• Okay, this one's been sleeved, but it'd still be interesting to know how many of the Vega 2.3s are still around.

    The Astre didn't come around until the big bumper was already blighting the Vega's snout, but the Astre nose looks rather better as far as I'm concerned.

  • I owned 3 or 4 in the late 70"s. The 2 bbl carb really improved the performance over the earlier single barrel versions. Lots of plastic inside. Vega's and Astres didn't have the best build quality, but I don't recall them arriving with dented front fenders (and no headliners). I wish folks wouldn't really super over exaggerate stuff (my pet peeve!).

  • The Oldsmobile Starfire and Buick Skyhawk were not direct derivatives of the Vega. The only "badge engineered version" was the Pontiac Astre which, by the way, made its debut in Canada in 1973 (with 'skinny' bumpers!), a few years before it was introduced in the US. The Olds Starfire and Buick Skyhawk did have Chevy and Pontiac siblings but those were the Monza and Sunbird, respectively. Though all were very similar as far as the platform sheet metal and suspension was concerned, only the Vega and Astre shared most of the outer sheet metal and they, therefore, appeared to be virtually the same cars. The Monza, Sunbird, Skyhawk, and Starfire shared much of the same underpinnings but were entirely different from the Vega/Astre models when dealing with everything above the rocker panels.

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