The rise & fall of the American personal luxury car

In the 1970s, America’s largest automakers put luxury within the reach of millions of motorists.

The personal luxury car segment rose to prominence as the muscle car chapter of American automotive history came to a close. Buyers who spent the 1960s doing burnouts in 500 hp machines were ready for more laid-back cars that nonetheless made them feel like they had spent their hard-earned dollars on something special.

And, as the 1970s wreaked havoc on the automotive industry, especially in America, luxury became a considerably more important selling point than horsepower. Companies were no longer able to flaunt blisteringly quick quarter-mile times as sellling points but they could brandish Corinthian leather and opera windows instead. Enormous and lavish, the personal luxury car briefly became the automotive equivalent of the ranch-style home and an integral part of the American dream.

Join us for a look at the segment’s meteoric rise and its lightning-fast downfall. PICTURE: Oldsmobile Toronado

Ford Thunderbird (1958)

Ford laid the foundations of the uniquely American personal luxury car segment when it transformed the Thunderbird from a two- to a four-seater in 1958. The transformation made the model more than 16in (406mm) longer and nearly 1000lb (455kg) heavier than in 1957 but fuel was cheap and it was a tourer, not an all-out sports car, so no one complained. The line-up included a two-door hardtop priced at $3630 and a two-door convertible that cost $3914, figures that represent about $31,800/£24,000 and $34,200/£25,800, respectively, in 2019.

Adding a pair of seats to the Thunderbird paid off immediately. In 1958, Ford sold 35,758 examples of the coupe and 2134 convertibles. In 1957, when the model was only offered as a two-seater convertible, Ford built 21,380 cars. Rivals were eager to mimic Ford’s success. 

Buick Riviera (1963)

General Motors (GM) chief stylist Bill Mitchell asked designer Ned Nickles to draw a Ford Thunderbird competitor for the Cadillac brand. The final sketch was gorgeous, and it completely stood out from the excess-led designs in GM’s portfolio during the late 1950s, but Cadillac officials had no interest in the car. It was ultimately given to Buick and assigned the Riviera nameplate.

Mitchell didn’t want a good design to go to waste so he famously instructed Buick’s decision-makers to turn it into a “cross between a Rolls-Royce and a Ferrari.” They followed his directives by releasing the car with a long list of standard equipment including a 325 hp V8, two-speed wipers, reverse lights, a glare-proof rear-view mirror, an electric clock and deep-pile carpet.

Buick charged $4333 for the Riviera in 1963, which converts to about $36,000/£27,100 in 2019 money, and it sold approximately 40,000 examples during the model’s first year on the market.

Oldsmobile Toronado (1966)

The Ford Thunderbird easily outsold the Buick Riviera in the middle of the 1960s but a volume of about 40,000 units annually raised more than a few eyebrows at GM's headquarters. Executives identified an opportunity for another one of GM's brands to enter the personal luxury coupe segment. Thus GM pelted Oldsmobile into the ring with instructions to offer something a little bit different.

Released in 1966, the Oldsmobile Toronado stood out with a bold, concept car-like design and mammoth dimensions; its 119in (3022mm) wheelbase was about as long as an entire Austin Mini. The sheet metal hid something even more striking: front-wheel drive.

The Toronado’s long list of standard equipment included a 385 hp V8, power steering, power brakes, an automatic transmission and an electric clock. Oldsmobile charged $4585 (about $35,800/£27,000 in 2019 money) for the model, which kept it off of Cadillac’s turf, and sold 40,000 examples in its first year on the market. Ford’s Thunderbird still reigned supreme.

The almighty T-Bird (late 1960s)

Sales of the Oldsmobile Toronado crashed to about 21,000 units in 1967. Buick managed to sell 42,799 examples of the Riviera that year but the Ford Thunderbird outsold both combined by a wide margin.

Ford redesigned the model in 1967. The line-up included a two-door hardtop plus two- and four-door variants of what brochures described as a Landau, meaning it had a vinyl roof. Combined, the three variants brought 77,956 buyers, cash in hand, to Ford showrooms that year.

Chrysler sat on the sidelines as GM tried to identify the element it was missing to beat Ford.

Pontiac Grand Prix (1969)

Pontiac boss John Z. DeLorean sought to hit two birds with the same stone when he ordered an all-new Grand Prix for the 1969 model year. First, the second-generation model needed to move back up on car buyers’ shopping list. Second, it needed to take the brand into the personal luxury car segment.

112,486 shoppers bought a Grand Prix in 1969 compared to 31,711 the previous year. Thunderbird production hovered around 50,000 units; GM had finally figured out how to beat Ford.

Its secret was cost. The Grand Prix started at $3866 (about $26,600/£20,000 in 2019) while the Thunderbird cost $4807 (about $33,108/£25,000 in 2019). Both came with V8 power and stretched about the same size. The Grand Prix wasn’t as luxurious as the Thunderbird and the nameplate certainly wasn’t as prestigious but buyers happily gave up cachet to get 20% off. Pontiac had created a new, more attainable kind of personal luxury car.

Chevrolet Monte Carlo (1970)

GM urged its other divisions to quickly apply Pontiac’s Grand Prix formula. The Chevrolet Monte Carlo arrived in showrooms for the 1970 model year with Grand Prix underpinnings and a brand-specific design. It brazenly placed elegance and luxury above performance, a strategy which worked wonders. The muscle car era was beginning to fade away and buyers were ready for something else.

That’s not to say it was slow. SS-454 model took less than 8sec to reach 60mph from a stop. Tellingly, only 3823 of the 145,975 Monte Carlos sold in 1970 came with the 454 V8 yet a majority of buyers ordered the optional fender skirts. Buyers sought style, not horsepower.

Thunderbird production continued to hover around 50,000 units which led Ford to re-think its strategy. Pontiac Grand Prix sales dropped to 65,750 while Chrysler still sat back and watched.

Luxury overtakes performance (early 1970s)

The personal luxury coupe segment really took off during the 1970s because a series of unexpected events conspired to kill performance. In the early 1970s, insurance companies in America started charging more to cover fast cars with big engines. The 1970 Clean Air Act marked the beginning of a strict, serious campaign aimed at curbing air pollution and the Nixon administration created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December of that year. Building a car with a 7.0-liter, carbureted V8 engine was suddenly frowned upon.

Then the 1973 oil crisis triggered by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sent demand for big, fuel-thirsty cars on a freefall. American automakers couldn’t use horsepower and quarter-mile times to sell cars anymore. In 1975 with emissions controls in full swing, the entry-level Ford Mustang II came with an 83 hp four-cylinder engine while the full-fat V8 coughed out 122 hp from a 5.0-liter V8. In a way, it had become more of a personal luxury car than a pony car, especially when fitted with the Ghia package.

If performance was out, luxury was in. Buyers figured that if they were going to trundle rather than sprint, they may as well do it in style, comfort and lavishness. Automakers rushed to release option packages that added wire-style wheel covers, vinyl roofs, hood ornaments and French (or French-sounding) names that made often made little sense in this context. PICTURE: 1975 Ford Mustang 

Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (1973)

The Cutlass Supreme morphed into a true personal luxury car when Oldsmobile redesigned the entire Cutlass line-up in 1973. It stood out from other members of the Cutlass family with vertical opera-style windows and it offered many standard features like ashtrays, front disc brakes, dome lights, a radio antenna and chromed hubcaps. Oldsmobile sold 219,857 examples of the car in 1973.

Buick Regal (1973)

Buick helped create the personal luxury car segment when it released the Riviera in 1963 but it didn’t enter the lower, more affordable end of the market created by Pontiac until 1973. The Century-based Regal took it into this lucrative space with vertical opera windows and a vinyl roof. Like the Cutlass, the Monte Carlo and the Grand Prix, the Regal was influenced by GM's Colonnade styling.

Ford Gran Torino Elite (1974)

Though it stretched 214in (5435mm) from bumper to bumper, the Ford Thunderbird was overshadowed by more affordable coupes made by GM brands like Pontiac and Chevrolet. Ford decided to move into that space by releasing the Gran Torino Elite in 1974. It received the same set of features that caught buyers’ attention when they looked at a Chevrolet Monte Carlo and it was priced on the same level, which was well below the Thunderbird’s price bracket.

In 1974, Ford charged $4092 (about $21,000/£15,800 in 2019 money) for the Elite and $7221 (about $37,000/£28,000 in 2019) for the Thunderbird. The Elite was the second most expensive Gran Torino model yet it was easily the most popular; it was as if Ford had read the market’s mind. 96,604 examples found a home in 1974 compared to 58,443 Thunderbirds. Chevrolet celebrated 284,667 sales of the Monte Carlo that year; in 2019, that number would place it on the list of America’s 20 best-sellers. PICTURE: 1976 model

Mercury Cougar (1974)

The Mercury Cougar illustrated the market’s pivot away from performance and towards luxury. In 1967, it was a nicer, more feature-rich evolution of the Ford Mustang developed with an eye on performance. In 1974, the third-generation Cougar arrived as a personal luxury car closely related to the Gran Torino Elite. Mercury positioned its coupe a little bit higher up than Ford's but it steered clear of Thunderbird territory.

The 1974 Cougar cost $4706 (about $24,000/£18,000 in 2019). Mercury sold 91,670 examples. Part of its success was due to a change in advertising strategy. Instead of reaching out to enthusiasts via car magazines, Mercury decided to showcase the Cougar in publications like Esquire.

Chrysler Cordoba (1975)

Chrysler looked on enviously as its rivals sold hundreds of thousands of cars that met the definition of a personal luxury car. The oil embargo had taken a heavy toll on the firm and it couldn’t pounce on new market trends as quickly as its larger competitors. The company finally entered the segment when it released the Cordoba in 1975. It was smaller than any car Chrysler had made in recent memory.

As a late-comer, Chrysler simply had to follow the recipe that made cars like the Chevrolet Monte Carlo a hit. The Cordoba arrived as a coupe with vertical opera windows integrated into a vinyl roof and a generous list of standard equipment. America’s appetite for upmarket, softly-suspended land yachts was boundless during the mid-1970s. Chrysler sold 150,105 examples of the Cordoba, a figure which represented about 60% of its total US sales volume. Sales of the firm’s larger cars (like the New Yorker and the Newport) fell by 12% that year.

Dodge Charger SE (1975)

Like the Mercury Cougar, the Dodge Charger buried its performance past and surfed the personal luxury car wave in the middle of the 1970s. Stylists intentionally broke every visual tie between the new-for-1975 Charger SE and its 1960s predecessors, though an optimistically-named Daytona package was offered at an extra cost.

The Charger was based on the same platform as the Cordoba and the two models looked a lot alike because Chrysler couldn’t afford to differentiate them.

Imperial (1980)

Chrysler had a trick up its sleeve to leap-frog its rivals: its dormant Imperial brand. It again resurrected the name in 1980 and applied it to a range-topping, Cordoba-based coupe with a striking, angular design that quietly paid homage to cars from the brand’s past. Executives repeatedly stressed the Imperial was an Imperial, not a Chrysler, though early models wore a Pentastar hood ornament made of crystal. They positioned the model well above more attainable coupes like the Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

Frank Sinatra helped promote the Imperial which led to the launch of a Frank Sinatra Edition that came with his favorite cassette tapes in a leather bag. His involvement wasn’t enough to lure buyers away from Cadillac and Lincoln. Chrysler sold 7225 examples of the Imperial during the 1981 model year, 2329 in 1982 and 1427 in its third and final model year on the market.

Europeanization reaches America (1980s)

In the 1980s, American motorists seeking a luxury car found a new passion. Imports made by BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Saab and Alfa Romeo, among others, were sporty to drive, comfortable, safe and well built - and usually somewhat smaller. Performance was in again, albeit in a different form than in the 1960s. Personal luxury cars quickly began feeling like a bad hangover from the 1970s so American automakers reacted accordingly.

The Oldsmobile Toronado and the Buick Riviera (pictured) shrunk as they moved away from body-on-frame construction. Chrysler shifted its offerings in the segment to the K platform. Over at Ford, the Thunderbird carried on as a seriously downsized coupe with a more svelte design and Lincoln went as far as selling the Continental Mark VII with a 2.4-liter turbodiesel straight-six sourced from BMW.

The segment wasn’t quite dead, Chevrolet managed to sell about 110,000 examples of the Monte Carlo in 1985, but it looked a lot different that year than it did in 1975. Many predicted the accepted, old-world notion of a personal luxury car in the vein of the Monte Carlo would be completely gone by 1995. They weren’t too wide of the mark. Chevrolet’s big coupe looked like a dinosaur when it retired in 1988.

In the early 1990s, buyers who wanted a big, luxurious American coupe needed to shop at Lincoln or Cadillac – and pay accordingly. Ford and GM saw an opportunity to revive the personal luxury car.

Ford’s Thunderbird takes off again (1988)

Ford attempted to make the Thunderbird more grandiose by moving it away from the Fox platform that had underpinned it since 1980. The 10th-generation model released in 1988 for the 1989 model year rode on a new architecture called MN12 that Ford developed specifically for big, luxurious coupes. It was also found under the Mercury Cougar.

The Thunderbird remained rear-wheel drive which allowed stylists to retain the basic proportions buyers had come to associate with the nameplate while making it lower, shorter and wider than the previous model. Sensing motorists’ growing appetite for performance, Ford offered its flagship model with a supercharged, 210 hp V6 engine at an extra cost but it notably did not make a V8 available until later in the production run. 107,996 buyers took a Thunderbird home during the 1989 model year.

Buick Riviera (1994)

The Buick Riviera went on a hiatus in 1993. It returned in 1994 for the 1995 model year as a completely different coupe than its immediate predecessor. It was approximately 20in (508mm) longer and stylists gave it a soft, rounded and above all original design in a bid to capture some of the original model’s allure. Buick confidently called it “a world-class personal luxury coupe” in its marketing material and replaced its triple-shield logo with Riviera-specific emblems on both ends as well as on the wheel covers.

Power came from a 3.8-liter V6 that made 205 hp in its standard configuration. The optional, supercharged six bumped that figure up to 225. The Riviera was one of the most expensive members of the Buick family and it rewarded buyers with a generous list of standard features including leather upholstery, dual-zone automatic climate control, and orthopedically-designed seats.

Buick charged $27,632 (about $45,831/£34,600 in 2019 money) for the Riviera in 1995. To add context, that amount of money would get buyers into an entry-level E-Class if they were shopping at Mercedes-Benz. Annual sales peaked at 41,422 units in 1995 but dropped to 17,389 the following year and never went above 20,000 units again. Citing a general lack of demand for coupes, Buick axed the nameplate in 1999 and it hasn’t looked back since.

Chevrolet Monte Carlo (1994)

Chevrolet brought back the Monte Carlo nameplate after a six-year hiatus. It was built on the same front-wheel drive platform as the four-door Lumina and the two models shared many styling cues on both ends. Both were characterized by a tapered, elongated design that fell in line with buyers’ expectations of the future in the 1990s.

It was a mechanically underwhelming car. No one day-dreamed about red-lining its 155 hp V6 engine and the 210 hp V6 that was part of the optional Z34 package didn’t deliver jaw-dropping performance either. Lumina buyers could order an optional V8 but Chevrolet didn’t offer the 5.7-liter unit on the Monte Carlo. The firm nonetheless found 93,150 buyers for the coupe during the 1995 model year.

It was priced at $16,760 (about $27,800/£21,000 in today's money). It overlapped with the Camaro in terms of pricing, which likely explains why it didn’t get a V8, but Chevrolet intentionally priced it well below the Riviera that also made its debut in 1994. Annual sales never dropped below 65,000 units which encouraged GM to work on a successor.

Hiding their roots (1990s)

The fifth-generation Chevrolet Monte Carlo and the 10th-generation Ford Thunderbird (pictured) took a markedly more restrained approach to luxury than their chrome-festooned predecessors. The opera windows, the vinyl roofs, the hood ornaments and the pseudo wire wheels were gone. Suave men in expensive suits no longer advertised them. Instead, automakers highlighted their vague connection to NASCAR racing.

And, in an odd twist of fate, both cars competed in the same segment. Ford moved the Thunderbird a little bit downmarket to position it on the same level as the Monte Carlo. In 1995, Ford charged $17,225 (about $28,600/£21,600 in 2019) for an entry-level Thunderbird with a V6 engine. The firm found nearly 115,000 buyers for the model that year. But while it easily outsold the Monte Carlo, the Thunderbird was axed without an immediate successor after the 1997 model year.

The final Monte Carlo (1999)

The sixth-generation Monte Carlo made its debut in 1999 as a 2000 model. Chiseled from a solid block of mediocracy, it took the form of a coupe that borrowed a handful of styling cues (including the shape of the rear window and the upright rear end) from previous, more prestigious models. It shared its front-wheel drive platform with the Chevrolet Impala, among other cars in the GM portfolio.

The market wasn’t there; the cloud of nostalgia surrounding the Monte Carlo was too thin to make it a hit. Annual sales peaked at 71,268 in 2001 and slipped to 37,143 units in 2005. NASCAR-inspired limited-edition models and a seriously quick SS Supercharged model with 240 hp on tap couldn’t prop it up. Chevrolet had one last trick up its sleeve: a V8.

An updated Monte Carlo (pictured) made its debut at the 2005 Los Angeles auto show with a new-look front end and an available, 5.3-liter V8 that channeled 303 hp to the front wheels. In hindsight, the deep burble of a V8 engine was a fitting way to bury one of Chevrolet’s most successful nameplates. The face-lifted Monte Carlo was offered only during the 2006 and 2007 model years. Annual production totaled 32,567 and 10,889 units, respectively. At the time, Chevrolet announced it was deep-sixing the model because there wasn’t enough space in its line-up for two coupes and it wanted to resurrect the Camaro.

No chance of a comeback (2010s)

In 2020, the names Monte Carlo, Riviera and Thunderbird have followed the carburetor, the vinyl roof and whitewall tires into the pantheon of automotive history. They're relics of a bygone age. The only two-door models made by Chevrolet are performance-oriented cars like the Camaro and the Corvette. Buick's Opel-built, Astra-derived Cascada convertible was axed in 2019 and Ford hasn't made a Thunderbird since it stopped producing the retro-styled, 11th-generation model (pictured) in 2005. The Grand Prix, Toronado and Cutlass Supreme nameplates were axed along with their parent companies.

We're unlikely to see the personal luxury car make any kind of comeback. The coupe segment is declining all around the world as car buyers flock to taller, more spacious models. Even desirable, high-performance machines like the aforementioned Corvette and the BMW M2 have a difficult time luring buyers into showrooms. The features that made personal luxury cars stand out from the pack are either common or obsolete; leather upholstery, cruise control and power windows are offered on a humble Honda Civic these days and few buyers today would merrily order a softly-suspended coupe with a vinyl roof. How would a modern-day Chrysler Cordoba capture buyers' attention?

The closest thing to the personal luxury car of the 1970s is, somewhat ironically, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupe. It puts a greater focus on luxury and comfort than - except for AMG variants - on flat-out performance. Above all, those who roll up in one proudly tell the world "I've got it made," which was always what personal luxury was all about.