It looks like the popular AMC series "Mad Men," about a fictional New York advertising agency in the late 1960s, is trading in its Jaguar business for a Chevrolet Vega.
A recent episode, set in 1968, has a storyline depicting the agency jettisoning Jaguar as a client in favor of a deal with General Motors. Dapper Don Draper dreams up several pitches for a new performance-oriented, futuristic Chevrolet. The name of the car is never mentioned, only the code name, XP-887.
Don Draper: “Driving the future”
In fact, GM assigned those ill-fated letters and numbers to the vehicle that became the Chevrolet Vega. The Vega, which was launched in 1970, is widely considered one of the worst vehicles of the 20th century.
Early Vegas were prone to overheating, oil-burning, rust and other major troubles. The wheezing, underpowered 90-hp aluminum-block 2.3-liter engine was far from high-performance. And the Vega's planned rotary engine -- about which Draper appears to wax poetic when he wistfully talks of "driving the future" -- never made it out of GM research and development. Just over 1.9 million Vegas chugged painfully out of GM's Lordstown, Ohio, plant from 1970-77.
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