And another unfortunate compromise: no air conditioning available. The original 1971 Vega was fun to drive, at least it was with a 4-speed, but so many issues made it such a Deadly Sin. Over at the Ford garage where I wrenched, Vega’s reputation was selling a lot of Pintos by 1975. There had to be a lot of rubber in the bushings to make it work–and it still worked rather well. And across the Pacific, Toyota was building 2.0L DOHC engines that could turn 7000 RPMs all day with anvil like reliability; yet there is nothing special in their construction(I know, I have a 70s 18R-G engine in my collection) Why couldn’t these clowns? Had they done that, I have no doubt the Vega would have been a big success. The 122-cubic-inch Cosworth Vega engine made 110 horsepower, versus a miserable 70 horses for the 140-cubic-inch SOHC engine in the ordinary Vega. Technical Specifications ENGINE: 2.0 liter displacement. RWD (rear-wheel drive), manual 5-speed gearbox. The junk Ford short-block with the snazzy Lotus head didn’t have to undergo a bazillion hours of EPA certification for emissions and fuel economy; and the Lotus vehicles that used the engine didn’t have to satisfy Big Corporation meddling in the final product. 5) Horsepower/Torque Curve, 1976 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega 5-speed (man. The engine had a lot of tech in it for the time. No wonder the CV was a flop and GM went tits up. General information: This 1976 Cosworth Vega is #2541 out of approximately 3500 cars made between 1975 and 1976. site. I was a Chevrolet tech for many years and I bought a 76 CV after my 69 Camaro SS convertible was stolen. Who but GM could manage to wring such mediocrity from such promising ingredients while spending a tom of money. Car and Driver tested a late production Cosworth Vega 5-speed and recorded a 17.4 second elapsed time in the quarter mile, which is consistent with a 0-60 time in the mid-to-low 10 second range. 1976 Chevrolet Other Cosworth 1976 Chevy Cosworth Vega. 1976 models came in various colors so did not look as distinctive, so I may not have noticed, but I think there were only about half as many of them. 4) Standard and Alternative Wheel and Tire Sizes, 1976 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega (man. Advance reports of the CV had us wondering what Ford would offer. 1/4 mile: 18.5 seconds @74 mph. Even the original Lotus-Cortinas had Chapman-specified suspension; it wasn’t until later that cost-cutting removed all the fun bits. Heck, how would a Federalized Vauxhall Viva/Firenza have worked? They were proud of it, were good at keeping secrets, and weren’t much interested in crediting “tuned” cars instead of showing off their own untouchable awesome car testing skills and talents. / 22.3 mpg (U.S.) / 9.5 km/l, more data: RWD (rear-wheel drive), manual 5-speed gearbox, accelerations: 0- 60 mph 10.7© s; 0- 100 km/h 11.3© s (simulation ©automobile-catalog.com); 1/4 mile drag time (402 m) 17.9© s (simulation ©automobile-catalog.com). The Cosworth Vega was a limited production version of the popular Vega Hatchback that was built in 1975 & 1976, with a total of approximately 3508 units being made. 5000-plus engines were built and installed in only around 3500 cars…after the initial rush, nobody wanted them. Chevrolet made 3,507 units over 2 years and I had #2416.. Just so you all know, the car not quick off the line but pulled extremely well at 3500 rpms and up and would actually put you back in the seat. When we stopped at the next light, he was shocked and he asked me if I had a V8 in it. Reproduction of part or all of the contents of this web-site in any form is prohibited and may not be recopied and shared with a third party. gcse.type = 'text/javascript'; site. I owned that car for 38 years, put over 100,000 miles on it and never had any engine work done, or rust on the car to this day. proprietary (including but not limited to intellectual property) rights. It just ended up stillborn and not the first evolution of the Vega power plant towards something reliable and powerful, because it was neither of those, in production form. That was a cast iron engine with good reliability and good performance when tuned. The automobile-catalog.com website is only for the on-line view using the internet browser. It replaces the '76 five-speed model he owned until, while serving in the Navy, he was transferred to Japan in 1984. Overall 1976 Chevrolet Vega production fell to 160,524 cars, including just 7,935 Estate Wagons. And that was back in 1966; ten years earlier. It is interesting to note that the original 1971 prototypes, using dual carbs, were producing 170 hp before emission standards came into play. The good news was that the reduction in stroke resulting in 2.0 liters displacement took a fair amount of the 2.3 L Vega engine’s roughness away. Dash # 3090. They’re usually in good shape and are an affordable nostalgia cruiser. I suspect this was a pet project inside GM, done for its own sake, without a real target market. 4) specs. The rest of the engines, after some were torn down for parts, were scrapped. commercial copying, redistribution, use or publication by you of any such According to a February 7, 1975 letter to all Chevrolet dealers, "the Vega Cosworth (RPO Z09) will include the following option content. And, as this CC entry and the prior CV postings indicate, the buildup for this car, in certain car guy circles, was huge, even though the car was vaporware for such a long time (we now have the word for such a thing, though we didn’t at the time). It was my friend’s SCCA Showroom Stock A race car, Meaning it was blueprinted, balanced, and whatever else one could get away with. In 1976, Road Test magazine conducted a ‘Supercoupe Shootout’, with the Cosworth Vega competing against a BMW 2002tii, Alfa-Romeo GTV, Lancia Beta, and a Saab 99. The engine’s output at the time was 140 hp, and it did some rather impressive performance figures if I remember right. You had to buy the Lotus design head thru the parts department and replace the factory one, and they say only about 100 or so were made available to the public. But that is the thing, GM should have never bothered with developing the Vega engine from zero when its European divisions had engines which could be certified and used in a car like the Vega (Opel’s CIH and Vauxhall’s slant four). The problem is they failed. And you have to feel sorry for those who coughed up the cash for these (or any Vega, for that matter). QOTD: How Soon Until We Start Seeing EV Curbside Classics? Anyway, by the mid ’70s it wasn’t so much “small sportsters” but sports sedans like the BMW 2002 that should have been the CV’s target. How did Chevrolet spend years working on the Cosworth Vega, and end up with nothing more than a Vega the way it should have been in the first place, with a perkier and less rough but certainly not a high performance engine? Cosworth of England, when they ran in Group 2 sports cars, cracked or split blocks after 2-3 hours in enduro racing so it does depend on what duty cycle you plan on running. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the content, organization, graphics, design, compilation, magnetic For those of us teenagers who lived as much in the minutiae of the car magazine test data pages as the actual driving of the cars (I raise my hand), the CV was an also-ran on the day it actually turned up. I should have bought one of the engines just to have as a display unit. Car has been repainted poorly. I’m extremely suspicious of that C/D review. Here’s the rather painful summation: “with the Cosworth Vega engine the Vega now runs the way it should really have run all the time – easy, smooth, good response…” But expecting folks to pay more than double the price of a Vega to have a proper-running Vega was clearly not a viable proposition. Like a proper FI system for their V8s. Search automobile-catalog: this database is huge, use the search field below to find here data you are looking for: There never was a “true” Lotus-like HP sports car with the C-V engine, to provide some halo effect; the base Vega was a well-known pile of crap at that time. var cx = 'partner-pub-9659367955710532:8424444182'; I bought brand new as a leftover in 77 for $4800.. Showroom Stock cars had to run OEM tire sizes and shaved BFG T/A’s in that BR70-13 size were actually stickier than the Euro brands favored by the “sports car” drivers. For 1976 the panhard bar mounting bracket was welded behind the … matters or any part of this site is strictly prohibited. Back in 1974, either in the January or February issue of Car & Driver did a road test of a 1974 pre-production Cosworth Vega. A quite logical choice, and a not insignificant slice of the market. John was a very good driver and I think a few factors like gearing, good brakes, and tire size helped the Vega at Sears Point where most of our regional races were held in those days. The springs and ride height are unique to the Cosworth Vega. The Chevrolet Cosworth Vega is a subcompact four-passenger automobile produced by Chevrolet for the 1975 and 1976 model years. matters or any part of this site is strictly prohibited. Whatever the reasons, the CV was just never marketable, and died after a few short years of low production and sales. But it didn’t play out that way. I remember reading this review in middle school. Really? The Vega got less from GM than the Cortina got from Ford. 4) Horsepower/Torque Curve, 1976 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega (man. This car can be driven anywhere right now. Some cars are built to fill a perceived market niche (the Miata comes to mind), and others are built, just because they can be built. Someone in Detroit completely out of touch with what’s been going on for quite a while. 1976 Chevrolet Vega Additional Info: For Sale. The following versions and sub-models of Chevrolet Vega Cosworth were available in 1976: 1976 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega (man. ), full performance and economy data, or to compare up to 5 cars side-by-side - click one of the the buttons below: 1976 Chevrolet Cosworth Vega (man. And in the end, that 110 hp was essentially the same as a base 2002 or 320i. I remember 1 night my friend and I were cruising around and stumbled upon a 302 Mustang, 4 spd and headers. Why could Lotus meet emissions with a pair of Stromberg carburetors and still return performance numbers in testing that suggested they were telling the truth about coming within 4% of maintaining the dirty Dell’Orto carbureted Jensen-Healey’s power output? There was a bit of corporate panic, especially with a Vega power plant that had obviously gone haywire, somewhere along the line. Analogous models manufactured in the same time period: (click on the car to proceed to datapage). As to how the GM brass allowed or encouraged this back room engine development sort of thing, it all started about 1971 or so. And the results are painfully obvious in the stats: 0-60 in 12.3 seconds. And not all was well even then: there was transient oversteer, which happened in part because the quite slow 22.5:1 ratio manual steering was simply too slow to respond fast enough in a succession of rapid maneuvers, like in the slalom test. In this car, the knowledgeable small sportster enthusiast will recognize and appreciate American design innovation and engineering imagination…”. By May 1973, output was down to 130 hp and 116 lb-ft, but Car and Driver took a prototype to 60 mph in 7.7 seconds with a 16.2-second 85-mph quarter mile, proclaiming, “The only four-passenger coupes faster than a Cosworth Vega have a Detroit V-8 under the hood.” For features that the Cosworth shares with the standard Vega, refer to the 1974-1976 Vega manuals. Except as expressly authorized by automobile-catalog.com, you agree not to copy, modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, assign, distribute, perform, display, license, reverse engineer or create derivative works based on the Site or any Content available through the Site. Extremely rare, at best. Regardless, the final product was doomed from moving goalposts. A precursor to the many Toyotas, Hondas, and Mazdas that widely used such production engines, years later. The Lotus Cortina, no mainstream car in any way, was the closest precognitor. Still, it rankles that GM spent so much on this program that they couldn’t absorb the losses of selling the cars at prices that buyers would accept. The incorporation of material or any part of it in any other web-site, electronic retrieval system, publication or any other work (whether hard copy, electronic or otherwise), also the storage of any part of this site on optical, digital or/and electronic media is strictly prohibited. I should have bought one of the Chevrolet Vega Cosworth were available 1976... A real target market to having a/c in all kinds of numbers black as were all of this life and... Who but GM could manage to wring such mediocrity from such promising ingredients while spending a tom of money might. Regular Vega but so did the regular Vegas cars…after the initial rush, nobody wanted them this:! 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