"The Impossibly" Long Doors of the 1973 Olds Cutlass; Aunt Ruby's 1973 Pontiac Colonnade

1974

From Ed -- 

Guys, I was looking at some old car magazines this morning and ran across a review of the Olds Cutlass (1973) where the reviewer talked about the impossibly long doors.  One has to laugh out loud at what he said:

"Five foot long doors and a center pillar moved backwards?  These mothers are really heavy -- heavy enough to make you think of them as iron gates guarding the opening.  When the car isn't level, you have the chance to practice your isometrics.  And in tight parking encounters the long doors may open enough to emit a rear passenger while those in front may still require the physique of an airmail envelope to escape entrapment.

About the best thing the reviewer (Car & Driver, November 1973) could say about the "Colonnade Olds" was that the "grille work and bumper, was clean, non-agricultural, and attractive."

It was good to know the car's front-end was non-agricultural  

A quick story to share on the GM coupe doors:  Attached is a photo of the three versions of the 1973 Pontiac "Colonnade" -- the one in front with the "vanes' that covered the rear side quarter windows is exactly like the last car that my aunt Ruby owned.  Unlike most elderly men who say "you will have to pry the steering wheel out of my hands before I give up driving" my aunt Ruby decided one day that at the age of 81 she would simply "stop driving."  She drove to my mother and stepfather's home, pulled in the driveway, and handed the keys and the title to the Pontiac to my mother.   "That's it, I stop driving, one of you take me back home" she said.  

Aunt Ruby was what people back in the day would call a "big boned woman" meaning she was heavy and stout.  My mother later related to me that they literally had to pry her out of the car given how tight the seating was.  I was then told aunt Ruby proclaims: "I never liked this damn car, never could see out of it, never could get out of it, those damn doors!"

My mother titled the car in her name, drove it for a few months and then told my stepfather to "sell the damn thing" -- "I get a crick in my neck trying to see out the back."  Visibility was horrible in the Colonnades, of course, but GM during that period did make the front "A" pillars thinner and touted "better visibility" in their marketing.

Note also that the Pontiac version of these cars had a vary shallow trunk (note the one in the photo in the upper left).  The trunk severely sloped downward.  One might be fooled to believe this was a French car.   And, of course, the sedan version, to the upper right in the photo, was also a horrible design, and in my opinion the worst of the lot.

But aunt Ruby, a "spinster" school teacher had bought new Pontiacs since the late 1940s -- sometimes a new Pontiac every two or three years.  My mother told me that the last thing Ruby told her about the 1973 Pontiac Colonnade was:"No more Pontiacs, I hate this car."