The 78-81 A-body and 82-88 G-body was likely the best home run GM likely ever did as far as year after year sales. A couple things helping that was, although by today's standards the G-body quality was a hair better than dismal, the Japanese and most "foreign" imports' quality was simply dismal. The lion's share of America's market still belonged to the big 3 automakers, and that surely never hurts. As Toyota loves to boast about the modern-day Camry being the best-selling car of its era, the A/G bodies from 78-88 collectively were the best-selling cars of their era. Hands down.
When the 78 A-body offerings first came out, they were initially frowned upon. They're charging the same price or more for the "new" models and you got less car. That didn't go over well. Instead of a boat, now you get a dingy. It wasn't well-received at first. I wonder if GM influenced the oil importers for the 2nd 1970s oil shortage in 1979 to boost sales. Hmmm. 🙂
It's hard to believe that a 78 A body could be considered "small", but compared to the barges that came before, it sort of was. But it caught on and caught fire. 460 bazillion 78-88 A/G bodies were sold (that number might be off by a couple thousand 😉 ) . The biggest grumbling of shade-tree mechanics also was the fact they had started phasing in the metric system into the mechanicals. Although the Olds V8 engine itself never got bolted together with metric fasteners, the transmissions and other fasteners were, and those shade tree mechanics now had to invest in TWO sets of tools to accommodate working on the same car depending on what area of the car you worked on. Probably the same with Chevy V8s as well.
When the 78 A-body offerings first came out, they were initially frowned upon. They're charging the same price or more for the "new" models and you got less car. That didn't go over well. Instead of a boat, now you get a dingy. It wasn't well-received at first. I wonder if GM influenced the oil importers for the 2nd 1970s oil shortage in 1979 to boost sales. Hmmm. 🙂
It's hard to believe that a 78 A body could be considered "small", but compared to the barges that came before, it sort of was. But it caught on and caught fire. 460 bazillion 78-88 A/G bodies were sold (that number might be off by a couple thousand 😉 ) . The biggest grumbling of shade-tree mechanics also was the fact they had started phasing in the metric system into the mechanicals. Although the Olds V8 engine itself never got bolted together with metric fasteners, the transmissions and other fasteners were, and those shade tree mechanics now had to invest in TWO sets of tools to accommodate working on the same car depending on what area of the car you worked on. Probably the same with Chevy V8s as well.
