Vega Bonds

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

LIBERTY

Paul Rohrbaugh of New Middletown combines a love of local history with a love of cars.

Rohrbaugh, an Austintown native, owns one of the nicest 1973 Chevrolet Vegas anyone has ever seen.

He purchased his Lordstown-built Vega — a dark green model — in June 2009 after two previous owners cared for the car like their most prized possession.

He knows a thing or two about taking good care of a Vega, because he bought a new one in 1974, just after he graduated from Austintown Fitch High School, and drove it until 1979, when he traded it in with more than 90,000 miles on it. Everything was still in good working order.

That Rohrbaugh was able to drive his first Vega for so many years without calamity is an accomplishment, because the Vega has been acknowledged widely as among the worst cars made by the American automotive industry.

Rohrbaugh, who drives his green Vega a couple of times per week to his job at National College in Liberty, said it’s that combination of local history and infamy that probably explains why the inexpensive, no-frills two-door gets so much attention when he drives it.

“We’ve had a lot of very nice conversations about our town and this car’s role in the area’s history,” Rohrbaugh said.

“I’m very proud of returning this bit of local history to our roads and preserving it for folks to see and enjoy.”

Jaw Dropper gets noticed

Rohrbaugh and his wife, Lisa, named the car “J.D.,” he said, for Jaw Dropper, because even though J.D. is a most simple-looking car, it produces extreme reactions.

Just about every time Rohrbaugh drives the car, another motorist will honk at him or follow along, gawking. He’s noticed on several occasions that motorists have pulled along side J.D., speeding up, slowing down — all in an effort to get a good look at the car.

“It’s like a little time machine on wheels,” Rohrbaugh said, agreeing that the car may be a great curiosity because there are relatively few of them left.

There was a time in the Mahoning Valley when seeing a Vega was as common as factory smog and traffic jams at shift change.

The Vega was a popular car for Mahoning Valley families to buy for their children — either in high school or college — many Mahoning Valley residents have told The Vindicator in recent weeks.

Because the car was made locally, provided paychecks for many families and because it was inexpensive, it was a popular choice here.

But because of quality problems, the cars didn’t last very long.

The Vega holds an important place in the memories of those who lived in the Mahoning Valley when the car went into production in 1970 — 40 years ago — and continuing until 1977.

Memories of the car range from nostalgic to practical to cynical.

Rohrbaugh, a longtime teacher and librarian who also has written two books on local history, always has been careful with the cars he owns.

So before he even brought home his red Vega from the car dealership in 1974 at a price of $2,300, he took it to his family car service station and had his mechanic take a look.

There was no grease in the lower part of the car anywhere — a problem that was quickly corrected, Rohrbaugh said.

After Rohrbaugh obtained his green Vega last year, he wanted to make sure that the car was safe from the rust problems that had dogged the car during the 1970s, so he stripped off the faded paint, found no rust underneath, and repainted it the original color.

The car still has its original AM radio, tires, and interior trim. The motor still runs great and doesn’t use a drop of oil — even though the innovative-but-ill-conceived engine was notorious for burning oil and complete failure within the first 50,000 miles.

THE BIRTH OF VEGA

A 2000 article in Collectible Automobile magazine gives a lengthy description of the factors that went into General Motors’ decision to build the Vega — mostly to provide motorists with an al ternative to the small, low-cost Volkswagen Beetle and to compete with the Ford Pinto, which arrived on the automotive scene at the same time as the Vega.

GM wanted to build a 2,000-pound car that would sell for $2,000. To do it meant scrimping everywhere possible — the thickness of the metal, the quality of some of the parts and speed with which the car had to be brought to market.

But Collectible Automobile says perhaps one of the greatest reasons why the Vega eventually appeared on most lists of the worst cars of all times is that GM failed to perform what one engineer called “granny tests.”

Instead of checking to see what would happen to their product if poorly maintained by a typical “granny,” GM test drivers checked coolant and oil levels at regular intervals and never learned that the Vega motor was chock full of little time bombs destined to ruin the car’s engine.

“It astonishes me that not one of us thought about seeing what would happen if we ran out of water” in the radiator, GM Engineer Fred Kneisler said in Collectible Automobile.

Lack of water and oil led to many of the Vega’s engine problems and also caused the motors to quit without warning or refuse to start.

VEGA’S YOUNG DEMOGRAPHIC

As many local former Vega owners have said, most were young when they got their Vega, many drove them to college at Youngstown State University and many relied on their father to maintain the car.

Sue Blystone DeToro of Austintown was one of seven Blystone children growing up in Boardman in the 1970s, and the family had three Vegas at the same time.

Because her father, Don Blystone, was a superviser at the GM Lordstown fabrication plant starting with its opening in 1969, it made sense to buy the Vega, she said.

“We all drove them to attend class at YSU and go to our jobs,” she said.

“The gas mileage was great, and they were pretty dependable. It was just our get-around car.”

Sue and her brother shared a Vega while she was in high school; then she got a used one in 1976 to drive to YSU for her sophomore year.

“My Vega was about as basic of a car as you could get,” she said. “It only had an AM radio, no air conditioning, manual windows and locks, and a 3-speed with a bad clutch that had to be replaced like five times.”

As for rust, “That was always the joke with mine. It was copper-colored, and when people would ask me what color it was, I would say rust.”

RELIABILITY CRITICIZED

Gordon Morris and his wife, Judy, of Cuyahoga Falls, who lived in Howland in the 1970s, bought a bright blue 1975 two-door Vega station wagon new.

The family kept the car about four years and put about 60,000 miles on it, but finally got rid of it because it was a little unreliable.

“You just never knew if it would start or not,” Gordon said. “We liked it otherwise.”

One time in 1976, his wife tried driving home from her job at Packard Electric at around midnight, and the car quit running on Elm Road Northeast in Warren near the state Route 82 Bypass.

Judy walked about a mile back to a friend’s house to get a ride home so that Gordon didn’t have to take their young daughters out of the house late at night.

Rodger Burnich of Connecticut and Florida, a Youngstown native, said he bought a 1972 Vega Kammback wagon with 4,000 miles on it. He sometimes drove himself and his wife from Connecticut to Youngstown to visit his father, a captain in the Youngstown Police Department.

When traveling down hills on Interstate 80, his wife would sometimes tell him to slow down.

“I’d say, ‘I can’t. If I don’t get up some speed, I won’t make it back up.’ You’d look at the speedometer, and it would go from 60, to 50, to 40. It always managed to get up the hill, but it would shake.”

Burnich said the cars inspired a common remark at the gas station when two Vega owners would meet.

“Everybody I knew who had a Vega would say, ‘How many miles to a quart of oil do you get?” He added a quart of oil about every 600 miles, Burnich said. “Most people kept a case of oil in the trunk.”

The Vega and the AMC Pacer that Burnich owned convinced him to buy foreign cars, he said.

“Lesson learned: Never buy an American-made car again. And to this day, I haven’t,” he said.