Do clothes make the person? Would Patrick Swayze or Elle MacPherson look any worse in jeans than in evening wear? If you start with a good body, does it matter how you dress it up? With the 1995 Monte Carlo, Chevrolet has answered these questions with a definitive "No."

Our recent test of two rather different Monte Carlos shows that, just as Elle is equally worthy of notice in a Scaasi gown or Gap chinos, the Monte Carlo can be dressed up in quite different ways without diluting its considerable merits.

We drove the Monte Carlo LS, the Scaasi-gown version, for a week, including one six-hour road trip. Then we kicked back and switched briefly to the denim-and-ballcap Z34.

The Monte Carlo succeeds the largely unlamented Lumina Coupe in Chevy's 1995 lineup. Although the Monte is still kin to the new Lumina underneath, the coupe styling is fairly different from the sedan, and handling and interior appointments have been given a very different direction.

The new Monte Carlo's styling follows a simple principle: Whatever Dale Earnhardt wants, he gets. The Monte is Chevy's new NASCAR fighter, and the folks at GM Styling (and the wind tunnel) kept that in mind. The nose is pointed, the tail is high, with a long deck (about which more later), and the greenhouse follows a smooth, laminar-flow-inducing curve, from the steeply raked windshield to the severely sloped backlight. The body panels are smooth, without lots of bulges or extrusions. The side windows call to mind the opera windows cut into GM's A Special cars (the Montes, Cutlass Supremes, Regals and Grand Prixs of the early 80s), but are far more functional. No homologation-special SS will be needed to make this Monte competitive on the high banks.

The Monte adopts an aggressive and taut stance, although not in the Jack Telnack/Mark Jordan wheels-to-the-corners manner; indeed, the Monte Carlo's front and rear overhangs are huge. Instead, the profile is shark-like, sleek and ominous.

The Splendid Co-Driver liked the tapered nose, particularly the almond-shaped aero headlights. She found the rear aspect of the car duller, particularly the plainness of the rear quarters; she did appreciate the curves in the greenhouse, particularly the C pillar.

The aforementioned long tail almost reminds one of the business coupes of the 1930s and 40s, with their same benefit: loads of trunk space. The Monte clocks in at 15.7 cubic feet, more than the larger Cadillac Eldorado or Lincoln Mark VIII. Unlike the business coupes of yore, a cargo net keeps your groceries from fraternizing prematurely.

Getting inside can be a trick, as the PASS-Key remote release (TRW's device, not GM's) has to be keyed precisely to release the passenger's door. (Those with a good Morse code fist will do well.) And the heavy doors have insufficient detent; they either open a sliver or all the way.

But once inside, you'll discover a very pleasant cockpit, roomy but with a snug feel. You'll recall at once that the original 1970s Monte Carlo created the category of "personal luxury car"; this new iteration is both personal and, in a restrained modern way, luxurious. The Monte Carlo's interior stylists threw out most of the GM book and created a modern, functional environment. Switchgear for headlights and climate control is large, with a good, friendly rubber feel. They're high and visible, and the rear defroster activates with a push on the climate control knob. Gauges for speed, tach, water, and fuel are large, set into a very deep, glare-free binnacle, and easily read. There is fake wood, to be sure, but it's curved stylishly into the doors. And those doors are covered in a warm but sturdy velour which matches the fabric in the optional bucket seats, and wraps around into the rear seat area. Some panels of the plastic dash, while well-designed, appear a bit too, well, plasticky.

Radio buttons, too, are Brobdingnagian by previous GM standards. The AM/FM cassette radio comes with optional soundfield presets for different music types; extremely useful if you want to hear how Sinatra would sound as a news anchor.

Previous GM practice is also cast aside in the minor controls; the emergency flasher, for example, is a straightforward up-down switch, not the collared pull-tab of yore. And with no key-release button, getting the key out no longer requires the manual dexterity of Mark Knopfler.

Controls are easy for my relatively large hands to reach, although the diminutive Splendid Co-Driver found it annoyingly necessary to remove her hand from the wheel to reach the turn signal. That turn signal is part of one of the few pieces of classic GM in the car: the familiar multifunction stalk incorporating cruise control, wiper/wash/delay, parking lights, headlight on/off/low/high, and turn signal into a single multidextrous appendage.

The Splendid Co-Driver noted with some pride that the Monte Carlo was a neighbor, hailing as she does from Oshawa, Ontario. That pride was somewhat mitigated by poor fit on a defroster panel between the dash and the oh-so-far-away base of the windshield. This joined an unfortunate designed-in break in the trim above both side windows, which showed ill-fitted plastic lap joints, and a big gap at the base of the A-pillar trim as the only obvious build shortcomings in the car.

The Monte Carlo scored very well on the Interior Utility Index, earning three and a half out of a possible four Golden Cupholders. Those who like their local Hold Everything store will love this car. A look around finds a large bin in the console, with a flip top; a flocked compartment just ahead of the shifter with slots for CDs and cassettes; a terrific cupholder designed for Big Gulps, but with a rubber insert to cuddle standard cans; and an opening by the driver's window, flocked on the bottom, for tollbooth change. The glove compartment is quite capacious. And well-focused reading lights on the rear-view mirror, where the lenses are out of the driver's normal line of sight, are an effective idea that should have been thought of before.

Settle in behind the tilt adjustable steering wheel. It's thick and grippy and shaped to guide your hands to 10 and 2. Enjoy the discomfiture of your passenger as she realizes that you have the optional six-way power seat, while hers is manual. Be glad you're in the supportive front seat; because of that curved roof, the rears are best saved for those with shorter torsos. Adjust the huge sun visors most optimally. As you look around, you note that the outward visibility is middling; the small windows aft of the B pillar work fairly well, but the C pillar is rather thick, forcing a big blind spot to the left rear. While you can see a fair bit of hood, the exact locations of the nose and tail are uncertain (hint: the front is closer than you think, the tail farther away.) The windshield's steep rake makes it seem somewhat letter-slottish, and taller drivers will find the top of the windshield almost in line with their eyes.

But you don't care, because this is a black Monte Carlo and you're going for a drive in the American South. They might as well give you that eighth Winston Cup right now.

ON THE ROAD

We began this review with the question of whether the appeal of a good body changes depending on how it's dressed up. That question came to mind at the first fast corner we came to in the Monte Carlo LS.

In ordinary driving, the Monte feels very solid, in a way drivers of earlier American cars may not be used to. The basic structure of the car seems extremely stiff by design, and the folks at the South Plant screwed it together tight. As European tuners can tell you, begin with a solid chassis that doesn't flex or shimmy, and you can change the car's personality radically with shocks and dampers. Chevy has tailored two handling suits for this body. How you like to drive determines which suit fits your Monte Carlo best.

In normal driving, the LS feels well-suspended in the softly-sprung, highly-damped mode made popular in Germany. The suspension doesn't wallow or float; it is, in a word, taut. But the LS is at heart a boulevardier. Both drivers noted that, when pushed, its steering lacks all but the most basic road feel, and coupled with the 205/70x15 Michelin XGT4s, it's difficult to tell that the wheels have been turned unless you go way past the proper setting and some body roll sets in; then you unwind the steering until the car levels back out. The chassis stiffness shows in one very clear way; it is possible to move the back end out with power, even though the car is front-wheel drive.

But to expect Saturday night barn-dance performance is unfair to the LS. It's designed for open-road touring, like the three-hour run from Washington, D.C. to Chincoteague, where the wild ponies run.

On the highways of the Delmarva Peninsula, the Monte Carlo is a very quiet environment. GM's NVH folks have been working hard, and it shows. That quiet and the absolute steadiness in crosswinds or when passing Frank Perdue's chicken trucks show that the folks at the wind tunnel did their work well, too.

Passersby evinced a surprising lack of curiosity about the car. Only after passing south into Virginia did the black LS start to get strong reactions; the strongest tended to come from passengers of pickup trucks with NASCAR stickers in the rear window. On the road, the Cranial Rotation Factor averaged "Mild Curiosity". (The CRF, which will be used in all of our road tests, is based on the reactions of other motorists, and runs as follows: Zero deflection; mild curiosity; trying not to look; impending whiplash; Full Linda Blair.)

The LS 3.1 liter engine is Dr. Bore and Mr. Stroke. Dr. Bore is not authoritative at tip-in, and gives off a sewing-machiney sound. Floor the throttle, and it's hello, Mr. Stroke! The 3.1 takes off with a throaty roar. Don't worry; the neighbors will never know that Mr. Stroke has moved in unless you want them to.

That throttle pedal, by the way, is too softly sprung; it zips up and down easily, but not until you get close to the floor does pedal effort feel proportional to the engine's response. (This could very well reflect a poor adjustment on our test car.)

The Monte Carlo eats miles, loping effortlessly at vaguely illegal speeds. Its electric cruise control is terrific, especially when compared to the old vacuum units. The Splendid Co-driver noted that the LS is pleasant to drive, while not demanding, and doesn't feel like it's as big a car as it is. On that note, in our test, combining daily commuting and errands with a six-hour road trip, the LS returned 23 miles to the gallon, running mostly with two passengers.

Also on the positive side, the seats are very comfortable for a long drive; the turning radius is very good for a bigger car; the wipers do a good job; and the sloped backlight stays quite clear of rain at even around-town speeds.

We had a few complaints with the Monte Carlo LS's dynamics. The tail rises a little too much under braking, especially given that the power-assisted front disc/rear drum brakes (with ABS standard) don't come on that hard. The front chassis booms a bit over bad road. And, most significantly, both drivers were quite unhappy with the drivetrain's freewheeling; it may have been a characteristic of the standard four-speed automatic transmission (no manual is available), but lifting off the throttle did very little to slow the car.

Some of our disappointments can be alleviated with a simple check of the Z34 option box. With stiffer springs and shocks, and 225/60x16 Eagle RS-As, the Z34 corners flat and sassy, with just a bit of front-drive schizophrenia (am I a power wheel or a turning wheel?) But the road feel is excellent, and the car slices through corners. You trade some ride quality for that handling, but the Z34 retains all of the virtues of the LS interior design and structural stiffness. And the Z34's 3.4 liter engine has much more power from tip-in, and that power stays proportional to the (heavier) throttle input, both on and off.

The question, really, is: What kind of car do you want? Either Monte Carlo is a solid, well-engineered car, with a plethora of features. But that's not, as New Yorkers say, the beauty part.

The beauty part is value. The out-the-door price of our tested LS is in the low 18s, which is a deal in itself for a car of this class. What's more impressive is the list of standard features. ABS, automatic, CFC-free air conditioning, power windows and locks, intermittent wipers -- in short, a host of goodies you'd pay extra for at other dealerships -- come in the sub-$17,000 base price. With the $5,000 you'd save compared to base Honda Preludes and Mazda MX-6s, among others, and with more room and more standard content, you could afford to dress up your Monte Carlo. Any way you like.

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Copyright 1994, Backyard Aerospace

Hard Drive is a trademark of Backyard Aerospace.