Vert-a-Pac railroad transporting for Chevy Vegas - photos

[Jon]

The Chevrolet Vega was designed specifically with low price in mind - it initially sold for around $2,000. However, the cost of transporting a vehicle from the factory to the showroom was very high - usually around $200-$300, depending on distance. Cars were generally transported by rail transport car, stacked horizontally in three layers, with 18 cars per 89-foot rail car.

In an effort to lower costs further, General Motors worked with Southern Pacific Railroad to design Vert-A-Pac rail cars, which were used to transport 30 Chevy Vegas at once, in a vertical configuration. Various filler caps, baffles, drain tubes, and spacers were used so that the Vegas could be transported nose-down.





What happened? Chevy Vegas were plagued with various reliability issues, prompting multiple large recalls. As the Vega went downhill, so did the model-specific Vert-A-Pac delivery method. Why don't we then use this method to transport cars by rail today? I don't know.

[Frank S]

Aw now Vegas were great little cars all you had to do was drop in a 350 from a Camaro a Mopar A833 (NP 440) 4 sp close ratio box and a Ford 9 inch out of anything narrowed to accept Micky Thompson N50 15's , and you would have had what Charles Delorean wanted to do over in the Pontiac division

[hemmjo]

Yep, the Chevy Vega had lots of potential. It just had some fatal design flaws, certainly fixable, if they had just spent a bit more time in testing and development of the concepts it introduced. It is really too bad that the US auto industry really messed up the early venture into the compact car arena. But the fact that the Vega engine was junk from the factory, made lots of Vegas readily available for HomeMadeTool kind of guys to play with.

https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-im...-drag-car.html

[SRQSid]

I bought a Vega as a second family car, bright yellow & stick shift. The biggest problem I had was the front fenders rusting out at the top near the A pillar. This was in western Massachusetts with plenty of salt on the roads in Wintertime. GM replaced the fenders at no charge. It served its purpose for the 2-3 years I owned it. I seem to recall a Cosworth model available also at some point.