did you know this?

Back in the early 70's, GM decided to ship Chevrolet Vega's to dealerships vertically, on rail cars. They were able to get twice as many on the cars, which saved lots of shipping $$$. Each car was attached to its own swinging door, and the big yellow machine just lifted the door up at latched it at the top.

 

Didn't know that. Never seen the Lakewood plant ship cars like that. I do remember when they put walls on the train cars to protect them from when people threw rocks at the new cars.

 

Vry interesting! Never saw anything like it. Thanks for sharing. Did u find the picturese on the web?

 

http://www.carlustblog.com/2012/10/...ll-cars-week-the-vert-a-pac-auto-carrier.html

 

that's where I found it...

 

yup I sure did. actually It was on Facebook but still the web!

 

One of the wholesalers my Dad use to deal with, was right next to the train tracks, and at the end of a switching yard. I remember watching them unload some cars like that, when I was a kid, but I always thought they were Corvettes, maybe they were Vegas..

 

I had a 72 Vega. The engine smoked so bad that the Highway Patrol told me to get if off the road!!! I used to carry a jug of " reclaimed " oil ( remember that ) and just dump some in when the oil light started flickering. It was the only car I ever had that used more oil than gas!

 

lol that's funny.... I had a 66 impala that was the same way, bought reclaimed oil for 99 cents a gal. at starvin marvin gas station... The sheriff that pulled me over said he had to roll up his windows when I went by....

 

Never saw Vegas travelling down the rails standing on their noses - it was hard enough to keep them traveling down the road on their tires

 

cool, that would definitely show how good or bad the seals in them were

 

they had a special baffle in the oil pan to keep the oil from standing on seals in the nose up position

 

Knew many folks that did just that! The body on the car was decent, their engines just sucked! I sold my old Vega to a friend and he put a chevy 250 6cyl in it. He did some work to the firewall to get the engine in, but when it was done, it ran great and looked like it was made that way!

 

A friend of mine put a 427 in one back in the late 70's - he kept it fairly stock looking except for tires and it dusted everything it came across. This was back in the day of the first "gas shortage" and kids were jacking up the rear ends of 4 cylinder cars and putting a glass pack on them - I saw the Vega go up against a Datsun B210 at a street light - the Vega was half way to the next light before the kid in the Datsun fully released the clutch - I guess the kid in the Datsun thought the Vega still had it's original engine in it

 

We ran de-stroked 400's back in my stock car days - The one I remember came out to be 347 cubes and ran aluminum rods - would run 8 grand all day long

What that 427 Vega, that my friend built, could do on the street stuck with me all of these years - I called it my V8 Vega syndrome - Big engine Little car - at one time in my life I went looking for a Vega to put a 350 into that I had laying around and never did come up with a good one - that was when I decided instead to apply the same thoughts with the Cleveland from my Gran Torino and that is how I found my Maverick