1974 Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna Type S-3

This was how the Muscle Car Era ended, not with a bang, but a faded purple whimper. In 1974 "Laguna Type S-3" was the badging that replaced the storied "Super Sport" on racy Chevelles. The '74 Pontiac GTO had been reduced to a decal 'n' hood scoop package on the Ventura, Pontiac's version of the Nova, and the Ford Mustang II was essentially a tarted-up version of the Pinto platform.

Gas prices, insurance rates, and government safety and emissions regulations did to fun cars what the Visigoths did to Rome, and it would be a decade and more before the enlightenment of computerized engine controls led us to surpass the performance of yore. If you're younger than about fifty, you fortunately missed out on a dark interregnum when the fast cars were all in the past.

For 1973, the newly restyled Chevelles came out, incorporating the now-mandatory 5mph front bumper. They were available in three trim levels: Deluxe, Malibu, and Laguna. (For reasons that made sense to marketing types, the Deluxe was the lowest level.) If you wanted a Chevelle SS, that was an option package on the Malibus.

For 1974, the rear end also sprouted a 5mph crime against aesthetics. The model's trim levels were juggled yet again, and now started with the Malibu, ascending through Malibu Classic, to the Laguna. As mentioned above, the "SS" trim level was replaced with the "Type S-3", which was only available on the Laguna Colonnade Coupe.

The base engine for a Laguna Type S-3 was the 2-barrel L65 Turbo-Fire 350 V-8 rated at 145 SAE net horsepower. Buyers who wanted more power could opt instead for the 4-barrel LM1 350, which was essentially a lower-compression L48 intended to run on regular fuel and rated at 160bhp. There were also two flavors of the 400 small block: 150hp 2-barrel or 180hp 4-barrel.

Also available, for its second-to-last model year in a midsize Chevy car, was the 454 V-8, in LS-5 form with 8.5:1 compression and rated at 235 SAE net horsepower. All motors could be had with either manual or automatic transmissions except for the 400 small blocks, which only came with slushboxes.

Of course, this being a '74 model year car, it would have been hitting showrooms just as OPEC shut off the taps in October of 1973, which didn't do anything good for sales of big block V-8 muscle cars.

No telling what's under the hood of this one (likely once Medium Red Poly before getting sun-bleached to an unfortunate hue), which was snapped out the window of my car back in February of 2015 using a Nikon Coolpix S6500.