I’m finding it hard to resist just about everything Joseph Dennis posts at the Cohort, thanks to the combination of great finds and terrific photography. This Chevette was shot in Flint, MI, in front of a WallyMart. And how many runs to the store has this ‘vette made in its long life?
Here’s its nose, which tells us it’s one of the first couple of years of production: 1976 or 1977. Almost 40 years old, and it doesn’t even have all that much rust on it. I’m guessing it was someone’s grandmother’s car that only went out on nice days, until more recent years anyway.
The fact that it still exists in Flint, is still usable, and doesn’t have the classic Chevette holes in the floors and super front camber is a Christmas miracle!
Owned since new by a little old lady who only used it for church and doctor appointments and a once a week Wall Mart grocery stock up.
If it works, it drives, it’s safe to drive, and it starts when you turn the key, then it’s a good car. The 1970s and 80s weren’t a very good time for General Motors America in terms of compact cars and sub-compacts. So to see cars like this in good running condition is quite a treat. 🙂
“Safe to drive” and “Chevette” do not belong in the same sentence…
Do they?
Wow. A buddy of mine in high school had a nearly identical Chevette (without the stripes). Depending on his mood, he called it the orange peel or, simply, the ShoveIt. I remember that it went through transmissions on a regular basis.
The Chevette was my wife’s last American car.
Given that it’s parked in a handicapped spot, it may still be owned by a little old lady who only uses it on double-coupon day.
That’s exactly what I was thinking 🙂
The Chevette was not a great car, but it was not the worst either (there are STILL a couple of Yugos running around here, I’ll see if I can get a picture of one) The Vega was worse, so was the Yugo, and so is the Spark. The Chevette was not very popular when it was first introduced. It became really popular not too long before production ended. The last Chevettes were much improved over the original. Any car driven in Michigan is going to rust. I never saw a rusted Chevette here in Phoenix. They just wore out over time, and weren’t worth fixing (sort of like the Datsun B-210)
My 42 year old Pinto certainly gets it’s share of put downs online, yet people just have a fit over it when they see it on the road, still running like new after all this time. I’ve had a lot of offers from people wanting to buy it, but turned them all down. Had I bought a Chevette new, it would still be running too. People buy cars like this as throwaways, and never take care of them. Proper maintenance, and warming it up before taking off, will triple the life of a car.
I doubt very few Sparks make it past 50,000 miles. They have a list of issues that would fill a book. GM has replaced lots of engines and CVT transmisions. The A/C doesn’t work, the wheel bearings fail, The front suspension control arms fall off the car, and on and on. And that is before 30,000 miles. I also rented a Spark for a test drive. If it was reliable I might buy one. I have ridden Harleys all over the country, so the noise and vibration don’t bother me. But having it fall apart going down the road does. And the worse thing is GM is not supporting the owners of these wretched cars. It should be a crime for a car to be that bad in this day and age. I would take a new Chevette (or Aveo) over a Spark any day.
I had no idea the Spork was so craptacular. Reviews have been mostly positive. It’s really saying something when the Aveo (!) Is considered a better car. I would have guessed the Mitsubishi Mirage was the leader in the bad, new-car category.
Do some in depth research. The Spark may be the worst car Chevy ever sold. Yes, many Vegas never made it past 50,000 miles on the original engine, but that was in the ’70s, and my 1973 Pinto made it over 160,000 and was still running when I sold it. On the original engine. Many Chevettes did too. Most Sparks seem to be dying before they hit 50,000 miles, many engines go around 30,000. The Spark has a very complex VVT engine, which requires very high quality manufacturing to be reliable. Most of the positive reviews are coming from owners with very low mileage. I actually considered buying one ($1200 and 40 mpg) for a transportation car, and joined a Spark forum. Glad I did so before buying. Chevy made things worse by recommending a 7500 mile oil change interval, and most owners drove them at full throttle (about 80 mph) They sludged up quickly, plugging up the oil passages. I am a firm believer in 3000 mile oil changes, and believe that’s a big part of why my cars seem to last so long. Any new car should go 200,000 miles.
The reviews I spoke of were of new Sporks by the usual enthusiast magazines. The general consensus was that, for the price, the car was okay, certainly better than the Mitsubishi Mirage, which most magazines lambasted.
If a high percentage of a major mechanical component (i.e., the engine) is really letting go that quickly, you would think there would be more media coverage about it with the owners screaming for a national recall. I mean, the way you describe them, it’s like they resurrected the Vega’s old sleeveless aluminum block. Considering the damage it did to the company’s reputation, I can’t imagine GM allowing something that bad out the door, again.
That’s why the comment alluding to the Aveo being better was curious. It’s the most recent cheap car that seems to have myriad mechanical problems (and why the new Sonic has been such a surprise since both are Daewoo products).
As to the 7500 mile oil changes, I would think that depends largely on the type of oil. If it’s regular dino oil (and cheap dino oil, like that at the JiffyLube places), yeah, 7500 miles is too long to go between changes.
But if the engine is supposed to be getting synthetic (and I mean ‘true’ synthetic, like Mobil 1), 7500 miles between changes doesn’t seem unreasonable.
You mentioned the “boondoggle…Spark” in another article. Do you have some evidence of all of these claims you made? I’ve yet to hear how horrible this car is..besides the weak A/C. I asked in that thread as well; can I see some examples of your claims?
The first photograph looks amazing. It almost has a film noir look to it.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see that car as being the one that replaced The Dude’s Gran Torino.
Noir – my thought exactly. That’s a beautiful photo……….
Noir is a good description. I was going to say it had an eery lonliness not unlike an Edward Hopper painting.
What a great find, particularly considering the location in a geographic area where the weather is not known to be kind to cars.
Of all the newer-than-1970 spectacular crap that GM built (and would ultimately take the company to the brink of bankruptcy), the Chevette seems to be one of the few to be looked back upon with a certain amount of fondness and gets the most begrudging love. It was bad, too, but at least it seemed to be honest about its ‘badness’. Performance was abysmal with a manual, worse with an automatic, and it can’t even be discussed how slow one was with a diesel. Still, that poor performance meant that the things were floored the vast majority of the time, yet they kept coming back for more (as parts fell off in the process).
This ‘cockroach of the road’ unkillability (these things seemed to keep running for decades beyond their use-by date), well, let’s just say it’s another one of those cars I’d love to see in pristine condition at a car show, just for the shear perversity of it. I have no doubt that a lot of people buying the new, uber-expensive, retro Mustangs, Camaros, and Challenger were driving cars like the Chevette in their teen years.
Just reading this prompted me to look on my local craigslist and voila!
A Chevette Diesel automatic.
http://worcester.craigslist.org/cto/4770915496.html
I had a 76 Chevette Scooter back in high school, early 1990s. It was powered by the 1.6L (?) and had the automatic. The car had sat for a few years & I didn’t tune it up before driving it or ever. The only good thing about owning the Chevette was telling people I drove a ‘vette! I’m sure it was a decent car for the first 5-10 years of its life…however, at 16 years old with a 16 year old at the wheel, it did not last long. I think it was a $150 purchase at the time. It stalled on me (one of many times) on the way home from high school with my girlfriend riding shotgun. I coasted to the side of the road as usual. A few moments later a friend of mine in his late 70’s 6.6 Trans Am pull in behind me. He offered to push me the remaining 3-4 miles home. The ‘vette saw triple digits on that trip…probably the speediest Chevette in history. The front end shook violently, the brakes smoked, the steering wheel vibrated, and my girlfriend refused to ever ride in it again. It went to the junkyard shortly thereafter and I became the owner of a 78 Old Cutlass Supreme with 10″ wide Yokahomas on the back and the 3.8L V6. A good car the Olds was, but I was still a lead-footed teenager…threw a rod through the side of the block on the way to school one morning…
Wow, this is crazy. My first car was a rusty ’78 Firebird Esprit and I ran up on some guy in a broken down Chevette some 20 years ago. Why…I do not know… but I pushed him home which was in the next town. We got up to maybe 50-55mph until my car started overheating because I was not running a fan at the time.
We’d pull over…he’d hop in my car & we’d run up & down the highway a few times to cool my car off… then back to Operation Shove-It. At the time I was running a tag off some Maverick & just knowing we’d get pulled over.
But we made it. He was like “thanks a lot man!” and went in his house & shut the door. He could have offered me a Coke or something, sheesh!
Believe it or not, the nose on my car incurred no damage other than most of the paint being rubbed off the leading edge.
I always wonder what can be done to these without swapping in a SBC.
It’s a decent looking little hatch and the T platform itself underpinned a large variety of questionably successful cars.
It’s only real fault is that it lived way past it’s “Best Before” date.
Seems like a much more reasonable/livable swap would be a V6. I’m not up on my GM V6 sizes but wasn’t there a 2.9L that was pretty common in the S10? They might even be low-performance enough so the Chevette’s small rear axle might last for more than a day or two.
The GM 60-degree V6 is a straight bolt-in to the Chevette’s chassis. Many Chevette owners have done it, and even GM itself built a prototype as an aborted “SS” model.
The all-iron 2.8 in the early S10 / S15 pickups and SUVs seem to be fairly common in junkyards. However- the hot ticket would be the later, bigger 3.1 or 3.4 liter with the aluminum heads. GM Performance Parts and various aftermarket suppliers even sell a 3.1 / 3.4 long block ready to bolt in.
An aluminum-head 3.4 with an Edelbrock intake, 350 CFM Rochester 2-barrel, headers, and a mild performance cam, mated to a modern overdrive transmission, would make for a fun little bomber.
A 60* V6 would make it a nice little Hot Rod. Later 3.4 mills were over 200 hp. It may need some help in the suspension dept though.
The torque from that would make the rear end explode like a grenade!!
I hope it’s a manual and F41 suspension car, that would make almost 40 years with a Chevette livable.
If Chevettes were ‘ cockroaches of the road ‘ then by definition they were NOT BAD CARS .
Just ‘ Penalty Boxes ‘ , cheap throw away transportation devices .
We had a bunch of these in our Fleet , the one the Construction Crew stole , had U.S. .25 CENT pieces glued to the fenders , making them ” QUARTER VETTES ” .
Cheap and noisy but they seemed to run O.K. .
-Nate
Such timing for this – with me being Chevette nostalgic lately. My second Chevette (5th in my family) was purchased very cheap after a friend burned up the engine in it. Picked up car, picked up junkyard engine, picked up two friends and we swapped the motor out after work on a Friday night. I remember we had a hoist on the motor but it wouldn’t let go of the transmission so we hooked a forklift to the front of the engine (why the grill is removed) and pulled on the engine while trying to lift it…pulled that car all over the place but the motor finally came out.
After driving a Chevette Scooter my “new” one seemed so smooth and quiet. Over the next couple years of junkyard picking I added darn near every option available to that car (pulse wiper, gauge cluster, tilt wheel- but NEVER air conditioning!)
That car soldiered-on for a few years after I sold it – it eventually ended up with my brother-in-law. It was nice to see him get a decent car…but he killed it. In 20 years of driving/car ownership he has burned through in excess of forty-five cars.
Sic transit gloria Chevette.
Great post and great pic. Finding Chevette options is pretty darn difficult! The tach clusters, 5-speed, pulse wiper modules, & even glove box lights are hard to come by. Then you have the RH sport mirror, rally wheel covers, tilt column etc. etc. etc.
Those little boogers held up pretty well considering the abuse & neglect most were given.
There’s a guy who lives 2 miles from my house who has a clearing waaayyy in his backyard..(I discovered this on a drive-by when a tow-truck emerged with a Fiero in-tow). We got to talking & eventually walked back to the clearing which contained a few wrecked 67-7? Chevy sedans, a rotting ’71-’72 Nova with that weird fabric sunroof option….and about five Chevettes.
One of those Chevettes was identical to the feature car in year & color — it had the crazy-rare tach cluster but was rusted beyond repair.
or a short time in the late 80s when we were between cars, ouf family had an 80 Chevette , a gray two door that we got for a decent price. Two speed auto, no power steering or air, but the car was damn reliable, and dare I say-fun to drive ! It got fine gas mileage and there was plenty of room for cargo with the rear seat folded down.Say what you want about Chevy`s entry level car,but they did what they had to do ,and seemed to be well built too. An honest and unpretentious car, basic transportation at its best.
Not even in the land that rust forgot are these easy to find and I have only found one in over a one year span. It is a shame this Chevette will not live to see 50.
A shame indeed. Looks like this was a nice, if faded and well-used, example before the rust finally got to it, but it’s probably uneconomical to bring back at this point.
Still, good to see one that appears to have had a long and productive life doing what it was designed to do–getting you from here, to there, with a minimum of expense.
While seeing any Chevette is rare these days, I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these early cars with round lamps.
I’ve looked for one off and on, but run across them only in junkyards here in N. Texas. I’d rock one as a commuter, but being 6’2″ they are cramped for me now.
Grandma had a 79 4 door, with 4 on the floor, AM radio and A/C (complete with broken temp lever) I recall it being very reliable, save for her habit of riding the clutch and wearing it out early. She’d kill a clutch in either her 69 Falcon or the 79 ‘Vette in about 20,000 miles or every 5 years.
An old lady in our building had a black Chevette up until a few years ago that was in showroom condition…here in Ontario. She’s driving something else now, but I was impressed with how long that car lasted.
About a week or 2 ago, with this site in mind, I took a look at a 80s Chevette I saw parked outside a local Target. It was a 2-tone red/silver 4 door with automatic. I think it is the only 1 still running in this area.
When I lived in Memphis I would occasionally see a diesel Chevette running around.
These can still be found but you need to go to states with a decent percentage of “below-average” income folks….think deep south/Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas. Maybe Alabama, states where folks bought these and HAD to keep them running.
GM was desperately looking for a car that would compete with the VW Rabbit , which had been introduced a year earlier. There was a comparison of the 2, and the fact that the Chevette didn’t have front wheel drive, and a smaller cargo area in back.
Only two vehicles have ever scared me with their, er, “driving dynamics”, and given the number of gawdawful beaters I drove in my young and poor years that’s saying something. Way back in ’82 or ’83 (I’ve done my best to repress the memory 😀 ) I did a dealer trade from now-defunct Doraty Chevrolet in Parma Hts. OH to a dealer in suburban Philly. Had to pick up an S10 Blazer… and drive a shiny brand new Chevette there. The way that obnoxious little deathtrap wandered about on the freeway scared the absolute living crap out of me. And don’t ask me how it felt when semis blew past me… those memories have been successfully repressed 🙂 . Anywhoo, I was very white-knuckled and VERY relieved to arrive at the dealer and pick up the Blazer. That vehicle impressed me quite a bit on the drive home. The other vehicle, since some may ask… was a brand new Aerostar I drove on a dealer trade… the less said about that turd the better.
GM was also eager to get something out to supplant the Vega, in 1975. And the T car was a design ‘imported’ from overseas, unlike the H body.
But, still had GM’s cost cutting and ‘cheap car’ attitude. ‘Trade in for a bigger [GM] car’ was any answer to complaints.
A girlfriend had one of these in the late 80’s when she was attending WSU in Eastern Washington. It was automatic, and she said it was reliable and good in the snow as long as it had chains on back and a little junk in the trunk. She liked it and it cost her almost nothing to buy and maintain. Seems they were fairly durable for a cheap car.
I had no idea the Spark was so crappy. I guess that is why you do not see (m)any on the roads. My 1st car was a 1987 Pontiac Acadian that I got brand new. It was a great vehicle in my opinion, reliable, good on gas, inexpensive to maintain and with the rear wheel drive and decent tires, fun to drive. My Acadian had a couple of the hard to find options – am/fm stereo radio with rear speakers, cargo security cover and tilt steering wheel. I still see a couple of 1986 or 1987 Chevette Scooters around the local area. One is dark grey in immaculate condition driven by a little old lady, likely the original owner. The other one is silver in decent original condition for a 29 year old vehicle. I always see it parked on the street near a local college, so maybe inherited from the original owner. Chevettes, Acadians & 1000`s may not have been flashy, but the later model years 1984 – 1987 were pretty decent vehicles and for many car buyers on a tight budget were a good choice as basic transportation.
I used to see these a lot when I was a boy in the 70s through the mid 80s. I found the 1980 and later models more attractive than the 1976-79 model years. I’d buy a Diesel model if it were available. If nothing else, I would think they would make perfect commuter cars or driving around the city or a small town, where the top speeds range between 35 and 45 mph.