Junkyard Find: 1977 Pontiac Sunbird
The story of the Chevrolet Monza and its badge-engineered Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac siblings goes much like the tale of its ancestor and platform-mate, the Vega: many sold, almost none made it to age 15. I hadn’t seen an H-body Monza, Starfire, Skyhawk or Sunbird in a self-service wrecking yard for at least five years when I spotted this one near me in Denver.
Pontiac later applied the Sunbird name to the J-body-based front-drivers it built in the 1980s and 1990s.
You still see members of the Monza family at race tracks, because V8s bolt in and they’re pretty aerodynamic for their time.
This one has been picked over in a big way.
A friend in high school had a ’76 Skyhawk that suffered a door striker rust failure and had to be welded, just as this one did. That was in California, in a 7-year-old car. I shudder to think of the rust that afflicted these cars in places like Michigan and New Hampshire.
Anybody need a genuine Delco AM radio?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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OH yeah, the rear light panel was made out of the same stuff that went between the bumper and rear quarter on Cadillacs (Urethane?) that you see missing all the time, they corrode and just crumble away and aren't available for replacement anymore. If this car is still around that panel is worth it's weight in GOLD even just for a mold/plug to make replacements out of, but I suppose this thing got crushed months before it got posted here.
Hey is it possible for me to get the name and phone number of this wrecking yards info id like to see if this car is stillnhere as ive looked over and over and cant find the part i need and yet it sits in this yard perfect
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