Chevrolet has made history with its cars and among the many models it has produced, there weren’t many models that didn’t make the grade, including the 71 Chevelle. In all of its history of muscle car making, Chevrolet had achieved what many other brands couldn’t: a brand name that would be appreciated by most Americans. When you would hear the name “Chevrolet”, you would instantly know it meant quaility.
Given the fact that it produced engines, which rivaled the most powerful production engines on the marketplace, Chevrolet earned the reputation as one of the best and most fierce competitors in the muscle car industry. Nonetheless, they didn’t stop there and with the coming years there were a few changes and new features, which were to be brought to their future car models.
Thus in 1971 the Malibu family and the Chevelle families were available in quite a few models: station wagons, pillared sedan, as a convertible and as a sedan or a hardtop coupe. The Chevrolet Malibu was a great car and this year it was counted as a series, while Chevrolet Chevelle was offering 4 station wagons in Concourse, Greenbrier, Nomad and refined Concourse Estate trim.
Thus it came to be that the Chevrolet Malibu and Chevrolet Chevelle had some redesigns regarding the front end styling and that included a reworked bumper and grille, large Power Beam single unit headlights, and integral marker, signal and park lights. Integral with the back bumper were the new dual round taillights.
If you could not afford the original base line car you could choose to go with the SS 350 which featured a 245 Hp engine at 350 CID V8. Also you could have the option to have it upgraded to the 270 HP one. Further on that, there were other Chevrolet Chevelles which could have a 396 which in reality measured up to 402 CID with 300 HP instead of the base line 250 CID 6 or 307 CID V8. One big problem with the SS models was that they suffered heavily from the insurance surcharges. This made the American manufacturer to issue in mid year a Heavy Chevy. It basically had many similarities to a muscle car and it would be available with any V8s not counting the 454 which was only found in the SS models.