1976 was a pivotal year in the domestic car market because it marked a time when the industry was at a crossroads in overall direction.
There were cars built for style and cars built for practical reasons, but the day of the muscle car was long over by 1976.
However, Detroit weathered the storm with some interesting cars in 76, so MyStarCollectorCar picked five of the cars that caught the public’s attention 50 years ago this year.
Jim Sutherland
The first car on our list is actually two very similar cars, namely the 1976 Plymouth Volare and its Dodge Aspen cousin.
They were built to replace the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart, although the Volare/Aspen models shared 1976 with the Valiant/Dart models before the older Mopar compacts headed to the exit ramp at Chrysler.
The 1976 Volare/Dodge models offered a newer style and engineering (front suspension and steering) that gave the cars a sleeker design and better handling than its Valiant/Dart predecessors. The replacement models would offer cheapskate versions with Slant Six engines right up to a 36O cubic-inch small block that offered lively performance by 1976 standards.
The second car on our 1976 list is the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, a wild-looking car that looked like it meant business, but proved the point that looks might be deceiving, given the car’s lack of performance. The massive 455 big block engine was still an option, but the engine was a castrated version of its former self.
1976 also marked the last year for single round headlights on Pontiac Trans Ams before they joined the 455 on the sidelines of Poncho pony car history that year. The good news is 1976 marked the debut of T-tops for Trans Ams.
The third addition to MyStarCollectorCar’s automotive Class of 1976 is the large-and-in-charge Cadillac Eldorado convertible. This giant land yacht was the last domestic drop top built in North America during the Me Decade and flew in the face of the car-downsizing movement at the time.
A 1976 Eldorado convertible was a car well past its best-before date because it was a huge car with limited interior space for passengers and very poor gas mileage, so it was an outlier in a new automotive era where small gas sippers with four doors were the wave of the near future for car buyers.
A big convertible with few practical features and an insatiable gasoline addiction was a dinosaur in 1976, but a very cool one in our opinion.
The fourth member of our 1976 club was also a giant car, specifically the overly plump Ford Thunderbird. The T-Bird began life as a two-seater sports car in 1955 and became a plus-sized car over the ensuing years.
By 1976, Thunderbird shared its platform with the Lincoln Continental because the car had become a luxury liner with zero resemblance to the two-seater T-Bird predecessor from the early days of rock and roll.
1976 would be the last year for oversized Thunderbirds because Ford would build a smaller and sleeker version the next year.
The fifth and final addition to our Spirit of ’76 automotive list is the 1976 Ford Torino.
It was the last year for the Torino model after a nine-year production run and, as a grand finale, Ford cashed in on the ‘Starsky and Hutch’ fad and built replicas of the popular TV star cop car.
Fame would be fleeting for ‘Starsky and Hutch’ but the limited edition 1976 Ford Torino dedicated to the TV show is still popular 50 years later and is a worthy addition to MyStarCollectorCar’s list of consequential cars from 1976.
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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