Take 2 - Car of the Week: 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo

[dodgechargerfan]

Glenn Kerner says he still stores his 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo the same way his father Bill did when he owned the car.

Bill liked to have the trunk open on his Monte when it wasn’t in use. Glenn could never understand it, but the answer he got was a perfect summary of the way his father cared for the car.

“It was his Sunday car, and he always kept the trunk open after he would take it out for a drive,” says Glenn, a resident of St. Louis. “I finally asked him, ‘Dad, why don’t you close the trunk lid?’ And he said he didn’t want to smash the rubber gasket. Closing the lid would squash that gasket and he didn’t want that.”

That pretty much covers how both father and son have babied the Monte Carlo during their combined ownership. Bill bought the car new in 1977 and put 48,000 miles on it before he died in 2007. Glenn took the keys from there, and he has been perhaps even more particular.

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[69.5CUDA]

ugh..with that reasoning of leaving the trunk open..youd think he would be smart enuf to leave the doors open too!

 

[TheIronSausage]

So.. does that mean he opened the trunk and disconnected the battery every time he parked the car to keep his trunk light from killing it? I'm sure they had those in '77 bow tie luxobarges.. All my Mopars except for my early A bodies have had trunk lights. While I know the bow tie guys were behind the times on things like alternators, and fully automatic transmissions, and anti lock brakes, I'm pretty sure they'd figured out how to illuminate the trunk by '77.. Also, it's a $40 piece of rubber.. pony up after 20 years..

 

[69.5CUDA]

i know my 71 caddy had a trunk light..and hood light.....but the caddy had the coolest thing ever"soft touch" trunk...once latched a motor would fire up and suck the trunk lid down to the seal

 

[Dr.Jass]

Yeah, those Caddy pull-down motors are kind of cool. High-breakage item, though... first-time Caddy owners often forget about it, and slam the lid like a normal decklid. That feature's been around on Cadillacs since the mid-1950s. I know both of my uncle's '65 Caddys had it, both the sedan and the droptop.

The feature car here seems a strange thing to keep in such amazing condition, but it's cool that he did. Too bad it's such an insignificant version of that body style, though. As a kid, a neighbor had a loaded '73, black, no vinyl, with a red swivel-bucket floor-shift gut and the 454 engine. Probably the coolest '73-'77 Monte I've yet seen. The only reason I know it was a '73 was because I remember the taillamps and tucked rear bumper, both of which were '73-only. He kept it in pretty nice shape, but wasn't fanatical. He traded it in, still OK but showing its age, on a new red CJ5 around '80 or '81, which maintained his status as "coolest Dad" on our block, since he immediately lifted it, wheels, tires, winch, etc. I'm sure the Monte long-ago rusted away or was crashed. I clearly remember his elder son rolling and totalling that maxed-out Jeep when it was only a couple years old. All the neighborhood kids breathed a heavy sigh of disappointment when a new Toronado replaced it.