.

    Reply
    1. 0A5599 Avatar
      0A5599

      Chevy made a 307 (often described as using leftover blocks and cranks from 302 Chevies).
      Based on the year of manufacture, it wouldn’t be original to the car, but would bolt right up, and would have been conmon junkyard fodder a few decades ago.

      Reply
      1. dukeisduke Avatar
        dukeisduke

        You’re right; it would be an early ’70s block.

        Reply
      2. WinstonSmith84 Avatar
        WinstonSmith84

        I’m under the impression that the 307 was the result of using a 327 crank with the bore of a 283, pretty much the polar opposite of the 302.

        Reply
        1. 0A5599 Avatar
          0A5599

          Right, that’s the “leftover” reference. You put a 283 crank into a 327 block, leaving a 327 crank wanting to hook up with a 283 block.

          Reply
          1. WinstonSmith84 Avatar
            WinstonSmith84

            Got it. That makes perfect sense. Chevy: We already sold wheat. How would you like the chaff?

  5. mdharrell Avatar
    mdharrell

    “Will the wheel come off in my hands? Will the doors fail to seal?”
    What do those matters have to do with the question of whether a vehicle is terrible?

    Reply
    1. Vairship Avatar
      Vairship

      Sounds like a race car to me!

      Reply
  6. dukeisduke Avatar
    dukeisduke

    Leaves and other trash will collect under the reveal moldings around the front and rear windshields, eventually causing rust. But that’s a generic GM problem, not an H-Body specific thing.

    Reply
  7. Alff Avatar
    Alff

    I had one, a V6 Buick. And yes, it was a hand-me-down from my grandparents. It was a great car mainly because I didn’t give a rat’s ass about it. It was fun to stomp on the go pedal and hear the air cleaner bounce off the underside of the hood, courtesy of a broken motor mount.

    Reply
  8. karonetwentyc Avatar
    karonetwentyc

    What always amazed me about these cars is that they didn’t receive a midlife replacement from the Opel Monza. The two platforms are dimensionally-similar, presented very similar overall packaging, and probably would have given the Chevy a longer lifespan in the market.
    GM will always be a company that remains in business despite my complete inability to fathom either its product development or business decisions.
    http://i.imgur.com/Fevij4B.jpg

    Reply
  9. karonetwentyc Avatar
    karonetwentyc

    What always amazed me about these cars is that they didn’t receive a midlife replacement from the Opel Monza. The two platforms are dimensionally-similar, presented very similar overall packaging, and probably would have given the Chevy a longer lifespan in the market.
    GM will always be a company that somehow remains in business despite its product development and/or business decisions being almost completely unfathomable at times.

    Reply
  10. karonetwentyc Avatar
    karonetwentyc

    What always amazed me about these cars is that they didn’t receive a midlife replacement from the Opel Monza. The two platforms are dimensionally-similar, presented very similar overall packaging, and probably would have given the Chevy a longer lifespan in the market.
    To me, GM will always be a company that perpetually remains in business despite making product development and/or business decisions that are just utterly unfathomable at times.

    Reply
    1. tonyola Avatar
      tonyola

      The Opel Monza was on a premium platform and would have cost too much if translated into a replacement for a US Chevy Monza. It does look good, though.

      Reply
      1. Sjalabais Avatar
        Sjalabais

        So what does “premium” mean in GM context? I always just assumed that the Chevy Monza and the Opel Monza were the same throughout with slight styling differences. Yikes!
        P.S.: I like what’s peaking into the photo above from both sides. Especially the 140, of course.

        Reply
      2. karonetwentyc Avatar
        karonetwentyc

        Well… I think there’s a case to be made for the Opel Monza working as a replacement for the Chevy Monza in North America from the standpoint of economy of scale.
        The point you’re making regarding the Opel being on a premium platform makes sense given that it was largely based on (IIRC) the Opel Senator, but neither it nor the Senator were premium cars in the strict sense of the term – both were good cars, to be sure, but given their Opel roots their real competitors were the likes of the Ford Granada, larger BL cars that weren’t Jaguars or Range Rovers, and France, Germany, and Scandinavia’s bigger (non-luxury) models. As something of an illustration of this, I can recall the Monza being referred to as the ‘Executive Manta’ – not necessarily a sleight, but definitely a description that pegs it in the automotive hierarchy.
        This is where I feel that economy of scale in North America could have played a part: while the Monza and Senator were niche vehicles in Europe (with comparatively-low production numbers by Opel standards), had either one been built in North America the story could have been very different. The Opel was packaged in such a way that with suitable tweaking it could have very much been a mass-market cars in the US, and would have given GM a number of dynamic and aesthetic advantages in the marketplace that none of its domestic competitors of the time were in a position to respond to.
        Admittedly, though, this is playing ‘what-if’, and on a long enough timeline, any number of outcomes are possible. But both the Chevy and Opel Monzas have always intrigued me for being so very similar in intent yet so very different in execution.

        Reply
  11. Andrew_theS2kBore Avatar
    Andrew_theS2kBore

    These cars look so good from the front axle line back… It’s the opposite of so many modern cars where the nose is carefully sculpted and the tail is just “some lights and a trunk”. In this case it’s like they styled the nose, realized it was terrible, pulled out all the stops to perfect the shape, and then accidentally sent the die makers the first draft drawings of the headlight panel and hood.

    Reply
    1. Sjalabais Avatar
      Sjalabais

      That’s what I thought about the MG reviewed yesterday. A messy ending to a bland start.
      http://i2.wp.com/hooniverse.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/IMAG6154.jpg?resize=720%2C468

      Reply
  12. Fred Talmadge Avatar
    Fred Talmadge

    They made good race cars

    Reply
    1. JayP Avatar
      JayP

      Yapper.
      http://allracingcars.com//gallery/chevrolet-monza/budweiser-chevrolet-monza-2.jpg

      Reply
      1. Tanshanomi Avatar
        Tanshanomi

        Even on the street.
        http://www.geocities.ws/miragestripes/newpics/carcraft1.JPG

        Reply
        1. JayP Avatar
          JayP

          I built that model as a kid.

          Reply
      2. WinstonSmith84 Avatar
        WinstonSmith84

        Dekon kept what was good, which was the styling and small block, and ditched everything that was bad, which was everything else.There’s nothing wrong with a Monza that a great racing chassis builder can’t fix by fabricating a custom tube frame and suspension while replacing the heavy and floppy doors with either hollow skins or entrance via window-net. The Monza was perfect for silhouette racing.

        Reply
    2. Rover 1 Avatar
      Rover 1

      Their racecars competed and won against the best. Maybe Chevrolet should be reminding us of their heritage as BMW constantly does.
      http://hanabi.autoweek.com/sites/default/files/styles/gen-932-524/public/Screen-Shot-2016-06-08-at-9.08.58-PM_0.jpg?itok=dosFyVGk

      Reply
  13. CruisinTime Avatar
    CruisinTime

    Same close ratio 4 spd and shifter as Corvette that year,if my memory holds.

    Reply
  14. Maymar Avatar
    Maymar

    I have no direct experience with the H-body, but I’ve spend enough time in Chevettes, and other contemporary GMs that I can fully imagine the god-awful plastics, everything rattling, any soft surface is pretty much a dust generator at this point (from molting), but it’ll never fail to start (however much it protests), and with the extra power, it’d at least be a hoot.

    Reply
    1. dukeisduke Avatar
      dukeisduke

      The hard plastic door panels in the base Vegas disintegrate over time with UV exposure, but with the Custom interior with the vinyl over cardboard door panels hold up better. And rattles aren’t that big of a problem. They don’t have much torsional rigidity, but unless all the weatherstrip is shot, they won’t rattle much.

      Reply
      1. Maymar Avatar
        Maymar

        I guess I should qualify that the Chevettes I experienced were all heavily neglected, which explained the rattling (and probably a lot of the rest of their awfulness).

        Reply
        1. karonetwentyc Avatar
          karonetwentyc

          If it helps, I’m fairly certain that Vauxhall Chevettes were factory-equipped with neglect and awfulness; my (admittedly self-limited) experience with them seems to largely parallel yours with the Chevy versions.

          Reply
  15. salguod Avatar
    salguod

    I drove an ’80 Monza through college and had all the problems listed – clutch cable tearing through the firewall, loose hinge pins, disintegrating plastics, rattles and generally things falling apart around you. Mine would drop the upper hinge pin while you were driving, meaning when I opened the door I had it in my hand while I found the pin and put it back. While my wife and I were dating, the heat never worked when she was in the car. Oh, and it caught fire. Twice. Really poorly built vehicles, but good looking and decent handling.
    That yellow nose is the wrong one for an ’80, it should have the wide grille opening like the coupe posted above. As someone else said, if this is a factory V8 car, it would be a 305 except for California which got the 350.

    Reply