Once again we find ourselves confronting a Cosworth Vega. It doesn’t help that they all look identical. It doesn’t help that the engine, while technically advanced, is still sluggish. The Cosworth Vega is the relief you feel when you finally leave the dentist’s office. It’s not the joy you feel when you drive your project Mach 1 for the first time. But I don’t write about cars I don’t like (ha ha, that’s hardly useful since I have rarely met a car I don’t like) so this one has to be special., and it is: it’s heavily documented, with ostensibly low mileage, owned by one family. Find it here on craigslist with an asking price of $19,900 or offer. A tinge of desperation has set in, as the seller mentions, “must sell”. The same car was listed here in October for $10k more! You should be able to drive this one home from River Falls, Minnesota. PRA4SNW pitched this tip to us – thanks!
The combination of Chevy and Cosworth could have been magical. Cosworth Engineering is a British company renowned for its engine designs, which in one form or another have won hundreds of races including over 170 in F1. So it’s not Cosworth’s fault that this 2.0 liter, four-cylinder, twin-cam, fuel-injected motor makes only 110 hp. If there’s blame to hand out, it belongs mostly to Chevy. The CosVeg was conceived in the early 1970s, and the goal was 185 hp from a compression ratio of around 12:1. But Chevy took so long to develop the car that emissions regs outran the engine design. Keeping up with the feds meant neutering the Cosworth Vega’s compression ratio, all the way down to 8.5:1. (Is it worth mentioning that the 2.0-liter Lotus twin cam developed for the Esprit at the same time put out 140 hp in US trim? And that was even considered slow?) The ordinary Vega handled fine, so no substantial changes to the underpinnings were employed. Our subject car has a claimed 24,823 original miles; substantial documentation is provided with the car. Its running/driving condition is “excellent”.
This one’s interior is in outstanding condition. No rubbing on the seat bolsters, no cracks in the dash nor even fading. Intact door seals. Clean sills. Great rear seats. That striking engine-turned dash. This is car number 2437 out of maybe 4000 made.
The seller comments that the paint has slight imperfections scattered around – unavoidable after all this time despite gentle use. The photos under fluorescent lighting reveal some orange peel, but that’s really picking a nit – shop lighting is about as unflattering as a bikini on a matron. This car has been religiously garaged and we’re promised it has no rust. On the question of value: you can pay a lot less for a Cosworth Vega but you’ll put up with more mileage, less documentation, dubious maintenance…. Everything about this particular example tells me that if you want one, this is it.
I know I will get blasted for this, but to locate a 98 thru 2005 LS1 drivetrain from a Z or a Vette and install, one of these would be a blast to drive! There were many of these in drag racing back in the 70’s. Anyone remember ‘Grumpy’s Toy”?
Why not use some common hooptie Vega instead? They’re cheaper, easier to find-for that matter, a ‘70’s Monza that had a V8 already in it.
I could be wrong but I just don’t see these ever going up like everyone thought they would. Always liked the look so why not make it fun?
I’m with you. To know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been, and these are one of those benchmarks that show us where we started from, and how far we’ve come. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone/ They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot!” – Joni Mitchell
I will concede that these didn’t sell well when new. At $5000, new, they cost almost as much as a Corvette at the time, and you could buy a fully loaded Z28 or TransAm and kept about $500 in your pocket as well, but they were a benchmark, although we didn’t know it at the time. Now, in an era of six-figure muscle cars, these can still be had at a reasonable cost, and they showed us the future, even though we weren’t quite ready for the future at the time.
You’re right, you will get roasted for that. If you want to hop up an ordinary Vega POS, then fine, but we’re talking about only one (1) of 4000 made of GM’s first all-aluminum, DOHC, multi-valve engines, and the first one with EFI (the Corvette used an electromechanical injection system). This was the prototype for all of the engines that would follow it. Only one (1) can be first, and this is it! Granted, the technology was in its infancy at the time, and all of the automakers were still learning how to cope with the EPA rules, and they were chasing a moving target at the time, but because of those first steps, we now have engines that size that can now put out close to 300 hp on stock pump gas, meet all of the emissions rules and get over 30 mpg on the highway, all with a full factory warranty! You have to start somewhere, and GM started here. It would be a crime to destroy that history just to create one more “drag queen”, which are a dime a dozen! Do it to an ordinary Vega, yes, those were crap, but leave this one alone! Please!
In a heartbeat I’m sure someone makes a kit and pull the oem motor/trans and put it up in storage. Wouldn’t be sluggish anymore.
That’s smart!
OEM lump and trans and drive line goes into proper storage or go nuts and tow a small show trailer with the original engine in nice display of history at car events.
Maybe a front wheel drive turbo under the hood will do for cruising and light towing duty.
Bummer, it doesn’t have the swing out rear window option; w/o A/C, that would be an aid for aitrflow through the cabin. Otherwise, a very nicely kept specimen that I could happily park in my driveway. GLWTS!! :-)
AC wasn’t an option.
One of this problems with this hyperexpensive exotic Vega, other than having the build quality and cachet of a Vega, is that air-conditioning was not even offered.
The key problem was not the feds and emissions, although everyone here always wants to blame them.
Cosworth told GM they would have to reinforce the block to get anything like the power they wanted and GM declined to comply, leaving the “ready to recycle” Vega, 2300 engine block as is.
they are interesting, but there are far more interesting cars that can be had for the same price
Either C&D or R&T tested one of these against some European models and I’d venture that most people today would be surprised by the review.
If I were to change the engine in this Vega i think I would try to swap in a 2.0 turbo 4 from a modern Camaro. V-8 Vega swaps are old news. Swapping in a turbo 4 from a Camaro would be better and what a surprise when you punched the throttle!
Since it is a Cosworth it would be better to leave it as built. Maybe performance pistons with a bit more compression would wake it up.
The total production for 1975 and 1976 was 3508. I was once the 3rd owner of a ’76 with about 13K miles on it. The price seems a little high here, so $10K more before sounds like a hard sell except for a factory fresh example, I think.. Though I haven’t really been paying attention.
nobody wanted to buy a car with mediocre performance, based on a half baked Vega platform, for basically the price of a Corvette, with no air-conditioning.
I hope someone in product planning was executed over this. Most of the Cosworth Vega engines were actually junked.
The Cosworth engines were “junked” because GM had far more motors left over than they sold in cars. Total Cosworth Vega sales were less than 4k, but GM built 10k engines, so they had over 6k examples on hand when the Cosworth Vega was cancelled, at least that’s what I read. Rather than sell them on the aftermarket, they just scrapped the rest. What a waste. Even selling them on the aftermarket for pennies on the dollar would have been preferable to just melting them down, but GM was the world’s largest automaker at the time. They still felt that they could do anything they wanted, simply due to market dominance, no matter how much the Government tried to disabuse them of that fallacy.
Fuel injection was so fidgety that 90% of them are still low mileage. Most owners thru them away and put a good weber or similar carb
The problem was that most owners didn’t know how to work on fuel injection, period. Like any new technology, it takes time to learn how it works and how to fix it. Don’t blame the engine for the owner’s ignorance. That’s like a DC-7 mechanic saying: “I don’t like these newfangled DC-8 jet engine thingies, so I’m just gonna swap a good Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial into it! Yeehaw!”
Tuning fuel injection got much easier with the advent of OBDII standards in 1995. Before OBDII, each manufacturer had their own proprietary test equipment standards, so you needed a specific diagnostic tool for each manufacturer. With the advent of OBDII, generic tools became commonplace and as cheap as a good multimeter, bringing EFI service tools into the reach of the home mechanic. Once you know how to work on it, fuel injection is far superior to a carburetor, with much lower fuel consumption and emissions than a carburetor can ever hope to achieve.
While this is true for modern engines it is not true for this one. The low compression and poor design lead to low HP and poor performance. Had nothing to do with the fuel injection. The ’75 Datsun 280z was f.i. with okay performance for it’s day at 0-60 in 7.5 seconds while the Cosworth with it’s 8.5:1 engine managed it in 11.1 seconds. The advent of F.I. is not going to help this engine.
I owned a 75 in the late 70s as my daily driver. All the 75s were black, with 76 seeing some choice of colors. It was reliable and unique. Never an issue with the Bendix FI.
They had two major flaws though: they were supposed to have 140 HP; the distinctive gold mag wheels had a manufacturing flaw that made them impossible to properly balance. Above 75 mph it would shake terribly. That may have been corrected in 76.
At the risk of being arrested: I gutted the catalytic converter and punched out the gas filler neck in order to use leaded gas. This definitely upped the performance.
Sold it in 1981 for more than I paid for it!
Saw one that appeared to be in great shape last Saturday,
while driving through Iron Gate,Virginia.Now I wished that I’d
stopped and took a look at it.
Not sure if it was for sale or not.
I Remember Bill Grumpy Jenkins , Ronnie Sox of Sox and Martin Hemi Cuda And Bob Glidden with his Ford drag car
At one time I was in the camp of keeping these things original. But now after having owned one and kept original I am now in the camp of “get that low HP lump out of there!”. They are good looking cars but in original form so boring to drive. They offer no thrill whatsoever and badly need some grunt. Shaving the head to add compression, messing with the timing etc. does little to improve on these. Great idea that fell flat imho. If I ever got another one it would be with an eye towards a different powertrain.
I remember an American magazine tested one and I still remember parts of it because I was a kid and thought these were neat. I’d have to say it was quite unflattering, and remember the testers had problems with the steering column getting quite hot, shifter problems and other things I can’t remember. I’m amazed I remember anything from that article, hell I have problems remember what I ate for breakfast nowadays…..
Needs to drop price another $10K and might get a buyer