In 1975, Pontiac offered Astre subcompact buyers not one more horsepower but a bit more style and exclusivity with a limited edition called the L’il Wide Track.
By 1975, the muscle-car era was well and truly over, a victim of rising insurance rates, stiffer emissions regulations, and baby boomers getting married and raising families. But some buyers remained hooked on the ’60s muscle-car image, if not the steep car payments and gasoline bills. This, in turn, soon gave rise to what some have called the “decal GT” trend, in which standard Detroit models with few if any performance features were dolled up with graphics and appearance items to provide a muscle-ish look.
Some of these vehicles were in-house factory products, while others were dealer and dealer group promotions, and a cottage industry sprang up around the Motor City to supply limited-production cars and components. A pioneer in the business was the Motortown Corporation, owned by Dave Landrith, Warren Wells, and muscle marketing guru Jim Wangers, and its first successful product was a customized 1975 Pontiac Astre called the L’il Wide Track.
Introduced in the USA in 1975 (1973 in Canada), the Astre was a Chevy Vega clone with a Pontiac-style divided grille and Firebird-styled tail lamps. It wasn’t a hot seller, moving only a fraction of the Vega’s volume, and according to Wangers, Pontiac managers asked him to gin up some excitement for the subcompact with a special edition. Based on an idea by Jerry Juska, Motortown assembled a package for the Astre that included Appliance Wire Mag wheels, a fiberglass front air dam, rear spoiler, and quarter-window louvers, and vinyl graphics in orange and red.
Pontiac dealers could order completed vehicles or purchase Motortown kits and perform the conversions themselves. Reportedly, 3000 L’il Wide Tracks were produced by Motortown, and every one was a silver Hatchback Coupe with an automatic transmission and a 140 CID Vega four under the hood. So no, the L’il wasn’t a muscle car by any stretch, but it did offer buyers a fair amount of style and exclusivity. An early flyer sent to dealers showed a station wagon version but as Wangers recalled it, none were built.
An accurate survivor count for the L’il Wide Track may be impossible, but it seems that fewer than a handful of the hatchbacks are still around. Motortown went on to further successes in the decal GT market with the Mustang II Cobra II, Plymouth Volare Road Runner, and Dodge Aspen R/T.
Being auto-only was the icing on the cake. FWIU the Vega GT with a 4-speed wasn’t a bad drivers’ car while it lasted.
From the days when you could get the sizzle but not the steak.
Dark days of American auto history. Today we’re riding near the top, but the transitional future will carry many “shocking” surprises.
The car that just missed. If the Vega/Astre had of came with a decent engine and some rustproofing, it would have been a success for GM. They really weren’t all bad, they drove pretty nice. But the beancounters destroyed them before they had an even chance…
They were pretty well sorted by 75, but the bloom was off the rose and the reputation made them hard to sell and killed resale value
A sled is a sled is a sled. Those days make me queasy still, all these years later. A few years later, not a single V8 car had more than 160 or 170 hp, and under the hood was a nightmare of vacuum hoses, wierd carburetors, just a bucket of crap that never ran right, much less a year or two when you were on your own trying to get it to pass emissions testing.
Is it any wonder the Japanese murdered them?