Earlier this week, my write-up on the 1980 Pontiac Sunbird Sport Hatch went over 1,000 views. This degree of interest is relatively rare for Eighties Cars—the three other posts that have preceded it to greater than 1,000 views are on the 1986 Chevrolet Camaro Berlinetta hatchback coupe, the 1985 Buick Somerset Regal coupe, and the 1987 Chevrolet Caprice Classic coupe.
I have many theories—and almost no real data—about what makes a particular post more popular than others on Eighties Cars. One belief is that the key to the popularity of an individual post is generally the rarity of the other coverage available for that particular vehicle or variant thereof. That theory works for the Berlinetta (all of the attention is on the Z28 and IROC-Z versions of the eighties Camaro) and for the Somerset Regal—though most of the interest in that particular post is because of a Jalopnik Meh Car Monday write-up that referenced this site. It doesn’t work for the Caprice Classic, but that’s a discussion for another post.
The “rarity of other coverage” theory definitely seems to apply to these first-generation Pontiac Sunbirds, with my post often showing up on the initial page of a Sunbird-related Google search (I probably not have done as well with the more popular Chevrolet Monza). Autopolis did have an interesting article on all five years of the first-generation Sunbird several years ago. There’s always the Wikipedia article, which covers both Sunbird generations—I’ve also written about the second-generation cars.
As always, I am grateful for the views—and our readers.
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