chaparelle

H-BODY PAGE

CHEVROLET

The Chevrolet Chaparelle.  The Chevrolet Monza was almost a Chaparelle, but then again, it could have been a Cardinelle too.  In my opinion, thank goodness for small miracles and that neither one was to be.  The following press photos were taken when the name Chaparelle was thought to be the final namesake for Chevrolet's H-Body.  You can clearly see the fender emblems do not say MONZA (I've tried to include decent close-up shots of the emblems to show the Chaparelle nameplate a little more clearly, without distorting the images too much)

There was a small insert article written in the September 1974 edition of Car & Driver magazine titled "Chaparelle: The Name That Never Was" which describes the adversity that Chevrolet stirred-up when it tried to use the Chaparelle name for it's H-Body.  Thanks to Marco for providing a copy of this article.  In the end, Chevrolet decided to reuse the Corvair namesake, Monza, adding "2+2" to it, and the rest, as they say, is history.