Hauling Cars By Train

Lots of Chevrolet Vegas.

Vegi



The copper colored one looks identical to the one I had.

 

Bouncing around with all the oil in the front, no wonder they didn't last.

neet picture wonder when they stopped doing it that way?

 

AAAAAAAAAAh why are the hatch- backs/tailgates open at this point in loading?

 

Perhaps there is some attachment to the rack / loader that can only be reached from inside the vehicle?

Seems to me this would have been a very big expense for GM - to build specific train cars only for the Vega's. Could this transportation system have been used in Europe, and then adapted here? The Vega's were closer in size to a lot of the European stuff back then.....
Anybody know?

 

I love that they were packing 6 Vega's in the same space they were hauling 3 cadillacs in.

 

Imagine the dealer-prep that had to be done at the other end! They wouldn't have any fluids, which means a crew at the receiving end to fill them up, install batteries, and crank them up to get them to the dealer, OR a mess of car-trailers designed to load them dry?

Baffles the noodle. I thought getting the transport wax was bad enough during a summer job as a lot-boy for a Mopar dealer (1968 - hemi and roadrunner days)

 

Lol that was the first thought I had too!

 

a couple of more pics

 

I've seen those pics before, I don't remember where. I recall reading that the engines were actually designed with this kind of transport in mind.

Here we go..wikipedia:

 

In general science class we saw a movie on this. It was a big Vega promo movie with "I'm leaving on a jet plane" as the background music. This was back in 1970 and I think from the designers to the promoters, they were all using drugs.
It's interesting that they would install baffles to allow the car to stand on its nose, but if you did any hard cornering, such as in show room stock racing, the oil would move away from the pickup and cause oil starvation in the corners. The show room stock racers of the time would add at least 1 extra quart of oil to keep this from happening in a race.
A guy I knew of in Maine, bought one when they first came out. After going through 2 transmissions and then the engine starting to smoke like a chimney, installed a complete Volvo drivetrain in his Vega. He liked the looks of the car. Last I heard he had about 400,000 mile on the Volvo engine and had used 3 sets of fenders on the car!

 

Norm just reminded me of something........I worked at a VW dealer in Arkansas in '75. I washed the cosmoline off many VeeDubs with kerosene. Talk about a nasty, smelly job! The vans/busses were a real delight.