1976 Chevrolet Laguna - Restored NMNA $$$

I've always been a fan of the GM Laguna/Cutlass - full restoration and is AWESOME but the trans decision is not my cup of tea.  

https://www.facebook.com/share/hPKdVXBE93G2CZbW/?mibextid=79PoIi

Weird choice indeed, with the three pedals and shift pattern on the ball.   Of course, that 10 bolt isn't ling for this world anyway.

I would be interested in knowing what it was bid to at Mecum in Orlando a year and a half ago. 

I'm shocked that somebody spent $110k to resto mod that. Shocked I say.

But it wasn't my money so my opinion don't really matter...

I'm always amazed how few Colonnade cars are at shows and meets.  

Note: my first car was a '77 Malibu Classic Coupe 

110K, into a , at its best, was a mediocre car when new, and has not aged well? Oh, my. 

The fake manual is is super weird, but other wise a nice car. I believe there were a very, very few of these that were factory 4 speeds. Maybe this was one?

Connandale cars have a sadly low survival rate. Nice cruisers but malise era powertrains. They were  very popular with the dirt figure 8 crowd which didn't help either. They were only made 4 years.

In reply to Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) :

They also were sought out by the Donk crowd, as well.

Difficult to find a decent one for a reasonable price these days.

The town I grew up in had a kick butt Friday night car show for close to 30 years - tons of  cars and always a wild night.  

A guy in high school loved Chevrolet Laguna's and had two (high school beaters) of them and he talked them up all the time. We always told him they were the same Malibu his grandmother drove.  I last saw him in 1980 at graduation. 

In 2013 I'm walking the show and see this car and ask if he was "Alberti".  His wife was blown away I remembered the guy who loved Lagunas and he still played with them.  Funny thing is I remember a lot of dudes cars from HS.  
 

My first car was a blue 75 Special.  It was an absolute POS but I loved it anyway.  Somewhere around 2000, I found and bought this 73 Century from a 92 year old lady who was the original owner.  I miss this car!  It is (probably) still around Jax with the kid I sold it to.

I'd rather see cars donked, than rot in a backyard. At least they're getting the love.

In reply to Appleseed :

In my experience, nothing is further from the truth.   

They usually are poorly slapped together, especially the bodywork, and end up in the U-pull yard in a few short years.

In reply to Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself :

Still a better shot than this:

In reply to Appleseed :

Put 5 times what it's worth into it, I bet it would look pretty good, too. 
And having seen the piss poor work on most donks (and other fad mods)  as sad as that looks, at least it wasn't butchered. Yet. 

When I was 14 or so, my aunt was married to a mechanic who had his own shop.  He had a Laguna S•3 sitting in the weeds out back.  He also had a 6.6L and some wheels from a '77 T/A sitting in a stall out back.  Man, the grand plans I had for that car...

By the time I hit 16, my dad sold me his '81 X-11 for pennies on the dollar, my aunt was getting divorced, and the Laguna became a distant memory.

I've never heard of the Laguna before; interesting looking car. I've always liked the styling of this family of GM cars. Ryan Gosling's Malibu (Chevelle? I don't know how to tell) in Drive is probably one of my all time favorite "hero" cars: 

Is it technically a Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna?

In high school we were saying they weren't "real" Chevelles.

I love these things, and all of the other 1973-77 GM Colonnade "performance" coupes. They were (and still are) great modding platforms, but always got a bad rep because they were slow from the factory. I still maintain that an easy cam swap, uncorking the exhaust, and some general carb/timing tuning puts these right back in the thick of the muscle car conversation. 

What I don't understand is why someone would invest time and money making it a fake manual car. Either spend the money making it a real manual, or make it an automatic. There's nothing wrong with having either, but why fake it? Reminds me of a kid that I went to high school who would shift his 1991 Grand Am automatic into neutral at lights and roll back because it "looks cooler".  Did he build this thing? 

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/308607138873668/?ref=browse_tab

still not a fan of the body style, but at least no one was... odd? ... enough to invest $110K in it!

Tony Sestito said:

I love these things, and all of the other 1973-77 GM Colonnade "performance" coupes. They were (and still are) great modding platforms, but always got a bad rep because they were slow from the factory. I still maintain that an easy cam swap, uncorking the exhaust, and some general carb/timing tuning puts these right back in the thick of the muscle car conversation.

I don't love the Laguna, but I've always liked the Colonnade cars, and I agree about the performance. I bought a 77 Malibu Classic around 85 for $125. The rad cradle had rusted and the rad fell back into the motor. The woman that owned it thought it was scrap and that's about what I paid for it. I fixed the cradle, put it on the road and slowly picked away at it replacing things as needed. The first was the exhaust, so I installed a set of Blackjack headers and duals. Then it wiped a lobe of the cam, and in when a surplus 327/350 horse cam, and while the intake was off, a dual plane, with a small Holley carb. We bought a gallon of mis-tint turquoise paint from out paint guy for $35, and a set of Pontiac rallyes out of a scrap bin topped it off. I drove it about 3 years and sold it in late 88. In the fall of 89 I moved out to the sticks about an hour away, and one day driving home from work I stopped at te store, and there it was, it followed me. I wish I had a better pic, it really was a good looking car.

They made good looking stock cars too, would have been around the same time

I'm sorry but...yuck. That is not good looking at all lol