It was a svelte 1973 model (USA 1974 models bore the clunky 5-MPH bumpers). My first car was a 3-year-old Manta Luxus. Who knows? It would have made trade more interesting, no matter what. Cadillac and Lincoln may have got an owner who went with a Jag or Mercedes instead. Cheaper American cars may have tempted a German or English or French person to try that large Chevy, Ford, or Dodge. Oddly, the european market may have seen more Detroit iron, as they would have been incented to use the boats going back to Europe after delivering instead of deadheading them back empty. This may have slowed the Asians down in getting such a toehold into the American market when the first gas crunch hit. They could have brought over tooling when the currency made direct importing cost prohibitive. If the big 3 had swallowed their collective pride and instead of trying to engineer and build small versions of American cars, they could have just brought over the successful, proven small models from Europe. Chrysler owned Simca/Talbot/Rootes, and would have had a chance as well. But then you’d expect a Swedish car to be okay on winter roads, wouldn’t you?Īn interesting thought, what if the US manufacturers had correctly used their European arm to supply what came to be known as captive imports, and done so sooner? We had the Ford and GM products coming into the USA from the 50s, albeit with very few takers. The Volvo 122 I traded it in on had similar waywardness in the rear, but little of the same tricky behavior on slippery stuff. I think only my brother’s Gremlin was worse on ice and snow, and that only because it was a lot heavier.Īside from that, the only handling oddness it displayed was a bit of rear-wheel steering on the occasionally lumpy Tennessee blacktop roads, mostly frost-heaves, and that was due to the rather quirky rear suspension setup. A slight change in the road’s camber, for instance, caused the back end to make a sudden swoop that turned us clear around, at maybe 35 mph. On ice it was too damn scary to be lethal, because I was afraid to go fast enough to hurt anything. Had an older Manta Rallye I got off a Nashville lot in the mid-’70s, flaming orange with that flat-black hood … and an automatic! That was my first autobox, and I had no idea how to take care of one, so the car’s tendency to die at idle after a run in cold weather probably had something to do with low fluid … The car’s dry-road handling was not the best of my experience but good enough to be enjoyable, and to invite long drives over country roads. The Opel Kadett collectively known as the Buick Opel Isuzu which the Chevy Chevette was also based from and Chevrolet got the Chevette in hatchback form replaced the Opel Manta at least here in North America. Both cars existed in the Buick lineup through the end of 1975 and the Manta which was due for a body redesign in 1975 in the European Domestic Markets were no longer imported here. The Buick Skyhawk at 179.3″ was slightly larger than the Opel Manta at 176.0″. In 1975 though Buick along with its other Chevy Vega/Monza based cousins finally offered the new GM RWD H-Bodied Chevy Monza body based (still completely different body design from the Vega/Astre) Buick Skyhawk. The Isuzu/Holden Impulse/Piazza was a stretched platform of the Isuzu Gemini identical in size with the Opel Manta) The 1G Opel Manta may have indirectly replaced the Opel GT but since the Buick Opel line does not have any subcompact offerings like the GM RWD H-Bodied Chevy Vega/Pontiac Astre, it was for a time being its entry level subcompact offering. In South America a Chevy Chevette and in Europe a Vauxhall Chevette. In Australia it was known the Holden Kadett. and Canada by its participating parent company the Buick Opel Isuzu. It had nothing to do with the Manta except that both belong to the Opel lineup especially since the Manta was one size larger than the Kadett (which had plenty of names depending upon if it’s an Isuzu which were called Gemini in Japan and later on in North America the I-Mark. The Kadett T-Car heritage is what led to the development of the Chevette and later on the Isuzu Impulse/Piazza.
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