71-76 GM wheelbase question

I've read that the Chevys have a 125" WB and the BOPs have a 127" wheelbase. First off is that true? Secondly where are the extra 2 inches located? My 68 Coupe DeVille had the front wheels pushed out toward the front more than normal in order to keep the tranny hump from being large and intruding on frt pass foot space. Is that what going on here or is the extra 2" in the rear seat area? I've also read that the Chevy cargo floor was 101" long, does that mean that the BOPs are 103" long? My 66 Impala had no problem with 4x8 sheets but my 94 can't handle them unless you move the front seats up so far that you can't drive the car anymore.

 

I had a Chevy wagon sales brochure from 1972 and it had the cargo bay dimensions with 101" for the length. Does anyone have a 71-76 sales brochure for Buick, Olds or Pontiac wagons? Any experts on these wagons......please

 

I have info on Oldsmobile full-size wagons of those years.

For all six model years (1971 through 1976), the Custom Cruisers had wheelbases of 127 inches. The overall lengths of these cars, though, increased from 225.3 inches in 1971 to 231 inches in 1976.

I have several 1973 Oldsmobile brochures as I own a '73 Custom Cruiser. They all give exterior dimensions, but not all give interior dimensions. The interior dimensions they do give are just interior headroom, shoulder room, and leg room. One brochure does give the "cargo capacity" as 106.1 cubic feet. No brochure I have gives a cargo floor length.

As far as the length of the cargo floor, it depends on how you measure it. You can measure from the farthest forward-most point of the second seat back when it's folded down all the way to the rear edge where the tailgate is, or you can measure from the back of the front seat all the way to the rear. The latter would include the air space between the folded-down second seat and the back of the front seat, and this space might or might not be usable depending on what kind of load you are carrying.

Anyway, I went out to the garage just now and measured the cargo floor length from the back of the front seat to the inside of the tailgate. I have the front seat racked most of the way back, and I measured an even 100". I'm sure that the front seat could be moved forward several inches from where I have it, certainly three inches, so a cargo floor of 103" is certainly possible, and probably as much as 105" or 106" is the maximum. But, as I say, this includes the part of the "floor" that is out over the second seat foot space. If this length is NOT included, then the cargo floor length wouldn't even be 100" but would be something more like 95".

 

Awesome ! Thanks Jaunty for going through the trouble of measuring your car. I really want one of the "Biggest Wagons ever made". I told my dad over and over to buy one back in the 70s, but he wouldn't even get a 4 door car, only 2 doors. He did finally break down and switch from VW Bettles to a brand new 76 Lincoln Town Coupe, pretty sweet and huge.............but not a wagon !
I use my wagons like trucks and my 94 bubble body can't fit an 8 foot sheet of plywood with the tailgate shut. So maybe a drivetrain transplant into a clamshell wagon is in the future. I'm still wondering where the extra 2" of wheelbase goes in the BOP vs. Chevy wagons. It's got to be rear seat legroom, but I just can't see it when I compare pictures of a Chevy next to a Buick/Olds or Pontiac. I'd really rather have a Chevy, but if the cargo floor is shorter than the others, then I guess I'll have to go with the more luxurious brands.

 

Get yourself a nice 1958 NewYorker wagon with the LY1 - 392 Hemi. You can get a 5 X 10 sheet in there, and still watch all the rice-rockets in the rearview mirror!

 

I think the 2" wheelbase difference is "used up" somewhere else and not in cargo floor length as one of the biggest selling points of these full-size GM wagons back then, including the Chevy, was that they could hold a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood flat and still allow closure of the tailgate. Of course, maybe the Buick/Olds/Pontiac versions had length to spare while the Chevy could just barely hold the 8-foot length, but I think this is really starting to split hairs. Get a full-size wagon of any of those four makes from that era and no one will ever accuse you of driving around in something puny.

 

The difference in length from '71 to '76 is all accounted for in the bumper systems. Simple brackets on the '71 - '72's, while the later years had progressiely more complex energy absorbing systems, mainly from '74 on....

 

I think the wheelbase of the 71-76 B-body wagons are all the same and Wikipedia is wrong (yeah, imagine that). All of the 71-76 wagons had a forward facing third seat, so I'm pretty sure all used the same floorpan and frame.

 

Yeah...it really kills me that people use Wikipedia as the last word. Hey...it's written by people that send the stuff in, folks. It's probably the single most irresponsible thing that has ever happened to the web IMHO.

 

If the most irresponsible thing to ever happen on the world wide web is, for pity's sake, Wikipedia, then the world wide web is a VERY safe place!

 

I had a feeling that the Chevys would be the same wheelbase as the BOPs.

Now who can verify this?

71-76 Chevy owners help !!

127" wheelbase or 125" wheelbase??

 

It's 125 inches. Go to this page and hunt up the 1973 Chevrolet Wagons brochure.

http://www.oldcarmanualproject.com/

I couldn't find the info in any of the '71 or '72 brochures, but the '73 Wagons brochure has full specs on the full-size wagons, and all Chevy full-size wagons had a 125" wheelbase.

If you hunt up the brochures for the other full-size GM wagons of that era, you'll find they're all 127 inches, as previously noted.


So all of you Wikipedia bashers owe it an apology!




Here's the actual page of interest:

 

Thanks for the awesome link ! I found a 71 Buick brochure that states........ 127" wheelbase.

So it's official, Chevy is 2" less.

Now where is the difference? It looks like it's in the rear seat area. The rear axle looks further back to me on the BOPs vs. Chevy.

 

This will be harder to answer. I think you'll end up having to actually find an example of each wagon and so some precise measuring of your own.

 

I've been staring at side view photos of these wagons til my eyes cross and my guess is the C pillar is a bit bigger. The rear doors have a different shape at the rear as well, but the glass looks the same. I'll check into rear door glass for a BOP vs. a Chevy. Maybe they're different. The worst part of all this is that my friend had a 74 Chevy Impala wagon that we mercilessly demolished. My other friend's parents had a 72 Grand Safari that they traded in for a Pontiac Phoenix hatchback POS, if I knew then what I know now........... They both got crushed is my guess.