Nostalgia & History > Vert-a-Pack Vegas on the SP

Check out this article...it explains the "vert-a-pack" that GM/SP developed to ship Vegas....

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/01/vert-a-pac-train-cars-kept-your-chevy-vegas-price-in-check/

From the article:

"Our apologies to those who've seen this before, but for the rest of the class, how awesome are these pictures of the Vert-A-Pac shipping system General Motors came up with to ship the Chevrolet Vega back in the 1970s? Developed along with Southern Pacific Railroad, GM was able to double the amount of Vega models it could ship by packing them into the unique storage cars vertically.

At the time, rail cars could fit 15 vehicles each, but Chevrolet was able to lower shipping costs by making it possible to ship 30 Vegas per rail car, in turn allowing the price of the Vega to remain as low as possible. Each rail car had 30 doors that would fold down so that a Vega could be strapped on, and then a forklift would come along and lift the door into place. All the cars were positioned nose down, and since they were shipped with all of their required fluids, certain aspects had to be designed specifically for this type of shipping, including an oil baffle in the engine, a special battery and even a repositioned windshield washer reservoir."

Pretty neat!

There is a number of discussions about Vert-a-packs in the TO archives. There was an interesting article in the SPH&TS about the beasts. The model manufacturer 'Exactrail' produced these in the past year or two. Very era specific freight car, anther very interesting Mechanical Engineering product.

A lot of hype. The Vert-a-Paks were not really successful. The problem of fluids leaking out of the vehicles was never really solved. The excessive time and labor to load and unload also served to negate some of the savings of more vehicles per rail car.

Best regards,

Rob L.

And the Chevy Vega wasn't exactly a prize-winner. It's often included in lists of "worst cars", along with the Ford Pinto hatchback and the Yugo.

Early '70s was a rough time for US auto makers dealing with the bogus "gas crisis". Experts at building reliable V8s, they had to shift gears (pun almost intended) and build small economy cars, changing product lines in just a few years. Big corporations have trouble changing that fast! I read somewhere the first Vega on the test track cracked it's frame and split in half, but the car was rushed into production anyway! PS, I'm a "Chevy" guy.

I owned a 1972 Vega GT hatchback purchased new for cash. Other than the need to sleeve the engine due to accountants cutting down the cooling in the block it was a reliable and fun car. I sold it with 110,000 miles running with the original exhaust starter, alternator, clutch and such. I think I made the right choice over the Fiat 124, Ford Pinto, or AMC Gremlin which were the other choices.

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The door closing method was decidedly low-tech.

DNRY122 Wrote:
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> And the Chevy Vega wasn't exactly a prize-winner.
> It's often included in lists of "worst cars",
> along with the Ford Pinto hatchback and the Yugo.


I can agree with you on that, that was my parents 1ST car in Cali, and it was like every week or so my mom always had to drive it to the shop because something was wrong with it, surprised they lasted to the late 80s and some are still around today if you look hard enough