Always wondered what happened to it. He sold it to some guys who wanted to race it.

By the way, in addition to the standard paint/sticker treatment, someone had added fake quick hood releases onto mine!

I would like to talk to your mother-in-law about her car. Thanks, Brian

BTW, the glorious, sparkling gold paint that arced through the black body, You must of not seen the car in person. Those pics were taken with flash during the day to show the reflection of the black decals. The car is black but at night when headlights hit the decals parts of it turn gold (or flash :) )

How could any one forget to mention the glow in the dark decales with the stripes and the chickenhawk glowing ever so obnoxiously at passing cars. One problem with the decales is that the hot sun tended to oxidize the decales causing them to fade.

At the time they only put out approx 3000 of these babies. They are few and far between. They mixed the interior seats. Mine had the white bucket seats with the original checker board black and white pattern. A real eye catcher.

As the writer stated. Very loose steering. But very easy to handle.

Keep the dream alive. Nighthawk is a lost classic. Find a monza, slap some black paint on it and some glow in the dark decales and your ready for a night on the town.

Once you go Black you’ll never go back.

The fact this car exists with only 45,000 is baffling, but I’m glad it does.

They say that if you give an infinite number of tax dollars to an infinite number of GM product planners for an infinite number of years, they will eventually build a 1988 Honda.

Volare. Not Valiant.

The Valiant was a good, solid, mundane car. The Aspen/Volare were that same car with modern styling, a biodegradable body and all that pesky quality engineered out.

Yes, the Valiant’s powertrain was still there. My parents had one (an Aspen, actually; 1976 wagon, brown on brown vinyl). It was rusting from the factory and didn’t start the third day of ownership. The engine was the only part of that car that didn’t rust, crack, short, leak or fall off entirely. I’m sure the powertrain was wonderful, and it did improve in later model years, but people tend to notice things like the door handles coming off in their hands.

And it’s not like this was unique to our particular car.

There’s a reason why the Aspen/Volare made numerous ten-worst lists, not the least of which was the damage they did to all the good will the Valiant and Dart managed to accumulate. Whole legions of Chrysler buyers never returned to the brand after owning one of these.

OK, that made me laugh. It’s the automotive equivalent of starting a footrace and immediately throwing up.

The good thing you can say about this car is that it was better than it’s domestic competition, the Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare.

I too disagree. I owned a 79 Volare Wagon for 8 yrs. Not the best car but no major problems and the AC worked when I sold it. Did you ever actually own one?
Also for the sake of fairness find some 70s Toyota or Nissan (Datsun) survivors if you can and test them. See how they compare now. How about a Renault or Fiat, that would be interesting.

The good thing you can say about this car is that it was better than it’s domestic competition, the Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare.

I must disagree. Anything with a slant 6, a Torqueflite & torsion bars is better than any GM small car of the 70s or 80s.

Of course, all of these cars were crap, and if you read anything that wasn’t a buff book it was obvious. It was even more obvious if you owned one. But the buff books kept pushing each new iteration of cars like this as the Next Big Thing. I recall particularly vomitworthy puff pieces throughout the 1980s by people who would never, ever by stuck trying to sell a broken Tempo, Cavalier or Reliant.

And thusly no one believes a word that Motor Trend or C&D have to say. I wonder if they realize that this is one reason why they’re bleeding money?

Just.

Barely.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082817/

http://www.h-body.org/