(first posted 11/11/2011)
OMG biggest POS ever!
Drove a twenty-year old one down to Tierra de la Fuega and back – never let us down.
The engine blew up at 30k miles.
Our Pizza delivery drivers couldn’t kill them
Craptastic
Simple as a Jeep, but twice as reliable
One of my favorite weekend activities was to toss the helmet into my Chevette and go Porsche-huntin’
I’ve been dreading writing the inevitable Chevette CC, but can put it off no longer. Which is ironic, because the Chevette is a favorite for automotive web site “writers”; all they have to do is show a picture of one in the junkyard or filched from the web, throw in a couple of predictable lines about its limited power, or it being the most malaise car ever, or a reference to the Scooter’s cardboard door trim, and a torrent of colorful comments are unleashed. Works every time, even here at CC.
Feelings run strong about this car. So am I going to throw gas on the fire, or get the extinguisher?
Neither.
Why try to changes folks experiences and memories? And it’s not like I ever had one. So let’s try to gain some insight into this poor misunderstood shitbox. Starting with its origins; a little DNA analysis.
Now to fully explore every member of the vast GM T Car would be quite the undertaking. It was made in the UK, Germany, Australia, Japan, Korea, Argentina, and of course the USA,; m favorite name for it being the Daewoo Maepsy. Yes, Deawoo too; it’s an old relationship. The T-Car represents the beginning of modern GM as a major global player, and was the first of its kind, being adapted to local conditions, as well as local components. At least four totally distinct engine families found their home under its hood. But it all started with this Opel Kadett C.
Strictly speaking, the first T Car to go into production was the Brazilian Chevrolet Chevette, which was the basis for the American version. It came out in 1973, six months before the Opel Kadett C. But the T-Car was designed and engineered in Germany by Opel, and the Kadett C has developed quite the cult following there. Especially the GT/E, which had a lusty fuel injected version of Opel’s 1.9 liter engine, and earned a deserved name for itself on the Rally circuits.
The Kadett C was the third generation of a long line of Opel compacts that started in 1962 and is still going with the Astra. The C was the last generation to be rear wheel drive, and solidly upheld Opel’s rep for building well-handling cars at the time, like the highly regarded Manta/1900. It also received an all-new suspension, shedding itself of the narrow-track front transverse leaf spring setup that Bob Lutz found wanting in the Kadett B, for an all-coil setup that resulted in an eminently tossable little car. Yes, there’s some of of Bob in the T-Car and Chevette, but then he spread his genes widely.
Steering was light and direct, and driving a Kadett or any T-Car was about as fun as it got for it’s kind, in that old school rwd way, as long as the fine tuning was up to snuff. Needless to say, our dear Chevette didn’t get the fine polish the GT/E did, but the basics were always there, more or less.
The Kadett initially didn’t have the hatchback body style that appeared from the start on the Brazilian Chevette and the Vauxhall Chevette. The British ‘Vett had its own engines handed down from the Viva, and included some serious pocket rockets like this HSR.
The third main branch was the Isuzu Gemini, whose offshoots included the Holden Gemini and the Korean Maepsy. They followed the Kadett’s body styles, but there’s no doubt that the Isuzu had some of the best quality components, and certainly the most durable engines, which were shared with their pickups.
Having read about the Kadett C’s fine manners in auto motor und sport, I was filled with a combination of anticipation and dread when it was announce that Chevrolet would build its own version of the Brazilian Chevette, beginning with the 1976 model year. After the Vega debacle, it certainly seemed like a major step in the right direction: leverage Opel’s experience with small cars. I’ll never understand why the Opel 1900 wasn’t used as the basis of their small car instead. Even “Americanized”, it would have saved GM at least a couple of Deadly Sins. But when the Chevette arrived with a woody version, I saw the writing on the wall.
And the ultimate-stripper mobile Scooter didn’t help. The early versions came without a back seat! And all just to undercut the almost-equally stripper Rabbit’s $2999 price by a hundred bucks. Brilliant! So where’s the damn GTE? No such luck. In fact, the first year Chevette engine line up is particularly anemic; a 52 hp 1.4, or the 60 hp 1.6.
So for an extra hundred bucks, the 1975 Rabbit delivers an ultra-modern body, fwd, great handling, and a 75 hp engine, as well as a back seat! You think maybe VW advertising the Rabbit’s top speed was a dig at the Chevette?
Yes, the Rabbit upset the apple cart, even for Opel back home. The VW’s package and dynamic qualities quickly made even the best of the T-cars look a bit obsolete, and the next generation Kadett had a very Rabbit-like configuration. But that came too late for the Chevette, which I strongly doubt GM ever had any intention of building in the US until the 1973-1974 energy crisis hit, as well as its offspring, the CAFE regs.
Well, necessity pretty much defines the Chevette. There certainly wasn’t any inspiration involved, which when it comes to GM, may just have been the Chevette’s redemption. Everything is relative, and although the Chevette may have been found wanting compared the the Rabbit, most Americans were still smarting from GM’s Vega debacle. Actually, 1975 – 1976 were the height of that disaster, and its likely that the the Chevette’s modest sales to start with were a reflection of that. Maybe the Chevette’s marketing wasn’t exactly in sync either. As if…
In addition to being suitable to mixing it up with vintage Rollers, the Chevette also needed to compensate for the Vega’s lingering stink. Well, the Rabbit was no paragon in that respect, so the real competition here were the Japanese, which made huge headway in the seventies. Toyota and Datsun were on a roll with their Corolla and B-210.
And Mazda even paid the Chevette tribute with their GLC. We ought keep in mind that the Japanese competition then were all rwd, and pretty primitive in terms of their chassis and packaging, the little Civic excepted. So in terms of what the Chevette was up against was not exactly dramatically better, dynamically speaking. Dramatically, I said. A GLC may have looked like the Chevette, and was sized like one, but there were too many fine details of execution as well as material and build quality to be ignored.
We’re slipping too deeply into negative territory here, so let’s find something good to say. The Chevette came with a refreshingly attractive dash and steering wheel. It may not look like much today, but for 1976, for an “American” car, this was practically revolutionary. Clean, clear, simple, functional, and even cheerful. Now if only it had a bit more go under the hood to keep the smile going. That was a particularly acute problem with the automatic. Turn on the A/C, and watch the speed drop by five mph.
No, the way to go was with the essentials. Really, the Scooter made the most sense, perhaps, as long as it came with the rear seat. Bare bones, like this veteran, whose hardboard door panels have long been recycled into Chinese cardboard boxes. Third world motoring, at its finest, and no thanks on the Woody!
I’m rather proud about finding this Scooter still hard at work a couple of blocks down the street. And I assure you, it’s far from the only Chevette still pounding the pavement in Eugene. I’m familiar with a good half dozen or so, although they do tend to be the later ones, from 1980 on. That may have as much or more to do with the Chevette’s sales spike during 1980 and 1981, when almost a million of these roach-ettes were eagerly sold to Americans flipping out about the gas spike those years.
That spike soon drooped, and Chevette sales withered away, down to a mere 46k in its last year, 1987. That was way too late to be selling this car, which was hardly fresh when it arrived. But this ad from 1984 ad proudly claims that 97% of Chevettes built in the previous nine years are still on the road! Build them long enough, and they will become…institutions.
Yes, the Chevette created a new class of car: the pizza delivery mobile. Cheap and easy to fix. And the drivers could have their modest amusements at mostly safe speeds. Yes, we deliver handbrake U-turns too.
The Chevette would have been a minor player if it hadn’t been for the second energy crisis. Nobody really wanted a Chevette. People bought them because they were foolishly freaking out about gas prices that would inevitably rise to $10 within a few years. Or they needed a cheap scooter to buy for their kids, and had a thing about it being American. Or owned a Domino’s franchise.
Anybody who was half-way serious about small cars did their homework, and bought a Toyota, Datsun, Honda, Mazda or the excellent new fwd Colt/Champ. Although the sticker prices were fairly similar (a Chevette or Civic both started at about $11k in today’s dollars), buyers often paid list or even above for the Japanese cars, and there was usually money stuffed into the glovebox of the Chevette.
These later Chevettes had 65 hp engines, and in a lightly equipped two door with a stick, could provide a certain type of honest entertainment. It helped if you were into small and simple machinery, and not too picky about the fine details. And didn’t live in the mountains. And didn’t mind fixing things that fell off randomly. And avoided catastrophic self destruction of various sorts that were inevitably experience by a certain percentage of owners. Hey, the ad didn’t say 100% were still on the road.
Makes me wonder how many are still, today. Well, from the shape of one or two I’ve seen, it might be a while before the very last Chevette disappears from the streets here. And to tell the truth, I’ll be sad when it finally happens. Who will we have to kick around?
Oh how I came to despise these things-Not for what it was, which was bad enough, but for the brain-dead pinheads who wouldn’t get the H of the left lane going 45 mph, totally oblivious to what was going on behind them. I got a moral victory of sorts one fine day in about 1990 when I shoved the nose of my A2 Jetta up behind one at a high enough speed that the flustered driver ran herself into the center median. Hint for the “operators” (can’t call them drivers), it’s called the right lane. Stay the H in it. Don’t move out of it….ever. Better yet, sell the effing POS and take public transportation.
Oh the hate is welling up again after all these years. Must….kill…
Actually, the Chevette was fairly innocuous, compared to the drivers of the numerous, left-over 60’s Beetles, who couldn’t get out of their own way on the L.A. autobahn… As for “quality”: those early Rabbit/Golfs weren’t that great. My uncle’s VW Rabbit (bought new) blew the motor at 100,000 miles… Not that it mattered: the body rusted out in the first 3 years, long before the motor was dead. And the Mazda GLC? My ex and I bought one brand-new: the engine suffered catastrophic failure at 90,000 miles (Mazda didn’t have its famed reliability back then; needless to say, my buddy’s Corolla was STILL running 190,000 miles later!)… My belabored point being: the Chevette was crap, yes, but the competitors weren’t much better. MANY Volkswagen owners were still loyal to the proven, reliable, air-cooled, “real” VW’s, and left the brand, when the water-cooled cars appeared (I meet many former VW owners, who are now driving Subaru Imprezas and Honda Civics). In general, the late-70’s and 80’s were eras of poor quality, both for domestic and imported cars (with the exception of Toyota & Honda). Volkswagen AG– the current company– can only DREAM of being as successful as the REAL Volkswagen, designed by Porsche, and made to be rugged, simple, cheap to buy, and cheap to maintain… there is no modern equivalent.
Im one of those 1960’s VW owners that has a Honda Fit as my daily driver. Its about the simplest well-made car you can buy today.
Agreed. I have a 2008 Fit as my grocery getter.Love it, too!
+1
When did Mazda have famed reliability? My friend’s Mazda 3 suffered catastrophic engine failure at a bit over 80,000 miles, leading me to look on the internet and find numerous common catastrophic problem areas. They’re about as good as the domestics, or Nissan. Without Toyota and Honda, Japanese cars would not be synonymous with high quality.
Mazda was a latecomer to Toyota-style Lean Production & QC, having it forced upon them by Sumitomo Bank after near-extinction resulting from the 1st Oil Crisis. Ford in turn learned it (however imperfectly) from Mazda.
My wife says her Chevette, recommended by her father, was a complete lemon? & accelerated horribly, & went to Toyota ever after. Didn’t Car Talk warn people about listening to Dad’s advice on cars?
My mom had a four door with automatic. I recall that your fingers were pinched whenever you released the handbrake. It was too close to the plastic tray that anchored the gear selector
The Chevette in Brazil was very popular and available in others versions like a 2-door sedan and even a small pick-up (there a huge gallery picture at http://www.chevettes.com/showroom.php?section=sa&page=1 ) known as the “Chevy 500” offered until 1993. Here some vintage commercials http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK3WvEYmyKs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y_yXmP0WN0&feature=related
I remember these very well – incidentally, they all seemed to be blue, too! All the structurai integrity of an empty Coors beer can.
Has anything ever showed rust as quickly as those painted bumpers?
These things, along with tinny, floppy Camaros, fixed-window Nova, Malibu and Impala coupes…now you can understand why I left GM for 20 years – that and the fact I couldn’t afford the beautiful, downsized 1977 Impala coupe – fixed window be hanged!
I’d love to see a “CC” on those late 60’s Opel Kadetts that Buick dealers sold, as a buddy bought one two weeks before I entered the service in Sept. 1969.
I remember one of the neighbor girls across the street had one of these and I’d see her every morning walking to her car, carrying her books all dolled up like Mary Tyler Moore (at the time) on her way to her teaching job.
I was just little Jimmy across the street to her…drat!
In any case, the motor made a terrible buzzing sound I recall and driving in it felt and sounded very much like the Vega it replaced.
Later, a friend had one of those Mazda GLC’s and while it looked much like the Chevette it was comparatively whisper quiet and rode far better, firm but comfortable, than the harsh Chevy.
A whole generation turned to Japan and never looked back.
Someone in my family always had one of these when I was a kid (my family starting off the charge with a well-tuned used ’78 with the 1.6L HO engine).
Always served us well, but never thought I’d own one until I found myself (now in 1997) as one half of a broke college couple who needed a car for the second half. The second half not being very adept at picking up on how to drive cars with three pedals increased the challenge — then I found an ’87 Chevette, with an automatic, no rust AND working AC for $700. Sold!
Getting out of my 16V GTI and then going for a spin in the Chevy left no doubt as to which was the far superior car, but I really did always like the directness and simplicity of the Chevette in its own right.
Sure, having to bleed the brakes following a starter change (b/c the master cylinder needs to be removed for clearance) was a bit of a pain, and resetting the choke tension with any change in the weather became a little tedious. But I still liked it. Even then, it was getting hard to find parts in the boneyard for it — seems that they were typically crushed on arrival. An engine fire finally killed mine. Never did really know the cause, but my suspicion is that it started as a half-assed “temporary” vacuum line patch (that I promptly forgot to properly fix) falling onto the exhaust manifold.
I saved all of my service manuals and spare parts in case I got another one, but at that time, I’d graduated, got a real job and bought my by-then-fiance the spiritual successor, a ’95 Neon, which I found to be far less satisfying to own than the Chevette was. I’m finally coming to realize that I’ll probably never own another one, but it still makes me smile and turn my head when I see one go down the road.
My grandpa was a GM exec with 8 kids. At any given time there were at least 2-3 kids in that range of “old enough to drive, not old enough buy my own car.” He must have owned one of every iteration of the Scooter and other bare-bones Chevettes over their entire run.
My aunts and uncles still remember their time spent in Chevettes as character building experiences, though I don’t think any has purchased a compact GM car since. The exception being my mom, who was the oldest and likely missed out on the Chevette years. She and my Dad traded their Firebird for a first year Cavalier wagon shortly after I was born. If only she’d had that early, formative experience, I might not have had to suffer the indignity of spending most of my childhood crammed in the “bitch” position of the back seat, which GM decided to turn into a hard plastic shelf, rather than an actual seat. My parents, ever frugal, had the dealer install a middle seat-belt, and it became a throne to sadism.
Studebaker had such a success with the Champion Scottsman, small wonder that GM decided to go there too. ?!?!?! I had a neighbor once who had one of these – cardboard interior panels and all. He was a teacher who was looking for the cheapest new GM car he could get. I never understood why not just go for a 10 year old Impala, if that was your thing.
For a short time in college (around 1980 or so), I did yard work for a business that had a second location in a nearby town. I hated yardwork. Several times I had to drive to Albany, Indiana to cut grass, and I had to tote the lawnmower in a late 70s Chevette.
Do I remember a 2 speed automatic? I don’t recall. I do recall the nasty shaking of the steering wheel at speeds over 40. I wanted to like the car’s honest simplicity, but I just couldn’t get there. Pretty sad when a 100K mile 71 Scamp is what you look forward to getting into after driving a late model car.
I also recall being told that these were designed in a way that it was impossible to do a proper front end alignment other than by parts replacement. Aaack.
We didn’t call the Chevettes “Shove-its” for nothing! My buddy used to always say whenever we saw one “…it’s a Vauxhall, it’s a Vauxhall!” I believe they were based on that platform if I remember correctly.
“I never understood why not just go for a 10 year old Impala, if that was your thing.”
In the 80’s, only the earlier Impalas before the downsized ones were affordable, but were gas-hogs, so no deal. For some reason, I never seriously considered an older downsized one. We could have used the extra room at that time, but Chrysler’s products saw us through. Wishing through the eyes of the rear-view mirror! What if? Indeed!
The difference was, Studebaker started with a fundamentally sturdy car, in making the Scotsman. The cheapskates really WERE saving money with the cardboard door panels.
With the Chevette…what you have here is cheap appointments meeting on-the-cheap engineering, with cheap materials. I was actually tempted with the Scooter option, as price was everything in my choice…but by hindsight, I don’t think the $200 or so saved would have mattered. I was consoled in my constantly-breaking car, with the thick cut-pile carpeting…all done in maroon, inside and out. Red interior!
There’s cheap; and there’s cheap. There’s spartan cheap, as with a Jeep CJ or the Scotsman. Then there’s exploitative cheap, as with the Yugo or the Renault or the Chevette and a whole host of other new-age GM products.
“Anybody who was half-way serious about small cars did their homework, and bought a Toyota, Datsun, Honda, Mazda or the excellent new fwd Colt/Champ.”
Gotta give the Horizon love, even my stripped “America” had a pretty plush interior, decent steering, and a horsey 2.2. (I know they didn’t have that motor in the 70s.) Didn’t feel as stripped as the beige-on-beige Colt a friend of mine had.
My mother had a 1979 Horizon (1.7 VW-Audi engine) that eventually became my first car for about two weeks. In matters other than fit and finish, engine smoothness, and durability, it was about as good at everything as a revolutionary Honda Accord. I actually found it to be much roomier, and the Torqueflite automatic shamed Hondamatic at the time. Pretty much every tank of gas from day 1 was accompanied by the addition of at least one quart of oil though. Power of a 4-stroke, oil consumption and blue smoke of a 2-stroke! Mind you the other way around would have been much better.
One other way it couldn’t have been much more different than an Accord was the option list. The Accord came with more things that mattered standard than were even available on the early Horizon’s three page option list. You could pick 5 levels of chrome trim, fake wood inside and/or out, two styled steel wheels, a few hubcaps, and two alloy wheels, fender mounted turn signal indicators, different seat shapes and upholseries, and dozens of things I’m forgetting. No amount of money would get you a locking fuel door or interior trunk release though.
I never owned one of these beauties personally, but a friend had the “fancy” version Pontiac T-1000 in the late 80s, one day he went to back out of my driveway started up, and re-emerged a minute later at my door, holding the automatic shift lever, which had snapped off in his hand while attempting to put the fine automobile in gear.
Yes, we Canadians had our own Pontiac versions of the Chevette, with 3 different names, depending on the model years. We had the Acadian, the T-1000, and then simply the 1000. I recall 1 or 2 years, we had BOTH the Acadian and the 1000, as if the latter was the “sporty” model. Very confusing. Here is a brochure-pic for the 1000. I must say, to refer to them as “fancy”, is quite, well, fanciful! LOL
oh, I can’t stop laughing. Thank you for your post!
Makes me wonder how many are still, today
I wonder. I’d bet it’s considerably more than the 304 that are apparently left on the roads here in the UK:
http://howmanyleft.co.uk/combined/vauxhall_chevette
Even if you count the further 501 mothballed cars (SORN means Statutory Off Road Notification, so not licensed for use on public roads, but not scrapped) it’s a tiny number, especially considering there were 56,173 still rattling around the roads in 1994 (ten years after production here had ended).
Cars really do last longer there than they do here.
I think it’s more a case of the UK having stringent annual inspections. Canada and most US states do not which means the tipping point is how much the owner can put up with, not how much the government can put up with.
Yes that’s of course the cause for cars here not lasting as long – they get legislated off the road for safety/emissions/roadworthiness reasons. Personally I’m OK with that.
The result though is that we get fewer old cars which is a shame.
I drove a 76? Chevette as a mail delivery car for a local bank in the late 70’s/early 80’s. It was faded white, rusty and had a back seat that was never folded open. I drove that car and showed it no mercy in the Northern Virginia suburbs. I’ll never forget the day that I spun out on an exit ramp going into the Pentagon south parking lot. What fun! Thanks for the memory. After that it was a first edition Escort. What a piece of crap that was! Scary on the interstate!!!!!!
Great write up, Paul.. i’m not sure the vehicle really merits such a good one. Twoquestion from this.
1. Was the term ‘shitbox’ invented for this car?
2. Does this green ‘structure’ appear to anyone as the residential version of the Chevette?
I don’t know that “shitbox” was invented for this car, but I’m pretty sure the first time it was used in print was in a Brock Yates C&D review of it.
That might’ve been the first time it was used in print, but as far as I know, Smokey Yunick usually gets credit for coining the term.
Another thing that is coming back to me is how the steering column was angled towards the center of the car.
I’m thinking the early models had the wheel intentionally bent such that your left and right arm would be the same distance away from your chest….when the wheel was straight, anyway.
The late model wheel was straight (I’m sure the person that made the decision to eliminate the ‘bending’ operation quickly elevated to Level 8 status) which always inevitably led to me sitting with my whole body turned towards the center of the car.
Anybody else remember it that way, or did I imagine this whole thing?
Yes – the steering column was offset.
It was one of many engineering shortcuts taken…to position the column properly, while using the steering-rack design…would have required a three-piece bent column linkage, and that might have cost good, gray GM a few extra bucks.
Same offset for the RHD version too and all the prior Vivas back to 63 it was cheap to the extreme.
Why GM didn’t never federalized the Opel Corsa and Kadett ?
If I had to guess, it would’ve had something to do with the dollar/deutschemark exchange rate at the time, which was the reason that they replaced all of the German Opels with Isuzus.
Yes.
It was also the reason for VW’s major-fail Westmoreland plant. The Europeans despaired of importing a mass-market car, in a time when the Mark was strong and the dollar weak.
What I remember vividly is that you could always tell when a Chevette was driving past you on the street, They had some sort of loud drivetrain whine that sounded like it was grinding coffee. If you ever see one now just listen for it- it will be there.
Ahhh, the Chevette. What can be truly said about such an automotive abomination? My family skipped American small cars (thank Buddha) but I did have some Chevette experience.
I have an idiot brother who has spent is entire adult life driving a taxi in a hick-town. Anyway, low about 1979, he managed to get a girl with a good government job to marry him so that she could buy him a GMC 2500 Sierra Classic pickup. Anyhow, she had a very nice Civic CVCC that she just, understandably, loved. I drove it a few times and loved it, too. Well, dear taxi-driving brother was GM all the way, with GM blue blood pulsing through his veins. No wife of his was gonna drive one of them thar ferrin cars. In his (rather small) mind, any car not made in Oshawa or Detroit was part of a sinister plot to poison our drinking water, so the Civic, which was paid for, was rust free and had like 30,000 km on it, had to go.
And thus came the Chevette. Sister-in-law loved her Civic but she got a yellow Chevette and a nice car payment to go with it. When I drove it for the first time, I was utterly shocked. By that time, circa 1981, I was used to imports. I couldn’t believe how horrible the Chevette was. The seats were crowned and when you sat on them, not in them, it felt like you were going to fall off. The steering wheel wasn’t pointing towards the centre of the car. The switch gear was flimsy and crappy to the extreme. It was rough, crude and just a horrible car, far inferior to the 1974 2TC Corolla I was driving at the time.
My first reaction was, “How could GM sell this crap?” Of course I realised that GM was selling on its brand loyalty as there were still loads of people like taxi-bro who truly believed that GM was the greatest expression of automtotivedom and would buy them purely for this reason. It certainly wasn’t price as the cars were never that cheap compared to their competition. Sooner or later, however, someone would get a spin in a snazzy Corolla coupe and see how completely superior it was and it was bye-bye Chevette, one owner at a time.
As for my sister-in-law’s Chevette, after a year or so it was a rust bucket, even in salt-free Victoria. After she had made all the payments (and on taxi-bro’s 9 mpg 3/4 truck) taxi bro insisted on another fine GM replacement, a Sunbird H-body with Iron Duke. This was because, since he could no longer afford the gas for the truck, he had traded it for a 305 Pontiac B-Body two door, which was in fact a cool car. After about six months with the Sunbird (which was at least as horrible as the Chevette) taxi-bro came home one day to find her lost-gone-forever. Very shortly after she traded the Sunbird for a Civic.
wow, canuck. that story reads like a countywestern song.
Idiot brother, indeed!
They never had a dog to get back but she kept the cat.
Trucks have never made much sense as urban vehicles here in Canuckistan because even thirty years ago, we paid much more for gasoline than you folks in the USA did.
And btw, she never saw him again. I did see her a few times and she had a nice guy, home, kid and Civic.
dupe
I love B-body Pontiacs, they are fairly rare. My first car memory is of my dad’s 1979 Pontiac Bonneville sedan, deep metallic brown with beige vinyl roof and beige interior. Sharp car! I especially remember the black-on-gold sunburst emblems on the sail panels.
More on topic, trade in a paid-for Civic to finance a Chevette? Wow.
For all the negative comments that this car gets, I would have thought that it was the worst car that ever existed. Instead, I have fond memories of the Chevette and its badge-engineered siblings. My grandmother had one for 15 years, and when she sold it it was still in pristine condition. She would drive us all over Pittsburgh in it. My grandfather had the Pontiac version of it and he would do the same. It was perhaps the perfect car for Pittsburgh: small, fairly nimble, and easy to park.
I grant you that it would be no good for someone who needed to go long distances at highway speeds or was stuck in the middle of Wyoming where the neighbors are 80 miles away on a high-speed road, but it seems to me that it has all the elements for a great city car, and in my experience it did quite well in that respect.
Then she replaced it with a Dodge Shadow. Blech. I would rather spend time in my grandfather’s completely impractical for Pittsburgh Gold Duster. That thing was a beast. He couldn’t even get it down the driveway easily, and when he did it was nothing short of a trial to get it turned around and back up the hill. But I digress.
The point is that for virtually every car there is something that it excels at. Except for the Yugo.
Pontiac T1000 not to be confused w/ the Pentax K1000 which was and IS a terrific camera. 🙂
A Chevette is indeed a fine car and very likable. This is especially true if you don’t drive it much and have never driven a Honda or Toyota. Most people who loved Chevettes fit into this description.
We got both the English and Japanese/Australian versions equally bad neither as good as a 323 Mazda or late 70s Corolla
By Jap version do you refer to the Isuzu 4 door and coupe of the late ’70’s early ’80’s? I think they were somehow related to the Chevette, but the Isuzu 1600 (1584cc??) engine in those things was a cracker!! They were fun to drive cos they had some power unlike the Chevette with it’s wheezy 1256cc excuse of an engine . . although the Chevette handling was a step up from the Escort 1.3 with was it called “Radial Tuned Suspension’ (??) giving quite flat cornering for the time for the GM offering (that was the so-called ’80’s ‘bug-eyed’ Chevette as I recall with the ‘RTS’) ..pity they didn’t come with the 1.8 FD Victor OHC engine as the last Viva Magnums did..
My thoughts on the Chevette are neutral. It is what it is. I never owned one but coming from a Vega owning family it seemed like an improvement. A good friend had one and it was bog slow with the auto but reasonably reliable.
Mrs DougD’s family had one when she was a teen. One day she got in an accident and although she was fine the “Vette” was a writeoff. However this happened to be the same day her father got laid off and lost his company car. This one-two punch had left the family carless and her mother dramatically told her that she had ruined her life.
Subsequent events have proven this NOT to be the case, as my wife has gone on to become a highly regarded medical professional. Can’t imagine how many Chevettes her contribution to society is worth, but it’s definately more than one…
I was in a carpool with a woman who drove a 1979 Chevette four-door. It was, by far, the noisiest car I have ever experienced. The speed limit in those days was 55 mph, and Pennsylvania actually enforced it, but the noise made even 60 mph feel like 80 mph on the highway.
I remember Car and Driver praising the reliability of the 1976 Chevette it had for a long-term test. Most of the people I know who owned one didn’t hate it – their Chevette was something to be used until it was worn out, and then thrown away for something else.
GM’s main sin here was allowing this car to linger on for far too long. It should have been replaced by 1980 with something more modern. Given that it helped repair some of the damage wrought to Chevy’s image by the disastrous Vega, Chevy could have built on the Chevette’s sales (it did sell well once the sedan debuted for 1978) with a more modern, front-wheel-drive successor. Instead, it was allowed to linger on through the 1980s, when even Ford had switched to the more modern Escort.
In 1985 or so, Car and Driver did a list of best third-world cars (I believe it was part of the annual “10 Best” issue), and, as a brutal but effective bit of satire, the editors included the Chevette on the list.
You could do an interesting article on C&D’s satires of GM products. Their review of the earlier Opel Kadett was so vicious, photos shot in a junkyard with junkyard guys instead of photo babes, GM pulled their ads for awhile.
Sometimes the truth hurts.
Ha! Found a photo from that review.
I have that C/D issue. And just re-read it. It’s funny, in some regards, but anything but an objective review. The part that really doesn’t make sense is that they kept holding up the Kadett as the car of the future (in a bad way). That wasn’t how things turned out exactly.
In 1968, was the Kadett materially worse than anything else in its class? What was the frame of reference? The Beetle, or a GTO? They kept making endless comments about this not being an enthusiast’s car. Well, the Kadett wagon was hardly meant to be. Yet they praised the Rally version of the Kadett, the same basic car with a slightly bigger engine and revised suspension. That was the enthusiast version.
Paul, I remember that era and anything that didn’t have a 400 cid V-8 under the hood was ridiculed by practically everybody. At that time, cities were choking in smog and the car companies were screaming that 1)they could never make such emission targets 2) if they did, the cars would cost $1 zillion each and 3) performance would suck. This I feel that C/D piece was a result of the talk that was so common in that era.
And of course it was all Bullwinkle. Meeting emissions was not that hard, it was just Detroit detested anything that would regulate how they did business,and more importantly, made money. Of course the car mag-rags were going to put the industry view into their publications. C/D just went too far in that particular issue.`
I rememeber reading in early 80’s Car & Drivers “FYI” section which had all the upcoming new cars, and they mentioned several times that “next year” was going to be the year that the Chevette was going be replaced by the FWD Kadette based replacement…..but we never got that, well we sort of did by way of the Korean bult Daewoo version of the Kadett….the 1987 Pontiac LeMans.
Apparently a lot of people will put a small block in a Chevette. Sounds like an insanely fun project.
A Cad 472 or 500 is even more fun. I don’t remember who it was, Car Craft or Hot Rod, did a series on how to make a Cad-ette drag car.
I remember the Cadillac-powered Chevette. The premise of the article was to see if it was possible to get a car into the 12’s on the dragstrip for under $2k. The Cad-ette did it.
But a easier, more practical hotrodding option would have been to transplant not a V8, but the 4.3L V6 into a Chevette (preferably a Scooter). That’s really the most memorable thing about the Chevette. It was like the last car that true hotrodding gearheads could easily transplant another, much larger engine into, sort of like the last early thirties’ Ford.
Kind of like a guy in my town back in the day putting a 396 in a VW Beetle and having to drive it from the back seat! No…I never rode in it, but it sure was funny.
that’s how I think of Chevettes…the modern day 40 Willys. Tiny car with RWD just begging for a healthy V8.
I’ve always wonder why the sold only the hatchback in the US. Given the sedan was ripe for the picking in Europe and US buyers generally hate the hatchback.
Quite a few of these still driving around here – the ones that lasted seem to take abuse and keep going.
The diesel Chevettes were fairly uncommon even when new but now could have to be one of the more rare American cars of the era.
At the time the Americans were in love with hatchbacks. For example Ford and GM offered sedan versions of the Pinto and Vega but they were far outsold by the hatch versions. Hatchbacks were so popular that GM even offered a hatchback Nova for a time. Americans didn’t sour on the hatchback until years later after having been punished in the 70’s and early 80’s versions and came to regard hatchbacks as a penalty box, poverty mobile.
The “Buick/Opel by Isuzu” was derived from the same basic car. It was sold as a 4-door sedan and a 2-door fastback coupe like the red one up near the top of this article.
http://www.hemmings.com/hsx/stories/2007/07/01/hmn_feature25.html
Seems as though many have selective memories about the Chevette and it’s competitors of the day. Fact is that the Chevette was far ahead of most of the shitboxes being pedaled by the Japanse at the time, in terms of durability and over all cost of ownership. 70’s and to a lesser extent the 80’s Civics popped head gaskets like Chiclets. Corollas were better and didn’t eat up then quite expensive CV joints like the Civic did but the 3 main bearing 2T-C was not a long lived engine. The B210 was the best of the bunch. However all 3 rusted at a much faster rate than the Chevette. When it came time to make repairs the Chevette was waaaay cheaper. Alternator $20 and instock on any parts store shelf. With the Japanese it was at least 2 times as expensive and since there were almost always questions as to exactly which alternator it took it was never in-stock. In addition they had external regulators that were as expenisve as the Chevette’s alternator with it’s internal regulator. The Japanese cars had “cardboard” door panels too, yes they were covered with thin vinyl and something that resembled padding when new but by they time they were a few years old it was often cracking showing that cardboard underneath and cutting or scratching your arm on the sharp edges of the dried out vinyl. Yes you often sat “in” the seats when new on the Japanese cars and by the time they had a few years of a fat amercian ass in them you sat way in due to the sprung springs, desinegrating foam and cracked frame. The Rabbit wasn’t any better on the reliability front they screwed up the emissions system so bad that driveablity was almost non-existant and they actually ended up getting a wavier and disconnecting many of the emission control devices on new and near new vehicles. Not sure who they had to pay off, but it made the cars useable and undoubtedly saved VW a ton of cash.
In the 80’s I often recommended a Chevette over a similar aged Japanese car for someone who was looking for the lowest purchase price on a car that wouldn’t eat them alive in maintenance, repair and fuel cost. Never once did anyone who followed that advice tell me I steered them in the wrong direction. Sure they were crude and many of the accessories may not have lasted but the Chevette proved the old addage used about SBC and 3.8’s in that it would run poorly (and on “its last legs”) longer than much of the competition would run at all. Those 70’s Japanese cars was what prompted the “low mile” imported from Japan engine business that flourished in the 80’s as the available good used engines in the wrecking yard were far outstripped by the demand.
Of course you’re correct on most if not all points. Really, the only car(s) I saw that whose interiors fell/rotted apart as bad as the Japanese were AMC, especially Gremlins – I owned one. Those seats split apart if you looked at them wrong and the plastic dashboards developed more waves from heat than the ocean.
I always thought that Mopar hit the bottom of the barrel on seat vinyl in the 70s. Every Duster I ever saw had splits in at least one seat seam by the time the car was 3 years old, and the older it got, the worse it got until every seam someone sat on was split open. I got pretty good with duct tape upholstering on my 71 Scamp. Fords after 1967 were not much better.
I’ve got to agree with you on this, the ’76 Honda Civic CVCC wagon I drove in 1981 was already a shitbox. The very first thing that had to be done to it was to replace all 4 CV joints. The driver’s window was stuck shut and the heater fan wouldn’t stop blowing hot air. The wagon door struts were bad and it would slam down like a guillotine unless you held it up with a board. Oxidized orange paint and rusting steel wheels, too. All this in a car with 60,000 miles and only five years old. My cousin in Dallas had a ’78 Chevette that she drove back and forth to college and it was in much better shape. The Honda was much more fun to drive but considering that she had a driver’s side window that cranked up and down made up for a lot of that. It wasn’t a bad car.
I forgot about Honda’s rusting steel wheels. But that brings back the memories of the common at least around here Pinto hubcaps on the early 13″ wheel Civics. Despite the FWD offset of the Civic wheels the pronounced dome on the early Pinto Hubcaps fit them perfectly once you removed the “H” center cap. There are some pretty recent Japanese cars that came with hubcaps where they show some of the black of the wheel and slots/holes, where when you remove that hubcap you plainly see the rust shadow.
Nice bit of reality Scoutdude Japanese cars certainly did not have much of a rep back then for ease of ownership the term jap crap had a reason behind it usually the early rust out which here puts the car off the road with our 6monthly inspections no road salt in NZ either they just rusted away.
Scout Dude, correct me if I am wrong, but I always thought the 2TC was a five main bearing design. I cannot find any reference to refute this belief. I had the 100 hp big port one in my 1974 Corolla and it went just great as the car was light. It finally rusted to pieces at like 200,000 + miles and it didn’t have a single part replaced on it, not even a water pump. I even pulled a tent trailer with it. The car never once failed to start and never had an unscheduled stop. For something that cost $3000 new, it served my family exceptionally well and it was a blast to drive. I have never actually heard anyone complain about the Toyota 2T engines.
Perhaps the Chevette was competitive in 1976 but by 1980 it it was totally eclipsed by the Corolla and Civic.
That is what I remember but that was a couple of years ago. I remember pretty clearly the first of that era Corolla I got “intimate” with by replacing the engine in one with a ventilated block. The reason I remember it soo well is due to the car’s owner. It was the first time I became aware of Turret’s syndrome. When he had been there for something as simple as an oil change every 1-3 minutes he’d shout F*&%! He was 6’2″ and quite muscular. So when it came in on the hook I was pretty scared when I found a hole in the side of the block you could put our fist through when I was sent out to see why “it just stopped” while driving down the road. Since it was an AT car I’m pretty sure it was the 2T-C.
You also brought back horrible memories of the water pumps that had the pulley and fan clutch built in. It seems to me it was a Datusn where one of the bolts was actually held captive.
Thanks for the support guys, I know at some other sites even hinting at the fact that Japanese cars from the 70’s were not cars that could go 200K with only oil changes, brakes and tires and still look showroom new, I’d be called all sorts of bad things. In the long run of course the Japanese players, particularly Honda and Toyota were improving their game regularly and systematically while the Chevette never really advanced. So by the 80’s the Japanese were breaking into the major leagues and GM was playing bush league ball.
My Corolla was bought by my dad as a cheap commuter and at like $2900 on the road, it did that job admirably. The mechanical side of the car was fantastic but the body started to seriously disintegrate after about five years. Since the car cost so little to buy and run, dad really didn’t care. Also, what didn’t rust to pieces in Montreal winters in those days?
It finally bit the big one in 1988, fourteen years after it hit the road. It didn’t owe anyone a cent.
But back to my question: was the 2TC really a three main bearing design? I can’t find a single reference to back that up.
Scoutdude: some good points, but I think you’re mistaken on the 2T-C engine having 3 mains. I did a little research, and found info and pics that suggest otherwise. And from what I’ve picked up over the years, I’d have say the 2T-C was a pretty damn stout engine, from the get-go.
I guess I’m wrong, wouldn’t be the first time and probably won’t be the last. Overall the 2T-C was certainly not the worst engine, but I’d take and Datsun A series from that era’s Japanese offerings.
The A Series engine was indeed good but it was closer in relative size and role to the Toyota 3K engines, the slant four. Bot the A and the 2T engines built the reps of the Japanese, especially when you consider the competition they had, such as the Vega’s wondermill.
2TC was the motor we got in early Celicas and the T18 liftback Corolla there was one in a 82 Corolla I bought that had blown but it had been thrashed without mercy for some time. I replaced it with a proper 3K to match the registration.
Yes, there’s some of of Bob in the T-Car and Chevette, but then he spread his genes widely.
So did Ghengis Khan…
This is the car I always pictured when Adam Sandler sang his song “Piece of sh** Car.”
Really?
The lyrics to the song make me thing of a beat up large Detroit sled, like a rusty Oldsmobile 98 2door
Like most teenage boys I only listened to the chorus.
I have to say, the front end of that Kadett GT/E is a lot easier to take than the various ones Chevy slapped on. Too bad they didn’t use it instead.
Thats the same front clip used for the Isuzu/Holden Gemini.
I had a friend in high school who had an elderly Chevette at one point. The muffler fell off and she didn’t have the money to replace it for a while (not sure how she didn’t get a fix-it ticket), so riding in it sounded like being in a race car, although the lack of muffler didn’t make it any faster — possibly the opposite.
The Opel Ascona/1900 wasn’t federalized? I’ve seen a number of period U.S. road tests, and Car and Driver included it in its 1972-vintage Showroom Stock roundup (where it scored pretty well, as I recall); The Standard Catalog of Imported Cars shows both the sedan and coupe (not called Manta until 1973) being imported from 1971 to 1975.
I used the wrong words there. I’m all-too familiar (and rather fond) of the Opel 1900; I meant to say adapted by GM for domestic production instead of developing the Vega. I need to fix that wording.
@jpcavanaugh: Was the town New Albany, by any chance? If there’s an Albany, Indiana, I guess I don’t know where it is, but I grew up in New Albany. New Albany – where my high school Driver’s Ed car was a shiny new ’76 Chevette, a dark green one with a tan interior. Not terribly peppy, if memory serves, It was a three-door hatch, and climbing into the back seat after switching student drivers was grim. The car followed me on into my H.S. career, as a friend’s Dad bought it from the local dealer a bit later on, for him to drive to school. There were then the usual car-related wacky misadventures experienced at that age, pretty much none of them involving high speeds. When I attended college, it seemed as if every other person that I knew drove either a Chevette or an Omni/Horizon to school, and a handful of us became proficient at repairing these penalty boxes in the dorm parking lots. Thirty years on, I don’t see too many Chevettes here in Northern New England any more, but I did see a nice Pacer earlier today . . .
Some random comments:
1) Here in Massachusetts, Chevettes are a fairly rare sight today. I wouldn’t say I never see one; but I see one rarely enough that when I do, I notice it.
2) When the Chevette was first introduced, it had to look like a more serious attempt at competing with the imports head-on than anything Detroit had come up with previously. Compared to a Vega or a Pinto, it was smaller, more economical, and probably more space-efficient. Whether the execution was there may be debatable, but at least Chevy’s new subcompact wasn’t just a facelifted H-body.
3) “…most Americans were still smarting from GM’s Vega debacle. Actually, 1975 – 1976 were the height of that disaster, and its likely that the the Chevette’s modest sales to start with were a reflection of that.”
That may have been a factor. I think the lack of a four-door version in the first few years was another. The longer-wheelbase four-door introduced in 1978 was likely a more practical car, and a bit more palatable in terms of size, for many American carbuyers.
4) “The Chevette would have been a minor player if it hadn’t been for the second energy crisis. Nobody really wanted a Chevette. People bought them because they were foolishly freaking out about gas prices that would inevitably rise to $10 within a few years.”
The second energy crisis in 1979 undoubtedly helped Chevette sales spike in 1980-81. But my recollection is that sales in 1978-79 — coinciding with the introduction of the four-door — had already been pretty strong. For reasons others have discussed, at least in its in its early years the Chevette didn’t seem as dated and inferior as it does today, and there were still a lot of people who preferred to buy American, or whose first instinct in looking for a new car was simply to look at their Chevy dealer. Cars like the Chevette helped ensure that there would be fewer of those people in the future.
5) “That spike soon drooped, and Chevette sales withered away, down to a mere 46k in its last year, 1987. That was way too late to be selling this car, which was hardly fresh when it arrived.”
Part of the reason why sales dropped after 1981 was competition from within. While the Cavalier was a bit larger and was technically a direct replacement for the Monza, it probably took away much of the market that had been buying Chevettes in 1978-81. The captive import program introduced for the 1985 model year would then seem to have taken away the remainder of the Chevette’s market. I’ve always been puzzled as to why GM kept building Chevettes for so long; but the mid ’80s it was unquestionably hopelessly outdated, and filled no particular slot in Chevy’s model lineup. I guess they just kept on going as long as they could sell enough to cover the costs of making them?
I could swear I used to have a Consumer Guide book (either a new car guide from 1988, or a used car guide from the same era) which listed the Chevette as having been available in 1988. But wikipedia states that 1987 was the last model year, with production actually ending in December 1986.
Ah yes the Chevette our luckily? were Vauxhalls with the Viva engines so they were fairly underpowered but easily repaired and reasonably reliable.
Vauxhall brought their Rally version here for the heatway rally on one forrestry section a speed radar had been mounted fastest were Mecedes 450 coupes@ 140mph next the little Vauxhalls pulling 135mph they were fitted with the Vauxhall DOHC 2.3 litre engines and went like rockets much faster than the Ford twincam Escorts.
We got a special stripper here called the Chevanne nothing inside but a seat for the driver it qualified for commercial finance rates but the dealer woulf fit the interior for extra as accessories
New Zealand also got the Japanese /Australian Gemini which was no better in reality and also suffered from Japanese parts availability thses were gadged as IsuzuHolden though when I moved to Australia the locals swear they are Aussie designed and built and are a favourite with botracers for being RWD and plenty of Holden Rodeo ute engines to swap in. The little Mazda GLC was a much better car.
My late uncle had a 76 Vauxhall Chevette as his runaround (his other car was a Jag XJS). Metallic gold 2door hatchback, red and brown interior. 1100cc and manual transmission. We borrowed it once, in the mid-80s. I was about 14 and remember it was the WORST car ever! It had no performance at all – none!! Uncomfortable and noisy too… I hated the styling too – though the Isuzu/Holden versions were ok. Despite how awful they were, the don’t seem to die quickly enough – they are always several on trademe.
Is that an Austin A40 ute? Sharp little job.
A30 got the wrong jpg
Actually, Bryce there was significant Australian input into the Gemini.
1) They were assembled here. Holden’s Brisbane plant, long gone alas.
2) Local rear axles & rear brakes & master cylinders.
3) Local batteries & upholstery.
4) Automatics used the Trimatic A/T.
5) Local radiators.
6) Local wheels & tyres.
7) Springs & shocks
The offset steering wheel never worried me.
Local parts for assembly purposes to get around tariffs is not design content, they were straight out Japanese Isuzus.
I owned an ’81, if memory serves, with the 1.8L Isuzu diesel engine with the 3 spd auto. Slowest car I’ve ever owned (and I’ve owned two (2!) ’60 Falcons). It was very reliable and returned an honest 38 mpg. Black on grey with black interior and no A/C (not available), in Sacramento, CA.
My parents had an 81 4 door hatchback Chevette diesel. It was still going strong until 1995 when some idiot ran a 4-way stop in his brand new Ford Ranger pickup as he had dropped his glasses and his foot slipped off the brake and we ran into a telephone pole. My parents loved the mileage out of that diesel. They had the 4 speed manual, which I think helped the cause. They said the body would have rusted out before the motor died on that car!
This little missive…seems to have my name on it. Yep…I’m the guy who lost an engine at 35,000 miles. I’m the guy who to this day curses the damned, double-damned, G-d-damned name of General Motors…for what they did to an up-against it, too-cautious-in-the-wrong-ways, nineteen-year-old kid…who was me.
Why, in the name of all that’s sacred…did I even CONSIDER such a car? To start with, I’d indulged both my sports and import lusts with my Sooper Beetle experience. It started with rust; the plot thickened with a hard fender-bender type rear-ender which broke the block of the rear-mounted engine; and then ended with a burned valve on the junkyard replacement, and the whole scenario overlaid with a growing sheen of rust. I was getting sick of repair bills I couldn’t afford; sick of begging money from my folks; sick of hitchhiking to work and to various VW specialists.
And I wasn’t willing to take a gamble on another used. Not when I’d seen $1600 1976 dollars reduced to $250 in twenty months…after about $1800 in repairs and rebuilds. What kind of lunatic buys a used car, anyway? asked my wiser-but-not-very, Inner Child.
Lots of guys at work had turned Japanese. And their Japanese were turning into orange dust – at a FRIGHTENING speed. Faster, even than my VW had. So…like the song said, “I don’t care how cheap they are / You won’t find me in a Japanese car!”
The Rabbit…real attractive. But a real VW; which my experience told me made it a real POS. Thanks…no.
My old man had just come back from an extended assignment in Europe; his company-provided car was a Fiat 128. He suggested; but I demurred. Even I had heard of Fiat’s legendary quality…
That didn’t leave much. The Pinto was too dated; its flaws discussed at length. The Chevette was supposed to have addressed all the flaws of the first generation econoboxes. The Civic was still new; and still raved over; but there wasn’t a new one to be had in all of Northeast Ohio. And…FWIW…that car was a rust-bucket, too, as it turned out.
But…the Chevette was there; it was in stock; and GMAC was more than willing to put me in the driver’s seat…at sticker, of course.
First blush, it didn’t seem so bad. Crisp shifter…so different from the fork-in-mashed-potatoes gear lever of the Beetle. Quiet; and after two years without a heater, I REALLY appreciated one in the Chevette. And, no, I didn’t have A/C on mine…hey, do I look like I’m made of money?
And handling was acceptable. Understeer; not the oversteer I was used to with the Super Beetle; but okay. And as a relief snowplow driver, I could get a light rear-wheel-driver around in snow.
But it was the problems…first the little ones; the odometer braking with about 5000 miles on it. The replacement that was sent under warranty…never did work right; read wildly over the actual speed. The dealer…they ordered the first replacement; then they ordered an “adapter.” They put it in without question or test and closed the book.
Then….brake warning light. Fixed by Mister Goodwrench with wire-snips…and he then left the spool of tape on the overlap area, hood over fender. Slammed it shut and bent the hood. I had to take it to an independent shop to have the REAL brake problem fixed; because GM’s computer tracking showed the problem with the brakes “repaired.” Or, so I was told at the OTHER Chevrolet dealer.
Reverse gear stripped; but maybe I cannot blame that on GM. I lost my temper because of some OTHER problem with the car, and slammed it into reverse and popped the clutch. And partly stripped it. It still backed, but with an interesting “rowr-rowr” noise while backing up.
Then…with 20,000 miles, wouldn’t start cold. Flooring the gas would get it going, but it wouldn’t idle until it was warmed up. Took three trips and two cab rides I (for a cold start for them) before an independent shop figured out that a wire inside the distributor (the coil was inside it) had a break and when the spark was advanced in a certain way, it wouldn’t get the juice.
The shop did an interim fix by yanking the spark retard line. Ran better than new; but the shop foreman patiently told me that to leave it that way was a heavy violation of law. Nothing to do but order a new distributor and pop it in…out of the 12-month warranty; $300 worth of parts.
Then…the connecting rod let go. At 35,000 miles. At this point my memories go blurry…so much bad stuff welling up at once. It cost me my job; it cost me what little pride I had left, in begging for MORE money to fix this money-pit once more. When I got it back, I was in the final semester of community college…with no work, rent paid for through June but only $300 in the bank…I lived on mac and cheese for four months until graduation. Where my summer-job plans fell through, too.
I can’t blame the car for what followed, either – although I harbor a belief in my heart, that it drove me to it and willed it on me. I took my last fifty bucks out of the bank on Memorial Day, and set out to get drunk in a local redneck bar…by this time I was living in New York State, where the boozing age was 18. Oh, I got drunk…and lost it in the rain, going home. Piled up on a parked pickup, and totaled that nightmare-car…and started a long, long career as a pedestrian.
Oh, how I hated that car…for decades afterwards. Focal point and key player in so much negative stuff…
After reading this, if I ever decide to buy a Chevette I hope someone slaps the shit out of me before I do.
JPT,
If you haven’t yet put this remarkable talent to work, I suggest a career in crime fiction.
I thought GM had used its patented compressed rust body panels on the Chevette. They have been gone around here for some time, but we get snow in the winter and use salt on our roads.
I pushed parts across a NAPA counter from ’83 to ’89, so my clearest memory of the Chevette is its inability to keep a master cylinder. We sold them like hotcakes. The rebuilts leaked just as fast as the OEs–we were always getting them back under warranty. The problem was probably not the seals, but cheap, crude castings.
I think that underlines the problem with these little heaps–the basic structure was sound enough for the time and price, and the drivetrain could be made to go the distance, but the peripheral parts were built to a price–an extremely low one–and they just nickeled and dimed their owners to death.
It’s true that a lot of foreign car owners have selective memory about how good their ’70s Hondatsuyotas were. But they were good enough to outdistance the domestic competition, weren’t they? How depressing is that?
I don’t know if you can blame GM for the failing rebuilt MCs. At that time IIRC Napa was pedaling A-1 Crapdone products. When the wholesale price of a reman MC (about $9) is about the same or less than the rebuild kit you know they aren’t using the highest quality parts or spending much on Labor. I saw way too many A1 MCs that were bad out of the box and still hear stories of that today.
About the Japanese competitors being able to outdistance the domestics I strongly disagree I put way too many engines in them back in the day. Plus they rusted at a much faster rate than GM and Ford offerings of the day. Here in W Wa where cars dont’ really rust I saw way too many Hondas with the front fenders flapping in the wind and rust making its way out from the wheel wells and under the windows. 510s were particularly bad too.
So I always asked when someone said I have xxx K miles on the car. Is that the second or 3rd engine? Japanese cars were the most profitable for mechanics back then.
I was in my teens when this car came out. I remember being told this was very much like an Opel underneath, but finding that hard to believe.
As I went off to college, I knew a number of young ladies who had one of these, at one time or another. We thought of them as sh!tboxes back in the day, but a friend of mine who dated one of these lovely young ladies gave me a different perspective after living with one for a while (a Chevette, not the lovely young lady).
He, a fan of all cars from Europe, was impressed with the basic ruggedness of the car. Not much finesse compared to his Fiat X-1/9 or VW Scirocco, but it DID start every time, got good gas mileage and you could buy common repair parts at the Acme-Click instead of having to bribe a parts store.
I was never a fan of these, but I actually considered buying one. I was between cars, I had just gotten rid of my old Trans Am but hadn’t bought my (soon to be) wife’s new car yet. I had a few dollars saved up and thought about putting some of it down on a super cheap-o Chevette and only have a one year note on it. I would have used it for commuting anyway, and wasn’t going to be too concerned about resale value and etc. Instead, I found a fairly pristine and low mileage Ford Pinto ESS for half the amount I would have spent on the down for the ‘vette.
I too, will add to the chorus of the people who are having sunshine flashbacks on their Japanese cars from the 70’s-80’s. I lived with a young lady who had a 78 Accord hatch as her DD, it was no great shakes. Rust, was a certainty in my part of Ohio, but that car rusted with a vengeance. The dealer had a ‘secret warranty’ on the front fenders. It was great that they fixed them for free, but you had to know the secret handshake to get the repairs. Other car companies did that, and it p!ssed me off equally badly. But, within two years, the fenders were flapping in the wind again..
Gutless, even more gutless when you turned on the AC, and once it was several years old, the vacuum tubes would dry rot, too. Which caused all kinds of drivability problems. Not that this didn’t happen to other cars, but have you ever seen a CVCC routing map? Frankly, as bad as my Turbo Capri was, it was still a better everyday car than that Accord.
Amusingly enough, I would buy something similar to this car now. It would be nice to have a small new car with a warranty, but mechanically simple. I only considered it dismissively back in the day, but now, it would make a lot of sense.
A Pinto ESS probably the rarest of Pintos cool.
I think my mom would have been among that group of “young ladies” in high school (Chevette was her first car and she loved it, was same blue color as article subject car).
I have personally owned, Driven, repaired and restored over 800 Chevettes in the last 29 years. I have a website that allows Chevette owners to still get a few parts.
I have an 84 Diesel and a 82 4 door scooter. I have driven several From Seattle Washington to central mexico and without trouble I think this was and is still a good cheap point A to B car. I drove my 82 300 miles in the snow just yesterday on street tires and still got 30 MPG. When I look at the newer cars Like Aveo, Yaris,Accent or the new Fiesta. I cannot bring my self to part with 12,000 to 18,000 grand. I’ll stick with my Chevettes. I have also been to Brasil and driven the Chevette there. I would love to have the little truck.
I have owned 4 chevette Diesels and my new 1981 diesel made 585,000kms and the body fell apart but power train was still in great running shape.At present I drive a 1982 diesel with 227,000 Miles on her and still get 54 miles per gallon.When I was working for GM they had the least amount of warranty.And on there gas models you break a timing belt and 1 hr later your on the road again not like most imports where you had to pull apart the motor and pay dearly.So to each there own.
As a current owner of a 1980 in IL (good ol state of 100*F+ in the summer to -20*F in the winter) i bought a running driving chevette 4 door 4 speed for a whopping $225 bucks with 54,000 miles on it. At first my dad was like h**l no you aren’t bringing that home but after he and i looked at it it changed his mind. He used to drive these for work and had some not so great memories of it.
Ive learned alot about automoitive repairs, when i bought it it had a burnt valve ($30 at napa to replace, oddly had it in stock still in 2007…) when i took the head off to fix it i could still see the factory hatch marks on the cyl walls. It was also missing its exhaust so a trip to autozone later (for some reason had a factory replacement muffler in stock in a dusty box haha)
Ive become VERY accustomed to the brakes on this thing, replaced everything besides the hardlines and yes still have to do the bi year bleeding procedure haha. Ive rebuilt the carb and a few other basic maint stuff all found parts in stock at your normal uto parts places. But i cant really complain, stock water pump, alternator, starter, fuel pump, etc.
Ive had to fix huge sections of the floor pans from rusting out and since then i have retired it from snow. (salt galore here) But man when i did take it out i could not get stuck and it always started, fired up in the dead of winter -10*F, foot of snow everywhere, barely plowed streets yet very slowly fired up. let it warm up for 10 min and off i went, could hear the snow skiffing off the bottom of the car as i went down the road but the pizza pan tires cut right through. Traction wise i lost steering before the backend spun/fishtailed…
I find the looks and feel of it more entertaining than todays electric razor or easter egg cars of today. Least i can actually bump stuff with my bumpers and not do a hint of damage unlike todays plastic counterparts. I guess its the feel it handles like its on rails and can take corners like a gokart is where it really shines. But whos to say, i cant complain about its 35mpg i get on E10 just around my commute (70%highway). Would lovee to see what one could do with a modern engine with VVT, fuel injection, OBD2 systems, standard 5 speed REAL manual trans, none of that clutchless slapstick crap.
(no jokes about it being on the side of the road haha)
Let’s see, I picked up an ugly green ’82 Chevette with auto (yuk) for $175 in the mid ’90’s to commute to work (30 miles each way). Beat the hell out of it for three years, the car never let me down and got good mpg’s to boot. I finally blew up the trans because I was too lazy to add some fluid when I knew it was low and ended up scrapping the car. Next up was an ’84 four door 4 speed car that I paid 225 for. Racked up around 60,000 miles on it (including some auto crosses), did some basic maintenance on it, that was it. Due to owner neglect and road salt, the thing suffered too much rot to be saved and I cut it up http://home.ptd.net/~mill007/partedredfourdoor.jpg and kept the parts for the next commuter car, which turned out to be an ’86 Pontiac 1000. Picked this one up from the original owner for 225 bucks, it needed a water pump and exhaust work. A two door car with four speed… I’ve still got it, and while it is getting tired it still starts every day and delivers well over 30 mpg. Ran a few autocrosses with this one too. I did break some stuff on this car but can weld so not a big deal. Just picked up a ’77 Chevette that was garage kept and has no rust, building this one for mpg’s and adding a good sound system. Hope to keep it a long time.
So why T-cars? Mmmmm, I bought four for less than a grand, racked up well over 150,000 miles in them and got very good mpg’s. Parts were dirt cheap back when you could find them (you still can today but you have to dig a bit), how about five bucks for new brake rotors and drums? Your buddy’s car broke down? Here you go pal… take the “Vette”. They are a conversation piece, these days I can’t get pull into a gas station and fill up without someone asking about or commenting on the car (OK, they aren’t all good). If you ever see a “Vette” going the other way (happens about once a year), you’re guaranteed to get a wave. It’s light, simple, rear wheel drive, about the slowest thing on the road, and if you use the sympathy routine you can talk your way out of speeding tickets (yes, given enough road, you can speed in one). They are actually good in snow. I’ve picked up enough parts to run one for years and have saved lots of cash… to spend on other vehicles. T-cars have served their purpose for me. So folks can laugh, but I’ll spend less money driving to work than they will.
One more thing, if you want to get some stares and guffaws, try autocrossing a Chevette. I’ve even run with stock 155/80/13 snow tires in the back. You won’t win, but you won’t finish last, either… and on a tight course you can embarrass some people. If you show up enough times, the serious SCCA types will talk to you eventually.
People rip on GM for not ‘bringing over Opel designs’, well they did! Was just not built for luxury or Autobahn drving as the Kadettes. We did at least get the ‘Buick Opel’ trunk-back versions.
And yeah, the Car Mags kept saying that GM as bringing the “FWD S Car” to replace the Chevette in early 80’s. But, Roger Smith killed it. Don’t know if maybe this S car became the Saturn? Or was it the FWD Kadette? It may have clashed with the Cavalier and Metro if it did get released
Also, I think the term ‘Econobox’ derives from the T cars.
Good friend of mine in Germany had parents that owned a brown four door…that they comically adorned with a Firebird hood decal! When they moved back to the USA and came back 1.5 years later, they had traded up the Chevette…for a Citation! WOO-HOO!
And shortly after my uncle retired from the Army, he bought a then brand spankin’ new bright red Scooter. When we came to visit him from overseas, my cousin was old enough to drive and he puttered me all around Clarksville, TN in that thing. Being all of 7 years old, I didn’t know (or care) how bad the Chevette was. I idolized my cousin, and he was driving the Chevette, so it had to be cool, right? Wrong. He did eventually own a string of really cool cars, starting with his Mk1 Scirocco, then moving up to first a 1985 CRX (base model…but when I got off the plane and walked out of the airport and saw that little white thing with the blue interior, I thought it had to be the baddest little car I’d ever been in…right up until he bought the 1987 CRX Si that my dad got to borrow after we PCS’d back from Germany. Now THAT was a car!)…
Somewhere I still have pictures of that red Scooter…
In high school (30 years ago) a buddy of mine had an orange ’76 Chevette he called the Orange Peel. It had the four speed stick and he went through two or three transmissions, but he couldn’t kill the motor. In the late ’90’s, a friend of mine had an ’80’s vintage four door that he drove for several years until the floor pan fell out. And now, an old lady in our building has a black 80’s coupe that she still drives, and it’s in pretty good shape. I saw it drive past today, and except for some minor rust around the fenders it looks like it came out of the showroom.
My sister had one of these cars, ’78 I think. Oh how I hated driving it. Bits of plastic were falling/breaking off all over the place. But do you know what my brother and I called the car? The lifeboat. When our cars broke and needed an extended stay in the shop, we called my sister and borrowed “the lifeboat”. It ran and ran. It did nothing well except run.
I drove a 76 Ralley 1600 Chevette for 86K miles on top of the 15K it had when I bought it. It was good, cheap transportation but it needed a five speed because of its 4.11 “performance axle.” The driver’s side floor rusted out in five years and it had to have a valve grind at 100K. The air worked good when the car was moving, but did little to help in slow traffic at 85+ degrees. The rear axle was beginning to sing when I sold it. It was not a good car for the open road, mostly because at 70mph it was turning about 4,000 rpm. It was easy to park because of the excellent visibility and small size. With a few improvements I wouldn’t mind driving one today.
My 1981 Chevette with the chrome bumpers still hasn’t let me down. More then I can say about most people.
Had the Aussie version, a TD model in panel van format. Removed what little emision controls we had in 1979 Australia. Advanced the timing, threw on a 2 bbl Webber, some
‘mag’ wheels & lined the interior. And a killer (in 1980) component stereo.
Great little car. Took it onto beaches, slept in comfort (and other activies too) in the back.
Seats, despite being thin & vinyl covered were really comfortable for me.
The offset steering wheel never bothered me.
And here she is on the beach. No tents for me
cozy & warm in the back.
And one as a speedway sedan, circa 1995
And this one is at Mid Atlantic Air Museum, Reading PA. I highly recommnend a vist.
Even with an auto trans, the removal of all that ‘road hugging weight’ must make it a little more sprightly.
The strange thing about that car is that it’s either a 76 or 77, but it has the nose Grill of a 78, which is a one year only for that type of grill.
Anyway if anybody reads his posts and read through every single comment, which I’m certain I missed more than a few, can they tell me if people mentioned any of the concept Chevettes?
Oh, how I loathe these cars. In 1987, my dad was using his 1975 Caprice Classic sedan he bought new as a work car. It managed to dodder through 12 years of existence & 200K miles of treacherous Colorado winters & the 7:30 am Grand Prix that was Denver traffic, only to be finished off by a crazy woman driving one of those inaugaral year Toyota 4Runners. She turned left into him coming off of Speer Blvd. & decimated the entire driver side of his Caprice. How she pulled this off no one knows. Being a working man in construction, my dad needed a car quick & cheap. A silver 1981 Chevette with navy blue vynil interior fit the bill. At just $300, it was a steal.
My dad & I both hated this turd. Ugly, dopey, dippy & SLOW! Egads! So slow. With a full load of tools, the A/C on, & foot to the floor starts, even fully loaded garbage trucks were faster off the line than this sorry pile. One thing about this dumb-ass car that just floored both my dad & myself: why in the F*#$& was a car this small rear-drive? Being it was an automatic, the floor hump & driveshaft tunnel took up a lot of space. Expensive parts, too. In 1987 dollars, EVERYTHING for this turkey was $48. Water pump? $48. Fuel pump? $48. Master cylinder? You guessed it; $48! The look on my old man’s face as he shelled out $48 no fewer than 7 times? Priceless! I can find at least one nice thing to say about a Gremlin, a Pacer, a Pinto, even a Vega! But these sorry shlubs? Nada! Not one once of sympathy can I muster for these tinny, tippy, buzzy, cheap little crates, so shoddily, so shabbily constructed, that the rear end shrieked in torment just barely keeping pace with the 60 mph traffic on the 6th Avenue Freeway. When dad finally inherited Mom’s slightly crusty but still solid ’76 Malibu as his replacement work car in 1988, my dad & I both sought our vengeance against this vile automotive cretin by driving it to a remote spot, playing a game of ‘car baseball’ with a pair of aluminum Sluggers on it, then walked to a pay phone to make 2 calls, one to Mom to pick us up, & one to a salvage man to come pick up the bashed carcass of that insufferable little mongrel of a car. We never told Mom the truth about what me & dad did that night; it’s a secret we share to this day. I’m sure if she knew, she’d be suitably horrified at our sheer level of hooliganism!
Waste of energy. I would’ve simply set it on fire.
Happy Motoring, Mark
I had one in 1998 I was in high school. It was an 87 CS two door in chevy grey
I loved it shouldn’t have sold it. But I saw it earlier this year at a garage.
I knew it was mine they guy laughed at what I told him. The glove box door broke the day after I bought it. It’s still not fixed and the ac did make it slow down by at least 5 mph with your foot on the floor. Still I loved the little thing. It was a blast. I had a friend with a buick that had a digital dash follow me. It took all 8 miles of the road but we got the car to 105 mph. Guess the three speed auto didn’t really have a top out point.
I don’t know why, but I’ve always liked the Chevette. My favourites have always been the 1980 and later models. If nothing else, they would be perfect commuter cars, or cars for driving surface streets, if not freeway driving. I’d buy a Diesel model, with a 1.8 litre diesel engine.
My gas-engine Chevette tale is below.
A couple of years after i traded it in, I worked with a guy who had an ’82 or ’83 Chevette diesel with a hatch. The only bad thing he ever said about it was that it was slow. His was a manual, too, but it may have been a 5-speed. His commute was about 80 miles per day, so the MPG from the diesel was a good fit for him.
IIRC, those were 1.8L Isuzu diesel engines, which have an excellent reputation for durability. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to find out personally, as his was taken out of service by an accident. (No injuries, though.)
How GM takes a good Opel design and totally ruins it. To be followed at oce more with the Cavalier. Sigh.
Pintos and Vegas were more popular on campus than Chevettes when I was in college. Also, Toyotas and Nissans (aka Datsuns) were picking up steam with an occasional Mazda in the mix. Seemed word was already out that GM just didn’t understand small cars at all. At least in the USA….
I always liked these little cars. My best friend in high school drove his mom’s sometimes, and I’d ride along. It wasn’t fast, but it was sure.
My ’84 “Vette” 2-door hatch was one of the best cars I ever owned.
Bought it in ’86 with 35K on the odometer to replace a terminally rusted ’74 Datsun B210 hatchback. Although there weren’t any Scooter logos, it might have been. The previous owner had jazzed it up a bit by adding some tape striping.
The secret to happy Chevette ownership is to go with a later model, 4-speed and power nothing, as mine was. This car would start every time and go anywhere… rain, snow or shine. Handled pretty well on the RWL BFG radials that were slightly wider than the stock ones. I also added gas shocks to all 4 corners and halogen sealed beams.
Drove it to ’93 and about 140K miles with pretty much normal maintenance, carried out religiously. Never had to replace the master cylinder, but it did require 2 water pumps. On this engine, the WP is driven by the timing belt, and the adjustment is a little touchy to get just right. I probably overtightened the belt on the first replacement.
I ended up trading my Chevette in on a 51K ’89 Beretta with 2.8, AT and AC, which I also loved dearly. Let’s just say that the ownership experience on that one was… ahem, not quite so economical. 😉
At trade-in time, the ‘Vette still looked good, had no visible rust, and still ran like a top. There’d be room in my lotto garage for another Chevette.
I wonder if the fact that the Chevette hung around so long could have been used to Chevy and Pontiac’s advantage the way the 84-87 RWD Corolla coupes were. There was a real nostalgia for small RWDs that began with the pony car horsepower war of 82-85. We know at the time GM was playing around with the 2.8 V6 in the Chevette, probably mainly coming out of the Fiero program.
Young pony car lovers would have to get over there aversion for V8 free cars. They would also had to do something about axle tramp. And many of the Corolla fans would have found them crude. But the 85 Camaro with the MPFI 2.8 and the t-5 five speed was a nice package. Subtracting 400 pounds and cutting the Camaro’s price by 30% might have filled the increasingly underutilized mid eighties American Chevette factory. If they had, I know we would have been seeing even more of them in high school parking lots, probably to this day.
It’s been a few months, but I used to see a Chevette 4 door whenever I visited my favorite Target.
When I lived in Memphis I would deliver pizzas to an apartment complex that had a diesel I-Mark 2 door parked out front.
These cars might have been a bit more memorable if GM in the U.S. hadn’t been deluded with that idea “….75% are still on the road” and had instead added steady refinement instead of idiotic trim packages. Like every other Chevy sold, there had to be several engines and trim levels.
A co-worker had one of the 1.4 liter, base models, and living in Florida he had the dealer add A.C. as the dealer here in Jacksonville received the car totally stripped.
GM sold a lot of Aveos that way. I saw several on one lot without AC but the set up for a dealer installed system was standard according to the sticker.
Lots of comments from 2011 referring to Car and Driver and it’s trashing of the Chevette in later years. When it came out C&D ran a cover story on it calling it “The Most Important Car Detroit Has Ever Built”.
The actual article by Brock Yates is a little more cynical and he uses the term “shitbox” at least twice.
In the text it’s explained that the T for the US was heavily re-worked and no sheetmetal is interchangeable with T Cars built in other parts of the world. It was also introduced in 1971, likely developed in the late 60s, so by 1976 the Chevette was a very improved 71 model.
Yates claimed the ones on hand for preview had “superior interior finish and detailing contrasting with the Rabbit’s aura of a Wehrmacht light reconnaissance vehicle”.
Patrick Bedard claimed ” an uncommon amount of money and effort have been directed towards rustproofing, including the use of galvanized steel and zincrometal in various parts of the unit body”. It appears GM was well aware of it’s competitors [and it’s own Vega’s ] propensity to rust and at least made some effort to address this problem.
However, in Motor Trend’s test, their Chevette was sidelined at the track because the steering wheel locked and couldn’t be taken out of park, rendering the whole car immobile until they disassembled the column. [ I saw the same thing happen to a then new 82 Celebrity…. , experienced it with my 05 ION….. a GM tradition, perhaps? ].
The Chevette is the sort of minimalist motoring that appeals to me. Had I been buying a new car at the time, I’d have chosen one of these, perhaps. The Vega was a disaster. The Nova too big and bloated. The Chevette must have made a lot of sense to a lot of people at the time.
And the attitude of the salesmen wasn’t great either. Because of his experience with one of the Quad Cities Chevy dealers [ “The Chevette? There’s one over there” ], and at Ford [ Fairmont base 2 door, 4 cyl. manual trans, same dismissive attitude], my Father drove to Moline and bought his first and only foreign car: a 1978 Subaru DL.
That domestic dealers still had that attitude toward small car buyers two years after the Chevette’s introduction and as the import’s market share continued to grow, just added fuel to the number of people who sought out the Japanese brands.
So many of the above comments reference buying these cars for $2-300 and then trashing them for being shitboxes. Most $2-300 cars are. Not exactly an objective reference point.
Both my brother and one of my sisters owned Chevettes, at least for awhile, back in the late seventies/early eighties. My brother and his wife bought a 1978 Chevette four door, I’m pretty sure it was the first new car they ever purchased. It had the four speed stick and was reasonably peppy, at least it felt quick because it was so light. My sister in law drove it back and forth to work for a year or so without any problems but when my niece was born, and they had two children, it was decided that the Chevette had to go in favor of something with more room.
My sister bought her two door Chevette, used, when she decided to return to school to become a nurse. This Chevette was an automatic and it was a turd; I drove it on several occasions and it would struggle to get past 58 MPH. With enough road you could coax it up to 64 or maybe even 65, but it wasn’t really worth the effort. It was just as well the car wasn’t any faster because the brakes didn’t inspire much confidence. All of this was likely a quirk of this particular vehicle, but my sister hasn’t purchased another GM vehicle since. As soon as she went back to work full-time the Chevette was traded off for a Toyota.
Is that a young Walter Rohrl in the Opel Kadett GT/E Advert?
My experience with the Chevette was a 1979 Scooter, light green over tan, no options, no back seat and rubber floor mats. It was a company car for a small weekly paper where I worked. Two of its peculiar traits forever soured me on Chevettes forever. The shift lever periodically detached itself from the linkage on the 2-3 shift; the air pressure caused by shutting the hatch was sufficient to pop open the driver and passenger-side doors.
I drove one hard in my first job ever making deliveries for a local bank. I don’t know how many drove it before me, let’s just say it was well-broken in. It was a step above the Scooter having chrome (or aluminum?) bumpers, automatic and ac. I would drive ac off as much as possible in No Va. It never got washed or cleaned out, drove like a Ferrari 🙂 and kept me entertained daily!
My first car bought brand new in 1987 was the Canadian version – Pontiac Acadian. 2 door, two tone paint – grey & silver. It was an automatic, had dual mirrors, cloth interior, cargo area cover and am/fm stereo radio with rear speakers in the hatchback area. Enthusiasts can laugh all you want, but it was a great little car, with decent tires and rear wheel drive it was fun to drive. Always started in the harsh Canadian winters and with regular maintenance it lasted me until 1995 with over 400,000 km`s on the original engine and transmission – no rebuilds. I only let it go due to undercarriage rust. Would I want to drive some so simple now, not likely. But, whenever I see a Chevette or Acadian still out there it makes me fondly remember my 1st car. Also, I still see 2 late model Chevette Scooters around town – either 1986 or 1987 models as they have the 3rd brake light. One is in near mint condition driven by a little old lady, likely the original owner and the other parked on the street near a local college, in decent original condition for a 30 year old car.
I once drove a Chevette from Chicago to Bozeman, MT with three friends.
It was a design quirk of the car that no matter what a person over 6′ did, no matter what seat he was in, no matter how it was adjusted, it was impossible for him to straighten out his left leg. It became excruciating after long hours of driving.
I have a seething hatred for these little sh*tboxes. In my young and poor days in the early Eighties I ran dealer trades for a Chevy dealer where a close friend worked. One day I had to take a Chevette all the way to Philly… the dealer was located in suburban Cleveland, so I was to spend quite a few hours in that car. And a miserable many hours it was… it was one of only two vehicles I’ve ever driven that actually scared me, and I mean scared me about to death. Every time a semi passed me (and being as underpowered as that deathtrap was more trucks passed me than vise-versa). I’ve never been so relieved to get to a destination than I was that day. Fortunately I got to drive an S10 Blazer back, much, MUCH better vehicle.
I fondly remember going to a debate tournament in the early 80’s in college – me and my partner had a Chevette 4 door silver with red interior thing rented for us – we had a great idea to time this slug from a full stop at a toll booth.
20 seconds transpired before this thing hit 60 mph.
It was an automatic transmission equipped torture chamber that wasn’t really that good on gas. It was misery on four rubber bands attached to steel wheels and the seats were licensed from some medieval torture chamber.
My own car at that time was a 1964 Ford Falcon with 170 cid engine with a delightful 2 speed automatic transmission. And my falcon could beat that Chevette.
There are few cars that truly deserve to be given the Porcelain Throne Award for outstanding contributions to toilet water, but the Chevette is a five flush finalist.
How ’bout a comparison test.. between one of these Chevettes.. and a Subaru Justy??
That is, if you can find a Justy.. in 2016.
1989 Subaru Justy GL ECVT
0-60 mph 14.3 | Quarter mile 19.6
1980 Chevrolet Chevette
0-60 mph 15.7 | Quarter mile 20.0
http://www.zeroto60times.com/body-style/classic/
Having owned a 80 Rabbit–be verrry verry careful when road is wet understeer if too much or too little throttle is an OF moment. Rabbit also had many electrical issues and the diesel rabbit had head gasket issues. Rabbit was worst car I ever owned–never again VW. Had an 82 Chevette with the 1.4 and Auto for a county car. Slowest pig I ever drove–got too many one fingered salutes after pulling out of stop signs and holding up traffic even with cutting AC off before pulling out. Was last GM product I have driven regular another never again. The 82 subcompact I currently own will do 0-60 in half the time of course they only built 703 of them over 3 years and when new could have bought 20 Chevettes for the price of a Mondial 8.
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I used to see a drag racing Chevette on the local car show circuit. He started with a Grand National 3.8 turbo and then switched to a 4.3 with a HUGE shot of nitrous. I never saw it race just at shows. The parachute was a nice touch.
AS the Vega debacle imploded in public, the Chevette seemed like an attempt by Chevrolet to quickly find a temporary replacement for it. Anyone with a radio, magazine or television knew that small cars were to be soon FWD and designed to fit a human comfortably, and clearly the Chevette wasn’t one of those cars. I remember expecting GM to unveil a real Vega replacement before 1976 that would be in keeping of the GM legacy. Instead, Chrysler unveiled a modern FWD/Rabbit designed vehicle while both GM and Ford kept selling Vega/Monza/Chevettes and Pinto/Bobcats, which were obsolete the moment the Rabbits and Omni-rizons were seen on the roads. GM and Ford fans had to wait another four years before their brands released the X-Cars and the Escort.
So, the idea that GM would keep making the Chevette instead of a modern small car was frustrating. There was no reason to buy one. GM yanked the Vega name, reworked the body, and renamed it the Monza, but everyone knew it was just a Vega, not a new car.
Worse, the Chevette just wasn’t a decent car. It reeked of cheap inside and out. It looked like a modern King Midget kit car, or a Crosley updated to meet government standards. Ziploc sandwich bags, new to the market during this same era – had higher quality than the Chevette. The Chevette made the Datsun B-210 look substantial in comparison.
I lived in Denver during this time and the Chevette was a joke when it attempted to leave the Front Range into the mountains. Gas mileage or not, taking a Chevette onto I-70 West was a fool’s errand. VW Beetles were more robust when charging up the foothills. When I drove or rode in my cousin’s Chevette, the first thing I did was roll the window all the way down so that I could have room for my arm and shoulder. The interior was too narrow for two healthy males to sit abreast without rubbing shoulders. (This was also a problem for many early Japanese rides as well, btw). When we had friends in the back seat, you could feel the Chevette struggle to accelerate with the extra weight.
Finally – GM unloaded thousands of Chevette onto the US Post Office and living in Chicago, I saw them used on walking routes in our neighborhoods. The mail delivery guy would use the hatch for the male to be delivered and they used these cars for a few years. I thought that considered their purpose in life, this was a good job for these sad little tin cars.
“GM and Ford fans had to wait another four years before their brands released the X-Cars and the Escort.”
And even then they weren’t ready for prime time. An avid reader of C&D, Motor Trend and Consumer Reports, I really tried to give the domestics a fair shake when I went shopping for my first new car in 1981. But the comparisons just weren’t there – the most acceptable decently built domestic was the Omni/Horizon; the Citation, Monza, Escort, Alliance and even Fairmont were all ruled out for indifferent build quality. Since I was going to be paying for this car for 4 years, I had to go with ‘near flawless’ Japanese build. Ultimately I went with a Corolla SR5 Sport Roof; I really loved the Accord but they were nearly unobtainium at that time.
Ford sold the FWD Fiesta here, starting in the late ’70s, before replacing it with the domestically-built Escort in 1981.
Ah memories! Back in the day when I worked for Bell Tel, they gave me a company car, a Chevette Scooter. Lucky you, you might say.
No. What an absolute cheesy POS. It actually had cardboard door panels. I stuck it out for a while until they “upgraded” me to a Monza. Tiny bit better, not by much.
I’d forgotten the “Scooter” model was still being made in 1980.
The car everyone loves to hate, or at least make fun of (in the US at least, but judging by the comments elsewhere as well). But when it was first launched here, it seemed very significant as the first truly global car with an American nameplate, several years before the FWD Escort or Omnirizon. As such, the precursor of generations of Focus, J Car, Epsilon etc. Of course, as with many of these, the “Americanization” seemed to lead to an inferior product. And I respectfully disagree with VanillaDude’s comment that everyone knew that small cars would go FWD. Sure we car buffs who worshipped Alec Issigonis and Dante Giacosa, and perhaps Soichiro Honda, knew FWD but the US was pretty much RWD then except for Rabbits, Civics and Fiats, and I think even LeCar was launched here after the Chevette.
A friend whose Dad had a nice big comfy Olds 88, bought his daughter a ’77 Chevette, to go with the stripper Nova he got for his wife. He was a GM guy all the way.
The daughter had nothing good to say about the Chevette, and called it a “Shove-it.”
Another friend got a ’79 Chevette in blue. They used it to drive 30 miles each way to and from work each day. It did the job well enough, but when I rode in it, and drove it a few times, I found it uncomfortable. The seats seemed unnaturally upright to me, and the acceleration was lacking.
They did get pretty good gas mileage from it though.
I think around that time, in the early ’80s, alot of people around here began to get more and more into Civics and Corollas. Ponys were a decade yet to come.
Pizza delivery cars that I can recall were more in the Pinto/Bobcat realm, and later, REliants and Aries’.
According to this webpage. Chevy did make a 2.8L V-6 Chevette prototype. I would have bought one!
https://hooniverse.com/chevy-enthusiast-via-hooniverse-the-1982-chevette-the-gm-dropped-a-v6-into-4/
It’s a little baffling why GM didn’t put a 2.8L Chevette into production, particularly considering how the Rabbit GTI was introduced a scant two years later to great success. It might have energized Chevette sales in its final years and seems like another missed opportunity.
The theory I heard is they didn’t want to cannibalize Camaro sales. *shrug* It would have been a fun ride so long at the awful brakes were improved. So much time I spent working on the brakes on my Chevettes – yes, I had more than one. I liked ’em. Honest, basic transportation. Mine were reliable and when they did break I could easily fix them in the driveway.
When my wife and I were first dating, I had a ’79 Accord LX. She once mentioned that it kind of looked like a Chevette. I was offended by that but I never told her. I knew right then she was not a “car” person.
She was the easiest person to teach to drive a manual, though. Except for me, she was the smoothest shifter I’d driven with.
Like butter.
We did later briefly have a Chevette.
It was cheap to buy and run.
It was in very good shape with low miles.
I hated it, but it was slightly more comfy than riding my CB360 in the winter.
Slightly.
I was dumb enough to buy a new 1976 CHUVette…….TOTAL PO$! Just about the WORST car I’ve ever owned, altho curiously the other 2 candidates I’d have for that “honor” were GM products, too! Go figure… 🙁
Guess I am a slow learner, and the “bulletproof” 250 c.i. 6 banger 3 on the tree ’79 Nova I traded it for……well: it ATE camshafts!! Finally after 2 failed tries a new short block was put in the Nova. After that I ran up @75K trouble free miles! 🙂 DFO
For a period of about 20 years, I had rented a home located on a large farm. The farmer/landlord had a 1962 Chevrolet Biscayne that he had purchased new. In 1980, after the youngest son obtained a driver’s license, he did a panic stop and separated the body from the chassis of the ’62. Not sure how they got that car through safety inspections. PA. still had required inspections every six months at the time. Right down to having precisely the correct diameter resonator pipe, tires, etc., etc.
The farmer purchased a new 1980 Chevette to replace the family car. I don’t think it was a Scooter, but it was bare bones with a 1.4 and an auto. The only use the car saw was short trips to church and choir practice and perhaps a monthly trip to market. When the gentleman sadly passed about 19 years later, his widow wasted very little time in being rid of it. I wasn’t living on the farm for some years, so I don’t recall what she bought. Other than the muffler falling off a couple of times I don’t recall many problems with that Chevette. I would guess that the car likely had 30-40k miles on it and about the second set of tires. Two new car purchases had covered 37 years of auto needs.
I feel that at least a good portion of the sales and longevity on the Chevette was due to the low cost and perhaps more importantly, it was RWD. My farmer friend could have afforded any car. The second oil embargo had tweaked interest among the unconverted in small high fuel mileage vehicles, but they were still not ready to commit to a new-fangled FWD vehicle. But it had to be a Chevy.
Considering the number of Vauxhall and Isuzu/Holden T cars that sold here new I havent seen one of either in years except at car shows they simply dont exist anymore in traffic and people do drive classics over here, I ran my Hillman for a week recently while I hunted for a starter motor for my Citroen eventually the correct Mitsubishi item came and was installed. On a run north to move parts I saw two Triumph Heralds and hour apart nut no T cars anywhere
The woman I married brought a 1980 Chevette to the union. Wasn’t long and she was driving my ’78 Fairmont Futura V8 auto and all the options. The Chevette was a 2dr auto with A/C. It was eating alternators at a fairly regular rate. Bad battery was the cause. Then one day the crankshaft pulley and cam drive sprocket checked out leaving a trail of bouncing parts behind the car as it rolled to a stop. The was only the one crank bolt and some “nubs” and the cam drive piece to properly locate the pulley. Typical bean counter move. The pulley needed to be located as it also was notched for setting the ignition timing. The problem was the Cycling A/C compressor. On-Off-On-Off and you were cycling a significant load and eventually the bolt fatigues and fails. New crankshaft and some shitty work by the dealer and it was back on the road, a year later I discovered how shitty the dealer work was, timing was off and dist. couldn’t be rotated any further. Took to dealer and they “fixed” it by torching the A/C bracket to advance the dist. some more but still not enough. Fixed it my self. I was a GM employee at the time so that really made my day.
The failed wiring in the distributors was very common back then. Most prevalent in manual transmission cars and trucks. The distributors for manual transmission cars and trucks usually use a different vacuum advance with a great stroke than a vehicle with an automatic trans. So that little pickup coil moves farther and it cycles back and forth more often and eventually one of the two little wires gives up and breaks and you are sitting on the side of the road. With the manual trans every time you shift the vacuum advance does a full stroke cycle. However the person who paid for a new distributor was screwed because the part that failed was replaceable. This was around the time it started to become fashionable to replace assemblies rather than fix something. A new or certain rebuilt parts carried a warranty so the shop was off the hook if it failed and also less time spent repairing said truck therefore you could service more vehicles. Good theory but a lot of minor repairs that would have been just as effective and cost the customer less were not done.
The one Chevette that really got me was a stranger’s car. I was driving home one grand day when I came up behind another Chevette and I could smell gas. As it pulled away from the light I could see gas pouring out of the car. I managed to get the lady pulled over. I popped the hood and knew immediately it had either a bad needle and seat or a sunk float. My “vette” had done the same thing earlier in its life.
She said she just picked it up and the shop said they couldn’t get the part to fix it and she should bring it back tomorrow! WOW!
I drove my vette for about five more years, gave it to the kids and eventually it went away. It was an OK beater, being a mechanic helped keep it repaired and useable.
Always generates a good laugh when someone says “remember when the “vette”…..
Chevette was based on the GM global T body, which was also an Opel Kadette.
So, if GM had used the pre-T Body Opel Kadette for the Vega, the Chevette shows how that may have panned out, 😉
Though I understand the negative comments about the Chevette, especially now that I have experienced Japanese cars, I have some fond memories of the Chevettes that have crossed my path over the years.
The father of one of my childhood friends worked for GM and bought a bright yellow one when they first came out. I don’t know how good or bad the car was, but remembered thinking it was cool, likely because it was new and yellow. My friend eventually crashed that car.
As part of a cool class I had in high school, we took a trip to the GM plant in Delaware to see Chevettes being made. I remember watching in awe as entire bodies were dipped into tanks of primer, and also that the workers seemed pretty bored.
Around that time my father worked for a Chevy dealer. He sold wreckers, so usually had trucks as company cars, but brought home a “deluxe” Chevette a few times. It was pretty fancy in comparison to our more typical family cars. My siblings and I wanted Dad to buy one, but his preference was for worn out old cars.
A few years later, in college, I bought a used Chevette Scooter, the newest car I had owned up to that point. It replaced a worn out Duster, which replaced a worn out Pacer, so seemed pretty good to me by comparison. It was the least expensive car on the dealer’s lot, and had all of the Scooter amenities and driving characteristics already described. My job at the time was food delivery driver, and I drove the Scooter pretty hard; lots of stop and go, fast gunning and hard braking. It served me well, with the only major repair being the need for a timing belt, the cost of which was covered by the dealer warranty. Otherwise it needed a starter or two, and later, a clutch, and likely an alternator or two as well. It met my needs and served me well. It also served as a rolling den of iniquity for me and my girlfriend at the time. Oh, to be that flexible again. My last sight of it, a year or two after selling it, was seeing it on the road, in the livery of a small church. It made me chuckle a little to think that my Chevette would spend its twilight years in the service of the Lord.
As they wore out they were the successor to the dumpy low trim Nova.
Pizza’s here!