“The K-Car program proposed a common body and chassis for all the GM cars in the intermediate and compact car classes. On the Chevrolet lines alone this meant building the Chevelle, Camaro and Nova, which at the time varied greatly in weight and dimensions, from essentially the same components. Like the similar program for big cars, this proposal was aimed at taking weight and cost out of these car lines and improving their fuel mileage. The Nova alone was scheduled to lose 600 pounds as its weight dropped from 3400 pounds to 2800. The equivalent savings in the intermediate car would be 800-900 pounds. In addition, we proposed a substantial change in the looks of these car lines. They would become more compact, higher and shorter, which would enable us to make more efficient use of the passenger compartment. . . .
We proposed instituting the K-Car program with the 1973 or ’74 models. We even discussed prices to the extent that we felt a bottom-end Nova at the time should be priced in the area of $2,600. This would have put it solidly in the lower end of the imported car price range. . . .
I later found out that the K-Car was getting substantial opposition from the GM Styling Department, especially Vice-President of Design, William L. Mitchell. The main objections from this quarter was that the car was taking the corporation into a more utilitarian design and away from the longer, lower, and sleeker look.”
— John Z. DeLorean (Wright, 1979; p. 181-182)
RE:SOURCES
- Wright, J. Patrick; 1979. On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors. Wright Enterprises, Grosse Pointe, MI.
BROCHURES & ADVERTISING:
- oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet Malibu (1973)
Also see ‘Was the 1973-77 Chevrolet Monte Carlo’s styling honest?’
Funny then DeLorean called his program the K-car. I wonder if Lee Iacocca taked the “K-car” name to use it for his own program at Chrysler?
But still, it was a bit later and ironic then GM worked on smaller full-size cars planned for 1977 as well as the Cadillac Seville.
Would this have been body on frame (like the ’78 A bodies), or unit body with sub-frame (like the ’75 X bodies)? Unit body is implied by the projected weight savings, but if so the NVH superiority GM enjoyed in intermediates may have been sacrificed.
I was surprised when the ’78 A-bodies remained body-on-frame. For the size of the car, I thought they’d have gone unitary. Outside the US I think only Toyota was still using body-on-frame for their Crown series, maybe some of the Russian companies also. GM had plenty of experience with unitary bodies this size (even discounting the overseas divisions of Opel, Vauxhall, and Holden), as the new As were about the size of the old Nova, weren’t they? Perhaps it was an NVH issue. I would guess the K-program would have been unitary given the weight savings. Surely they wouldn’t have wanted body-on-frame for the Nova-replacement.
Also, Ford’s decision to put compacts and intermediates on a common platform in ’66 had not gone so well, so marketing, as well as styling may have had reason to be skeptical.
You ask good questions. As with so many topics about the auto industry, the quality of the redesign’s execution could have been crucial to its success. My sense is that the problem with the 1966-70 Falcon was that it was too wide and heavy for a compact, yet the platform it shared with the Fairlane was on the narrow side for a late-60s intermediate.
Could GM have come up with a platform that was flexible enough to field both credible compacts and mid-sized offerings? A Nova with a curb weight of around 2,800 pounds would not have been an outstanding achievement in the early-70s, but it would put the car in the same league as the AMC Hornet and Ford Maverick four-door sedan. I assume that more impressive weight losses would have occurred with the new “mid-sized” cars.
I am curious about how DeLorean would have dealt with the platform’s width. Even AMC under Romney gave the 1963 Classic a wider body than the compact American — which threw away the economies of scale of sharing major components such as cowls. So might DeLorean have given the Nova a standard compact width of around 70 inches and differentiated the mid-sized cars with unique outer-body sheetmetal that was wider by a few inches?
I didn’t see any references in the DeLorean book to whether the body would have been unitized, although — as you point out — that would have made sense given the projected weight savings. That said, he might have been a little loose with his numbers, e.g., I have not seen Novas in the 3,400-pound range until they received beefy bumpers in 1973.
Good point, as they didn’t seem too successful in the US. Here in Australia these compacts were the standard size car, and the ’67 Falcon seemed unnecessarily wide and bloated after the comparatively lithe ’62 we had before; wider (73″) than the Holden (70″) or Valiant (71″), to no obvious benefit. As a kid washing it I couldn’t help noticing the thicker, heavier doors. To the end of his driving days my Dad was still misjudging the width of that thing. Having said that, later Holdens and Aussie-bodied Valiants went to the Falcon’s width.
I wonder if this proposal by DeLorean was part of an attempt to ensure his rise to the corporation’s presidency? His K-body plan could potentially have put GM way ahead of the curve and saved their bacon from frying in the fire of the 1973-74 oil embargo.
Even more interesting is Mitchell’s role in nixing this ambitious re-direction especially since corporate had forced Mitchell to upsize the proposed 1971 E-bodies to ride on the bigger B/C-body platform. If Bill couldn’t have his way with GM’s prestige models, I don’t think he was about to let DeLorean have his with the full range of the corporation’s highly profitable mid-size cars.
I find any argument that predicted the 1973 oil embargo to be false. That was an unexpected event. As such it was not baked into anyone’s product planning decisions that had been made 3-5 years prior.
“The K-Car program proposed a common body and chassis for all the GM cars in the intermediate and compact car classes.“
It’s really hard, from a style perspective, for me to imagine a 1970-81 Camaro/Firebird without the powerful Bill Mitchell “super hugger” design, if the ‘K’ common body/chassis had come to fruition. Would a boxier, taller Chevelle/ Nova/ Camaro body really have led to the iconic cars we had known so well? Or would Camaro/Firebird have been something more disjointed like the original Valiant-based Barracuda? Perhaps they’d have ultimately decided to share fewer parts after seeing the reality. It really depends on what was essential to achieve their commonization goals, particularly regarding the cowl panel assembly. However, based upon DeLorean’s design sense; including the ‘67 Firebird, ‘69 Grand Prix, Vega styling and the Giugiaro-esque DMC-12, I trust he’d have known how to achieve a clean and attractive style that would be appropriate to its tidier package. It might have even led to a more competitive position against the imports in the late 70’s when public tastes were shifting.
General Motors was all over the place: Quickly changing expectations, the loss of the NSU-Wankel engine program, the 1973-1974 Arab Oil Embargo, etc. I cannot see how William Mitchell, as great a designer as he was, could stop the G.M. Executive Committee into temporarily downsizing the entire G.M. fleet. It was obvious to most that the 1971-1976 full-size cars were way to heavy and big for the interior comfort the cars delivered, and the (1973-1977) G.M. intermediates similarly inefficient. Of, course, Chrysler and Ford fell into this rat-trap, too.
It’s astounding nowadays to think GM had the money to be able to be all over the place in those days! So many programs, some of which dead-ended, and some of which (eg. Vega engine) should have dead ended. Looking back from the fragmented market of the 2020s, it’s hard to credit the dominance and the resultant financial resources GM must have had.
Although longer-lower-wider was very much the design ethos, and flaunting what you’ve got seemed to be The American Way (view from a foreigner here; please excuse me if I’m wrong), Big American cars were becoming increasingly unwieldy in export markets. I think of my childhood; a 1950 Chevrolet was a usefully large (and suitably impressive) car, but a 1960 seemed positively cartoonish. Sales of big American cars fell, as they had just become too big (and thirsty as a result) to be viable for the Australian market. Likewise I could compare 1950 and 1960 Fords or Plymouths; I guess there was something in the water over there! 🙂 But with a booming domestic market, I guess overseas sales didn’t matter.
I’d have thought the ’69-’70s were quite big enough already. Definitely GM’s early seventies standards (and intermediates) were too big. I’ve never read who was responsible for super-sizing them over their predecessors, which had maintained pretty much the same dimensions throughout the sixties. It is hard to imagine Design having the clout to override the Executive Committee though.
In my experience the onus would have been upon DeLorean’s team to create a convincing ‘challenge’ 1:1 physical styling model in order to gain consensus for his new direction among the product planning, engineering, production and styling management. However if Mitchell had no desire to consider this path and immediately ‘put the curse upon it’, then that was his call to make, and he certainly was most influential. Of course today, Styling doesn’t wield such overriding authority over development as it once did, with product program managers responsible for weighing all factors more appropriately.
This is an interesting account, but I question whether Bill Mitchell deserves the blame for squashing this program.
Given the proposed timeline – with the K-car program models being introduced for the 1973 or 1974 model year – DeLorean must have formulated this plan when he was general manager of the Chevrolet Division. (He had been appointed to that position in February 1969.)
DeLorean would not thus not have had final authority over the product plans of the other divisions. Pontiac had a version of the F-body with the Firebird, and Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac all sold versions of the A-body. By the early 1970s, the A-body accounted for a big portion of the total sales of Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac. I therefore doubt that the general managers of those divisions would appreciate having Chevrolet unilaterally decided to make major changes to those cars without their input.
Did he have buy-in from the general managers of those divisions for this plan? One or more of them would have would have had sufficient clout to derail this program.
The implementation of this proposal would have affected everything from amortization costs of different bodies to factory utilization rates. Those aren’t the type of decisions made by the chief stylist. Bill Mitchell may have voiced objections to the K-car program from a styling standpoint, but decisions regarding platform sharing and downsizing were ultimately approved or rejected by the 14th Floor, not Bill Mitchell.
Remember that Mitchell originally wanted the Oldsmobile Toronado to be based on the A-body, and wanted to downsize the boat-tail Riviera to a special version of the A-body (similar to what had been done with the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix). He was overruled by Ed Cole with the Toronado, as Cole wanted the costs of GM’s large personal luxury cars to be spread over three models, not two. The general manager of Buick fought him on downsizing the Riviera for 1971, with the result that it was based on the full-size body, much to Mitchell’s dismay.
GM management would also have considered Ford’s experience with the 1960s Falcon and Fairlane/Torino. Ford had essentially implemented DeLorean’s proposal, and it hardly benefitted the Falcon. By 1967, the Chevy II/Nova was whipping the Falcon in sales. At the time DeLorean was formulating this proposal, GM management may have heard that Ford was planning to place the 1972 Torino and Montego on an all-new platform – with a body-on-frame configuration to match the smoothness and lower noise levels of the GM A-body. GM management had seen its chief rival take this approach…and Ford had not enjoyed greater success than GM in those segments.
My understanding is that DeLorean was still at Pontiac and that he had built an alliance with Chevy management on the proposal. I agree with you that Mitchell may not have had as much power as DeLorean suggests.
Judging by the weight numbers DeLorean offered, it may not have been the case that the Nova would have suffered the same fate as the upsized Falcon. The bigger potential challenge was arguing in favor of a major downsizing of the mid-sized cars. How would top management have bought into that idea when the rest of the GM lineup was growing in size and weight? At that point in time there weren’t enough external pressures to force the issue, as there was in the second half of the 1970s, which were heavily colored by the first oil crisis, passage of CAFE standards, and increasing import sales.
Are there any photos of the styling proposals of cars based on the K-car platform? It would be interesting to see them.
It’s a shame that GM upsized its intermediates with the Colonnade generation. The 1968-72 generation was very popular with buyers (throughout their entire run). They were the right size, comfortable and quite handsome (in my opinion, their styling has held up better than the styling of the Colonnade generation). They were also made of better materials and featured better build quality than the Colonnades.
Our family owned a 68 chevy full sized then a 72. The 72 was a bigger car but no roomier and the trunk not as usable. But most importantly the 72 had a lot of cost cutting in the interior and overall it was not as good a car as the 72. And the colonade cars I think were even more of a disappointment compared to 64-72.
This K program seems a little advanced coming in about 1969 – 1970. The Japanese had not reached prominence at this point and even the Audi Fox which pointed the way to the future was about a year or 2 away.
If acted upon GM wouldve owned the world market with smaller efficient most probably unit bodied cars.
Just too advanced the plan seemed and still with many questions about how 3 car packages could be pulled form 1 platform ,and perhaps customer acceptance.
Mitchell did not like small cars. He had all the talent to style them correctly – but remember his first car assignment was the 1938 Cadillac 60
special. That was his blessing and his curse.