We've been discussing GM Boxy wagons over on the Longroof forum, and it brought back memories of the wagons we had growing up. When I was 4, in 1978, Dad bought our first wagon, a LOADED silver Pontiac Grand Safari, which was an outstanding car. Anyway, I got carried away with a story, as I so often will do. Thought I'd share it here as well, in case you're bored. That's my kid brother Dave, he's four years younger than me. Pic is from around 1988. He's still skinny today but he's bald as Telly Savalas now. I still have all my hair and can diet if I wanted to. This one of the very few pics I have of Mom's silver '86 Electra Estate wagon. That car was gorgeous inside and out, but the engine was a total dud. If you notice in the picture the car has a small trailer hitch under the rear bumper (with snow on it..yucko!). Well that was on there when we bought it. It was a dealer demo car, had just a few miles on it, but had that hitch on it, should have been a red flag.... Dad got transferred with AT&T from Denver Colorado to Basking Ridge New Jersey in 1986. We sold our beloved 1978 Pontiac Grand Safari in Denver rather than driving it to New Jersey. That was an astoundingly GOOD car. Had the Pontiac 400 in it, turbo 400 trans, Rally II wheels, and Dad had custom ordered the paint and options on that Safari. He only sold it because it was getting close to 100K miles, and with his new promotion and move to New Jersey, he promised Mom a new car. We shipped the 69 LeMans convertible and the '79 Vette to New Jersey from Denver, and AT&T gave Dad a new '86 Lebaron GTS as a loaner once we got to NJ...a real POS. Dad gave that to Mom, and he commuted in his Vette. As soon as we got settled, the folks started looking for Mom's new wagon. For those old enough to remember, the first Ford Taurus came out to major hoopla in 1986. Now Dad wasn't a Ford guy, but all the car mags went nuts for the Taurus, so Mom and Dad went to the Ford house to test drive a new Taurus wagon. Dad said it looked like a big watermellon, but Mom liked the look. This test drive is one of Dad's favorite stories. The Ford dealer was on Rt. 22 by the Wachung Market. They were in a loaded Taurus LX wagon. Leather, digital gauges, alloy wheels, the works. Dealer in the back seat, Mom on the passenger seat, and Dad behind the wheel. They pulled out onto Rt. 22 and Dad said the steering wheel felt loose. They drove south on 22 and Dad could tell something was badly wrong with the car (which was BRAND new). Dad tells the dealer something is wrong, and goes right to take a jughandle for a U-turn, and right then the steering column breaks loose of the dashboard and the falls in Dad's lap. Mom said Dad was SO COOL. He picked up the column by the wheel and drove back to the Ford dealer, while holding the column up into place with his leg. Haha! That was the LAST time Dad stepped foot on a Ford lot for a test drive. Dad, being a Pontiac man, went to the small Pontiac dealer in Morristown to look at new Parisienne wagons. Well he didn't like them. In '86 they'd taken the wide chrome trim off the lower doors and rockers, which he said looked cheap, and you could no get the Brougham seats, which he wanted. I remember him saying if they wereonly going to offer a Caprice interior, he might as well just buy a Chevy and save some money! Dad never considered an Oldsmobile...he hated the fabric Olds used on the wagon seats, and like Pontiac, there was no upgrade option offered for the seats. In '86, you COULD get a step-up interior fabric in a Caprice wagon. Don't think it was called Brougham, but it looked like pillowed seats. I remember Dad took us to the big Chevy dealer on Rt. 22 to drive a really pretty dark blue over dark blue uplevel cloth trim Caprice Estate. It was loaded out, and Dad liked everything but the wire wheels, the new "aero" door mirrors, and the steering wheel, which he said looked cheap. Well Mom didn't like the Caprice. She said it felt too dark...ok then. SO we drove up the road to Buick 22. Dad liked the Buicks, but they were more expensive and he thought they were out of his budget. Well the Buick dealer said "hang on" and pulled that silver Estate Wagon up to the showroom. Silver..just like our '78 Safari had been. Mom was in love at first site. We test drove it, and Dad commented about what a dog the 307 was compared to the 400 we'd had before, but he loved the silver cloth pillowed seats and all the wood on the doors and dash. I was 12, and was fascinated by the Electronic Touch Climate Control (beep....beeep...beeeep). Dad didn't like the wire hubcaps, he wanted either chrome Road Wheels or the finned mag wheels that some other wagons they had there had. He also didn't like that the car was a demo...the hitch concerned him. Well the dealer went away for a while and my brother and I drooled on the black Grand National they had in the showroom. When the dealer came back, he'd taken something outrageous like $6K off the window sticker, plus told Dad the car would retain the full 3/36 warranty. BUT no changes, sold as-is, wire wheels and all. Dad bought it right then and there. We kept the car until 1993, when Dad traded it for the new Cutlass convertible. It had around 90K miles on it, but it started burning oil at 20K, and Dad, rather than taking it to the dealer and raising hell, just kept dumping oil in the 307...and then it was out of warranty...of course. It had a red FAIL sticker on it for inspection the last three years we had it. It would not pass the emissions and Dad refused to spend money on it. It's amazing, but we never got pulled over in it. I remember the last time we took it for inspection in Morristown, and they stick the sniffer up the tail pipe and you have to rev the engine. Well as soon as I put my foot in it the garage filled with smoke and the inspector starts yelling WHOA WHOA WHOA I had my smoke break already!! Ha! I learned to do the "TJ Hooker"move in that car. We had a long gravel driveway and I'd floor it in reverse, get up some speed, then whip the wheel and yank it into Low about halfway through the spin. ......I have no idea why the transmission failed at 70K miles.... The car was popular with my friends, and we took it to Pennsylvania and the shore MANY times, me or one of my buddies driving and all three rows of seats full of teenagers. Everyone liked the rear-facing 3rd row, and by the early 90's when I started driving the wagon was already kind of a novelty. Many of my friends grew up in minivans. That wagon, especially when loaded with kids, was SO SLOW. Having no rings will do that I guess. You could FLOOR it on the highway, and other than some more whoosh sounds under the hood, not much else would happen. My friend Ben, who was and is half-crazy, LOVED this, because when you floored it, great clouds of oil smoke would pour out the back of the car. We'd get people tailgating us on the Parkway, and Ben would yell SMOKESCREEN!! and floor it. It was a great way to get tailgaters to pass you. :banana: As mentioned Dad traded the car for the Cutlass ragtop in '93. The dealer I think gave him $3500 for it. The engine still ran quiet, you just had to add a quart of oil with every fill-up, and the car still looked nice. The chrome was speckled from the Jersey salt but the body was still solid. Notice the family 86 Estate Wagon in the backround...here. That Electra was our last wagon until I bought my '89 Custom Cruiser in the late 90's. Boxy Fun! Storytime over. -Mike
I guess since I brought it up I'll do a rundown on our '78 Grand Safari. Ok one more of my long-winded stories.... We moved from Amarillo texas to Tulsa Oklahoma in late 1977. I was 4 years old and Mom was pregnant with my kid brother. Our family car was a 72 Cutlass Supreme notchback coupe, 350, buckets and floor shift. Nice car, but Dad decided we needed a wagon since my brother was on the way. Dad had always been an Olds man, but the woodgrain that looped over the wheel-wells on the Delta wagons turned him off. Off chance he read in a magazine that '78 was going to be the last year the true Pontiac 400 was optional in the fill size Ponchos. That decided it. Dad had a good job with Southwestern Bell, and decided to special order a "man's" wagon...even thought it was for Mom. He walked into Ernie Miller Pontiac and told the salesman exactly what he wanted....and the salesman said he couldn't have it! Now remember I was only 4, but Dad loves to tell this story, so I know it by heart. Here's the deal, the Bonneville Brougham offered a wild multi-shade cloth pattern for '78 on the seats and door panels. It was long rectangular blocks of tan, brown, black, and grey, called "Valencia Cloth"......very 70's. Dad wanted that interior in his wagon...and he wanted a silver exterior with dark wood trim. The dealer said he could not order a silver car with tan interior, it would just look wrong. Dad insisited, said if they wanted his business, they would have to order it that way. Check out these seats....man the drugs in the 70's must have been GREAT! After some haggling, and the store manager trying to talk Dad out of it too, and Dad having to sign a letter saying he would not refuse delivery, they agreed to put the order in. In addition to the odd colors, Dad ordered a LOADED car. He wanted every power option in the book, seats, windows, locks, cruise, basically a Bonneville Brougham wagon. He also ordered the 6.6 Pontiac 400, and told them if it showed up with a 403 Olds, he would refuse delivery, letter or not. He also ordered the tow package, full gauges, heavy duty cooling, and snowflake mag wheels. The car was almost $12K, more than a Corvette that year. After waiting 6-weeks the car came in. The dealer called Dad at work, and asked if they could keep it on the showroom for a week or two! The silver with dark wood and tan custom interior was stunning in person. The dealer was shocked, but it got a ton of attention when they unloaded it. It looked like this, but with the wild interior above. This is a '77, not a '78, but the main difference is the grill and the '78 Grand Safari's got the wide chrome trim on the lower doors and rockers that this car is missing. Still the color, wood, and wheels are the same. We also had the that wacky interior above. Dad wanted his car, but when he went to take delivery, he had a fit. He had ordered snowflake mag wheels, and the car showed up with wire wheel hubcaps. Also, he had ordered a tilt column and deluxe steering wheel, the one with all the wood on it, and the car showed up with a fixed column and base-level tan steering wheel. Thankfully it did have Cruise. Dad still had a fit. The dealer informed Dad that the snowflake wheel open had been discontinued from the wagon line because of the weight wagons were designed to handle. The mags were just not strong enough. As for the tilt column and deluxe wheel, that was a factory mistake, and they offered to credit my father the option price. Dad was pissed. After haggling a while Dad agreed to take the car with the fixed column, but he DID NOT want wire wheel hubcaps. The dealer offered to take some Rally II mag wheels off another new car on the lot, and Dad agreed to that. We had a new car. Dad loves to point out that a few weeks later there were four silver over tan interior wagons on the Ernie Miller lot. That Grand Safari was a great car. We hauled and towed with it, that 400 was a super engine, we moved to Denver in 1984 and that car would run off and leave just about anything when we went up in the mountains. In 1986 Dad got transferred to New Jersey. The Safari had just under 100K miles, and was still in nice shape. He sold it to a neighbor down the street rather than ship it to New Jersey. He regretted selling it. When we got to NewJersey Dad bought that new '86 Electra Estate Wagon. Needless to say I grew up with wagons....and I would love to find an old Safari like that one we had....but the ones that show up now all seem to have plain vinyl interior and 301's in them. I want a 400 and that wild 70's cloth interior! If anyone ever comes across a Safari with those seats, let me know. Al mentioned we left that car in Denver in 1986, and I'd love to know what happend to it. Always on the lookout! -Mike
