The recent flurry of articles and comments about the GM “Dustbuster” minivans in their Oldsmobile and Chevrolet guises reflected a general consensus of these cars and their next-generation successors as failures in the domestic marketplace. A curious case of gaining in translation occurred when GM exported the 1997-2005 generation to Europe, however, as GM shuffled names and found itself for once competing successfully against the Chrysler minivans that dominated the market in both North America and Europe. The model was the Chevrolet Trans Sport, a Pontiac Trans Sport rebadged as a Chevrolet.
The 1997-2005 GM minivans were a conventional design, with boxy conservative styling similar to that of the Chrysler minivans and a steel unibody in place of the wedge shape, space frame and plastic panels of the Dustbusters. In the U.S., Chevrolet sold it as the Venture, while Pontiac’s version continued the Trans Sport name in 1997-98 and became the Montana in 1999.
In Europe, GM sold the design through its European subsidiaries as the Opel Sintra and Vauxhall Sintra but also as the Chevrolet Trans Sport, as part of an effort to make Chevrolet a mainstream brand in Europe. The Chevrolet Trans Sport was simply the Pontiac Trans Sport with a Chevrolet badge on the front. It even retained Pontiac’s signature twin grilles, making its origin instantly recognizable. The Chevrolet Trans Sport sold well in Europe, particularly in Sweden where these photographs were taken. Considerable numbers of them appear on the streets, which may support the Wikipedia assertion that they outsold the Chrysler minivans in Sweden for several years.
The Dustbusters also were sold in Europe, where some remain on the streets two decades later, including this Pontiac Trans Sport in Stockholm. Their story is a separate one, though, which perhaps someone else can tackle.
Pontiac grille with a bowtie awkwardly applied to the top bar? Seems an odd choice. Hard to believe that’s actually how they shipped, especially when the more fitting (but less attractive, IMHO) Venture grilles were available.
I’ve never held them up side by side – perhaps they have different shapes that would have set off a cascade of parts changes (ie. needs different bumper cover to make the grille work, which then doesn’t fit with the cladding, or the fenders, which then require a different hood, and so on?).
Slapping that badge on pretty much negates any attractiveness that grill may have offered, though.
Its nearly as pathetic as slapping a Poncho badge on a twin grille Commodore and claiming its a Pontiac
Chevriac Sporture
Yeah if you notice the bottom of the ’99-’05 Montana’s grille is pointed, protruding lower into the front bumper. The bottom of the Venture’s grille was flat, level with the bottom of the headlights. As you mentioned, it would have required a cladding-less front bumper that wouldn’t have matched well.
The Chevy Venture’s bumper cover has a flat top that does not dip to accommodate the grill cover.
Have a Chev. Trans Sport. Basicly it’s a Pontiac Trans Sport/Montana trimmed car without the (Pontiac) Arrow on its “Pontiac” grille, equiped with the Venture’s alloy wheels. The driver side airbag/horn wears the Chevy (Venture) emblem. Some series wore the Venture grille and the Trans Sport/Montana trim. 7 seater, LA1 3.4 Litre V6, long wheel-base.
I would also like to recommend an interesting example of the chinese manufacture Chevrolet Venture marketed in the Philippines! It wears Venture grille and Pontiac trims. As well as it was available also as 10 SEATER! 3 passenger configuration in the front section, 4 passengers in the middle and 3 passengers in the rear. Engine is similar to the LA1 3.4 Litre V6 BUT it have only the 3.0 Litre eng. capacity.
By the way, the Chev. Trans Sport’s front bumper cover shares Pontiac design but with wider space for the euro reg. plate as well as on the right side bumper cover surface the “C H E V R O L E T” lettering is inprinted.
…and the mentioned design solution is for the first gen. 1997-2000 Chevy Trans Sport. The article shows the 2nd gen model from 2003 – … which still shares then actual newer Pontiac front end design.
We bought an ’00 Chevy Venture in Nov ’99 when we were living in Ohio. That car ferried relatives who flew in from Hawaii; made numerous trips to Niagara Falls, Toronto, down to D.C. – over to Missouri and back to Cleveland . . . . then upon a change of station, went to Point Reyes, California. While there, made numerous trips to Disneyland in Anaheim, Las Vegas, San Diego and shipped from Richmond, California to Kodiak, Alaska where it was sold in 2006 and still resides. 144K on the clock when sold. Only non-maintenance item was a transmission pump replacement at 96K. Pulled well through the snow. I still look back on it as one of the very best vehicles I ever owned.
Back to the crux of the story – these were trim/badge engineered to the max, even more so with the facelifts that came along and included variants with the Buick and Saturn versions. Our ’00 had the 3.4 OHV V-6 and was well suited for it’s duties. Economy was a constant 23-28mpg.
“Montana” was a package on the ’97-’98 Trans Sports, just an FYI since it wasn’t alluded to in your name-change comment.
Just this week, I saw the wreckage of one of these (Chevy Venture) involved in a crash. It really wasn’t wrecked all that bad, but the front passenger was killed. They are awfully unsafe!
were these AWD?
If GM was trying to introduce the Chevy brand to Europe, I wonder how it was decided that they should sell the Pontiac-styled minivan there instead of just selling Chevy Ventures.
They would have had much better luck selling rebadged Daewoos….oh…. wait
By previously researching design tastes of the european customers…
In the first generation “Dustbuster” minivans, the Olds Silhouette kept its original nose even after its platform-mates had a bit of rhinoplasty. The reason was that the Europeans liked the original look, and they kept it for the export markets. The second generation was built with Europe in mind, which is why it was so much narrower than the Windstar and 3rd generation Chrysler vans that were around when it came out.
I never knew they sold it in Europe as a Chevy, especially since they were selling it as an Opel there.
Opel Sintra was available only as Short-Wheelbase…
Chevrolet Trans Sport was available only as Long-Wheelbase…
If I recall correctly this car (Opel Sintra in Europe) was withdrawn from the market here, somewhere in the late nineties, due to very bad results in the EuroNCAP crash test.
IIHS moderate offset crash test results: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/pontiac/trans-sport-montana/1997
Yikes.
Should have crashed this into the 59 Impala!
Result- everybody dies!
Check the redsigned nose of the Montana SV6….
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/pontiac/montana-sv6
ugly but it worked
I had a 2001 although I liked the vehicle, it was the beginning of the end of my GM love affair. There was a lot of problems GM knew about and never attempted to fix, this soured me to the brand forever.
The Opel Sintra simply didn’t sell, so they stopped exporting it. Seems to me they sold a couple of thousand before pulling the plug. The funny thing is that they made the dimensions of all the vans such that they would sell in Europe, only the Europeans didn’t buy them.
In the second half of the nineties the smaller MPV became very popular, the Renault Megane Scenic was an instant hit. Basically these were MPVs based on the automakers’ hatchback models.
Here’s a later Opel Zafira MPV with a 240 hp 2.0 liter turbo engine, for the sporty dad ! By the way, Opel and Vauxhall have been the Euro-Chevrolets, basically since the year stoneware crock, when the guilders were still made of wood. Forget that whole Daewoo-transformer-Chevrolet farce.
My sisters 03 Holden Vectra had a Holden Lion on the grille, Opel AG plate on one side of the radiator support panel and a Vauxhall Elsemere plate on the other side, badge engineering that makes a Rootes group owner like me laugh.
Check this out for Opel/Vauxhall Zafira = Subaru TRAVIQ : -)
Hard to find spareparts for them :-I
These GM vans interest me. The concensus on their worth seems to vary wildly, with some loving them, some hating them, and others just ignoring them. My sense is that they were better than the Windstars but not as good as the Chryslers. That said, I seem to see more old beater Windstars and Voyageavan & Countrys on the road than these nowadays.
These GM vans had: bad transmissions, bad head gaskets, bad catalytic converters, bad HVAC units, etc. They rusted out horribly. They were a smooth ride, however!
The euro vans had a 16v four and a 5 speed (the kind with 3 pedals) so no tranny worries.
My mom’s cousin has had a Pontiac Montana like this one since new. I’ve never talked to her about it, so there could be problems, but it’s still her daily driver and one of their two family vehicles. Guess she got a good one.
Compared to 94-95 and 96-00 Chrysler Minivans these and that Astro crap are death traps. Also, their electronics are iffy and the 99 Venture I used for Drivers’ Ed was noisier and slower than my 95 Voyager.
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/pontiac/trans-sport-montana/1997
A Windstar with the Vulcan V6 and 3 Speed Tranny are the most bullet proof, but were never as common as the Chrysler Trio unless you work for USPS.
I have a hard time imagining a group of raggare cruising in one of these minivans.
GM has just announced the withdrawal of the Chevrolet brand in Europe. Their strategy for introducing it at all – or at least the way they did, as a bargain bin, badge engineered, Korean leftovers, unranged offer – remains a mystery.
Here in the UK, most non-car people only know two US-only car auto brands, Chevrolet and Cadillac. The latter has been launched, and belly-flopped, a few times over here in recent years, but both of them are true American brands with huge capital they could draw upon (as opposed to Ford, say, which is British!).
Inevitably, its’s their 50s/60s heritage that sticks, thanks to the movies and rock’n’roll. Both should be long, low and chromey. A modern interpretation of that theme (in some larger way repeating the Mini/Fiat 500 trick) would sell Chevrolets in the tens of thousands across Europe.
But the Mini and Fiat 500 are specific, readily identifiable cars – which Chevrolet do you chose to do a retro-model of? The 57, 59, 64? I’m not sure a suitably sized sedan with fins would sell – how did the Chrysler 300 do in Europe?
This wasn’t GM’s last bad European badge-engineering scandal. The last one was the Chevrolet Alero, which GM didn’t even change out the Oldsmobile center caps on the rims for Chevy ones! They even left the Oldsmobile badge on the steering wheel! How cynical…
On some Aleros they replaced the “Rocket” front badge to the Chevy badge 🙂
Wheel center caps and steering wheel badge remains the Oldsmobile’s “Rocket”… No significant sales would be reached with Oldsmobile brand in Europe. Chevrolet as a brand is better known. So the manufacturer’s re-branding decision was -at least- rational! North-American GM cars were sold through GM Opel Dealerships then.
For my first college degree, I took a two year course in automotive repair sponsored by GM. As part of this program, they donated a bunch of GM cars to practice on. One of the cars was an Opel version of late 90’s GM minivan. I’m guessing that that this may have been available in Canada… maybe? How else could it have been in America? It was definitely a version of our American, front-drive vans and not the Opels and Vauxhalls sold overseas as the body shell was identical to our Ventures, Transports, etc.
Anyway, the Opel version looked so much better without all of the extra cladding and with more tasteful wheels and light clusters. The inside had leather seats and a very European-looking metric instrument cluster. The best thing about it was the manual transmission hooked to some kind of DOHC 4 banger. It was very unusual seeing this version in America as ours had V6 and automatics only. It was a minivan that I wouldn’t mind having.
The car you had was the 1997-99 Opel/Vauxhall Sintra. It was only available in Europe and the UK. Canada never got it.
I was just gonna ask if this generation was still available with the Quad4/5-speed option like the European dustbusters were, guess that answers it! Although upon consulting Wiki, it wasn’t the Quad4 but an early version of the Ecotec built by Holden (and only found in the US in the Daewoo Leganza). So these vans were built alongside the US minivans in Georgia, with an engine shipped from Australia and then sent to Europe for sale. That’s total madness. They had the Opel V6 from the Cadillac Catera and some kind of diesel four cylinder available (both with 5-speeds) as options as well, which must have been shipped over from Europe for assembly then sent back as a finished product.
There was another article that mentioned these vans on CC awhile back, and I agree the Opel version looks infinitely better than the Chevrolet Venture.
GMH used to build the worlds 4 banger supply at Fishermans Bend now they build the 3.1 & 3.6 V6 there for export
For a few more years at least! It’s ironic that they built 4-cyl Family II engines for many years (1981-2009) that weren’t used in local cars for many of those years, 2001-2009 and a few years before that too, perhaps 1992-1998. The engines were exported from the beginning too. For probably 20 years they were exporting on average 200,000 engines per year (inc the V6 in more recent years), but back to 50,000 or so in more recent years. They still send a lot to South Korea and China but the European market (Alfa Romeo and Saab) and South America have dropped off.
Cadillac Catera was a badge engineered Opel Omega! These were assembled at Opel. The MV6 3.0 Litre engine is Opel’s genuine.
These engines aswell as the 4 cylinder 2.2 Litre petrol and diesel engines were exported previously to the Doraville plant, placed into the short-wheelbased U-Bodys and then exported (back) again to Germany – Europe and sell them as Opel/Vauxhall Sintra…
The Opel/Vauxhall Sintra’s outer trims and overall design was equal to the short-wheelbase Chevy Venture. Only the grille was different. Sintra was officially available only in Europe.
So I know this post is almost ten years old now, but… exactly which American college had one of these 5-speed Sintra minivans? I’m trying to locate one stateside.