1972 Pontiac Luxury LeMans - A bargeload of Seventies restraint.

How's you car feel? A little bigger than you need? If you're in America, it probably is. But here's an ad from 1972, to make you feel better about your vehicular extravagance. It's an ad from Pontiac, trying to show you that you can still be pampered in your "mid-size" car. See? Prudent reserve from the GM of 1972.

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"All the luxury you want without buying more car than you need." This is assuming you have a surprising number of corpses to transport in the capacious trunk, or perhaps hundreds of pounds of weed to smuggle in the body panels. In your '72 Luxury LeMans, you can do it without going overboard, Captain Ron.

The copy really is worth the read. The feature list is like a what's what of Huggy Bear's credentials. Fender skirts, baby. Liberal (but not heavy-handed) bright metal trim. Yards of plush carpet, clear up to the lower door panels. And, if you're feeling a little bummed out by the austerity of your modern bourgemobile, you can fantasize about what your life would be like with a set of deluxe wheel covers. You can say goodbye to your days of persuading the proprietor of you local hub cap shop* to bring out his good stuff. "No no, Pepito. I'm feeling saucy today. I want you show show me some DELUXE wheel covers. Maybe something in a concentric beveled circle, with a red doohickey in the middle. This thing you've shown me barely has a doohickey at all. I don't think you grasp how saucy I am today." Well, forget that noise. Your new Pontiac Luxury LeMans comes with deluxe pie tin- err, wheel covers.

The instrument penal has the look of rare Ceylonese teak, which is a very rare look indeed. There are just a few places in the world where that look still grows, and some of it can be yours! It's safe too, with a steering column that's more than willing to absorb all your energy. All you have to do is have a sternum that's ready to absorb the steering column. Hey, you give a little, you get a little. And, it's easy to park and economical to operate, because gas was going for pennies per gallon. This means you can get the Luxury LeMans to the end of the block on just five bucks' worth of go-juice. All this, thanks to the sensible restraint of 1972. Now, don't you feel bad for all the crazy stuff you've reasonably believed about The Seventies? Me neither.

*Reputable hub cap shops:

- Rin Tin Tin's Tins
- The Bashful Wheel
- Andy's Capps
- Circle Jerks
- The Dish Ditch
- Starsky's Hubcap Hutch