They had six cylinder, 110 hp engines. They had bench seating in the front. They had no rear defog...not needed in Iraq. They had three-speed manual transmission, with the stick on the floor. The back windows did not roll down.
My dad bough one in 1982 when Iraq canceled the second half of the order, and the cars were dumped on the Canadian market. He gave it to me when I went to school in 1983. The Iraqi Malibu was my first car.
And what a car! I thought it was the coolest car in the world! It was Battleship Grey! It had a favourite highway speed of about 140 km/h! Its stereo was loud enough to cover the screaming coming from the brakes when they needed work and made noise that was loud enough to attract grimaces from all on-lookers as I drove down the road. (NB - When I finally got the car serviced, the front brake assembly actually fell off onto the ground when the mechanics put the car on a hoist and took the front wheels off to take a look at what was causing all that noise.) Forget the Cameros, Mustangs and Thunderbirds....I had a babe magnet!
Just look at it! This is very close to what the car looked like!
OK, that's a slightly used one. Here it is new...
After a whole four years of hard service, I gave the car back in 1986. As my dad drove it down main street in the Luckiest Little Town In The North one sunny summer day that year, the front right wheel came right off and rolled into a ditch....and that was the end of the Malibu.
My next car was a 1980's Ford Mustang...enough said.
