1970 was arguably the last year for serious muscle cars before heavy-handed automotive bureaucrats and gas shortages sparked a painful castration process on cars built during the early years of the Me Decade.
The domestic automotive industry also encountered new competition from the import market because foreign car builders were already selling smaller vehicles in their home markets and decided to offer smaller vehicle choices for the North American market.
Jim Sutherland
General Motors and Ford offered small sub-compact cars to combat the intrusion of the newcomers in the domestic market; a choice largely borne by necessity in 1971, given the uncertain future of big block powered land yachts at the time. Chrysler offered small foreign cars disguised with Mopar badges.
The little cars were not fast by any means, but they could pass gas pumps better than any of the big boys built by the Big Three. Good fuel mileage was their main selling feature because the subcompacts had puny 4-bangers unenhanced by turbo or supercharge boost and were not engineered for maximum performance. Basically, they were slugs in small packages with not enough passenger space to house a family of under-sized hamsters. But they were fuel-efficient.

Most older car guys have very few fond memories of the 1971 subcompacts, unless somebody shoehorned a V-8 engine under its hood and hit the ¼-mile track with it. The small cars’ 98-lb weakling performance did nothing to light a car guy’s competitive fire, so the little guys became embarrassing cousins of their muscle car relatives. Somebody loved them, but not the car guys.

Nevertheless, the cars could hit 60 mph, even though a sundial could likely clock their times, so we decided to research five sub-compacts sold in the 1971 North American market and reveal their 0-60 times. The chosen vehicles were equipped with factory 4-bangers that were not fast–but were frugal in terms of gas consumption.

The first car on our list is the 1971 Chevy Vega, voted ‘Motor Trend Car of the Year’ that year, before the little rust bucket with a horrible engine could unleash its fury on the track and record a snail-like 0-60 time of 13.5 seconds in its GT beast mode form. The ’71 Vega was a solid reason why ‘Motor Trend’ was also a comedy magazine.
The second car on our list is the 1971 Ford Pinto, a domestic sub-compact that later became famous as a rolling BBQ because of a faulty gas tank design.

The ‘71 Pinto could hit 60 mph in 16.2 seconds, so it was faster than a 1971 Vega, but not fast enough to extinguish a fire.
The third car on our list is the 1971 Datsun 510, a newcomer built in Japan that found its way to North America and was a game-changer in the car market on this side of the pond. The terminally square 510 looked like a brick on four wheels but gained a solid foothold for a future import car market in North America.

However, the Datsun 510 took 14.5 seconds to hit 60 mph, so the only objects in its rear-view mirror were Pintos and tortoises, both of which were closer than they appeared in the car’s mirror.
Except for our fourth choice in the small car derby, namely the 1971 Plymouth Cricket, a forgettable little car built by Chrysler-owned Rootes Group. Rootes was a British car company that built an array of sub-par cars that perpetuated the dubious reputation of poor-quality British vehicles, so Chrysler decided to rebadge Rootes’ Hillman Avenger model as a Plymouth Cricket for the North American car market.

What could possibly go wrong when an underpowered British car was sold in an overseas market? The answer: everything, including its woeful 0-60 time of 18.5 seconds that ensured it fell behind the Pinto and the tortoise in a race. The gap was even bigger if the Cricket’s owner stopped to pick up the car’s pieces along the way.
The final addition to our list is the 1971 Toyota Celica, a small Japanese sports car that hit 0-60 in a “blistering” 12.7 seconds.

The ’71 Celica was fast compared to the other four choices but was not a track star by any other speed standard at the time. However, it was the king of mediocre small car performance and had enough jump to almost stay slightly ahead of its acute rust problems.
1971 was not the finest hour for small cars in terms of go-fast potential or build quality, but it was a starting point for them.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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