Whenever I think of the Chevrolet Chevette (and I usually try not to), I tell myself that most of them surely went to the boneyard long ago. So, you can imagine my alarm at seeing the Mecum Auctions listing for this improbably showroom-perfect, 47-mile silver 1987 Chevette three-door hatchback — an unlikely time traveler from the last year that these miserable little cars still haunted U.S. new-car showrooms.
The Chevette has a long and complicated global history. Its basic T-body platform was offered under various brands and in numerous different versions around the world. Some of the non-U.S. variants were allegedly pretty good, like the rare late ’70s Vauxhall Chevette HS2300 and HSR homologation specials, whose its 2,279 cc twin-cam engine boasted twice as much power as any Chevette sold Stateside. We didn’t get any of those.
In the U.S., the Chevrolet Chevette — nicknamed “Shove-It” and other, less flattering sobriquets — was always a low-budget penalty box whose sole virtues were price and fuel economy. By ’80s standards, its 27 mpg (adjusted EPA combined rating) was no longer really economical enough to make up for its other shortcomings, but it was still dirt-cheap: In 1987, its final year, you could get a three-door Chevette for as little as $4,995 plus destination (a relative worth of about $15,800 in 2025), about $800 less than the least-expensive 1987 Honda Civic.
The Chevette didn’t have an outstanding repair record, but its unambitious RWD mechanical bits were mostly straightforward and cheap to fix. Its body was also fairly resistant to ye old tinworm, not something that you could say about a lot of ’70 imports. Some of these cars soldiered on for a remarkably long time in truly miserable condition, usually out of necessity. I had a friend in high school who was saddled for a while with an old Chevette whose entire exhaust system had fallen off due to salt-induced corrosion, resulting in a deafening Indycar level of interior noise; the cost of fixing it exceeded the car’s entire residual value.
Perhaps some of you have positive memories of the Chevette, because one was there for you in some warmly remembered time in your life. I get that. However, considered strictly as a car, by someone who has at least sometimes enjoyed driving cars, the Chevette was consistently dreary. It was very slow. Its ride was choppy. It didn’t handle well. It was cramped inside, and its gutless gasoline engine was noisy until you were going fast enough for wind noise to drown it out.
Even with a lot of extra-cost “Custom interior” options, the Chevette interior looked and felt cheap.
If for some reason the standard interior wasn’t bad enough, the ultra-cheapo Chevette Scooter discarded what few amenities the regular Chevette offered in order to pare another 10 percent or so off the base price.
It’s been a long time since I had to ride in one of these cars, but looking at these pictures still makes me shudder.
Years ago, I spent some time in an aged 1980 Honda Civic three-door hatchback with a five-speed gearbox. It was no more powerful or luxurious than a Chevette, and it was about as noisy, but, wonder of wonders, it was actually fun to drive. The Civic went where you pointed it with unexpected enthusiasm. Its limits were modest, but it threaded through traffic like a well-trained dog eagerly zinging through an agility course. Even driven quite vigorously, it gave me 30+ mpg — about 10 percent better than you could expect from a Chevette — and while there was nothing plush or fancy about it, the Honda seemed to have been engineered and assembled by people who took pride in their work. A Chevette had none of those virtues.
Early on, that was forgivable — the T-car was a pretty typical mid-’70s C-segment car, and no worse than most.
However, most other small cars of that era evolved, while the Chevette stood still. Chevrolet sold these cars for 11 years, but other than the addition and demise of the diesel version and a few cosmetic tweaks here and there (like a new grille and rectangular headlights), the last versions were just as blah as the first.
Shamefully, the Chevette even struggled with U.S. emissions compliance. In 1980, GM requested an EPA waiver of the 1981 and 1982 carbon monoxide standards for the gas-engine Chevette. They admitted that poor design of the dual-bed catalyst and air pump for the 1.6-liter carbureted four left it incapable of complying with the new CO standard, but said there were no alternative engines available, and argued that “severe economic and social costs” could result if the EPA didn’t allow GM an extra two years to develop a less expensive emissions control system. Surprisingly, the EPA granted the waiver in July 1980 (45 FR 49877–49900, if you’re curious), but it was not a proud moment for the engineers of the world’s largest automaker.
Ultimately, the problem was that Chevrolet decided they had no incentive whatsoever to make the Chevette even vaguely desirable. It would sell as well as GM needed it to because it was cheap and fuel efficient, but creating a Chevette that anyone WANTED to own might cause customers to choose one over a Citation, a Cavalier, a Celebrity, or some other pricier model with bigger baked-in profit margins. Horrors!
In short, the Chevette was an automotive hairshirt because GM wanted it that way, and they kept it like that to the bitter end. (The Pontiac version was arguably worse, if only because Pontiac had the gall to charge substantially more money for it without offering anything extra in return.)
Consumer Guide noted that by the end, the Chevette and Pontiac 1000 were mostly fodder for car rental agencies, which, like Chevrolet and Pontiac, used them to punish cheapskates who refused to pay a little more for the upgrade. Still, some private buyers did buy them, enticed by rock-bottom sticker prices. Chevrolet sold 46,208 of these cars for 1987.
The photo in the Mecum listing of the original window sticker is too small to read, but I have a listing of Chevette prices and options from a 1987 price guide. The $4,995 base price got you an AM radio, reclining seats, and the little center console; five-doors also had cloth upholstery, which was $130 extra on the three-door hatch.
The Mecum car has the standard 4-speed stick. A 5-speed was available for an extra $75, but about half these cars had the automatic — a terrible way to spend $450 unless you were running a car rental company or had only one leg. Besides the optional transmissions, a Chevette buyer could theoretically ladle on around $1,500 of extras, including two-tone paint and various “Custom” trim groups, but I can’t imagine many private buyers did that. If you were able to spend $6,500 or more on a new car, you were better off with just about anything else, like a basic 4-speed Civic or the Isuzu-built Chevrolet Spectrum that often shared showroom space with the ancient Chevette.
There were worse cars than the Chevrolet Chevette, in the grand scheme of things. GM sold a bazillion of them, and I’m sure some people got good if uninspired service out of them. However, it’s hard for me to regard these cars with anything other than disdain. The Chevette was an indifferent car built by people who’d rather not have bothered, reluctantly sold to people who couldn’t afford better by dealers and salespeople who saw nothing much in it for them. Although the basic T-car platform was old-fashioned by the ’80s, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it, and GM could certainly have done SOMETHING with it to give it even a tiny bit of verve. Their unwillingness to do so was telling, and I think ultimately embarrassing — a testament to Detroit’s eternal contempt for small cars.
In January 2025, somebody paid the mind-boggling sum of $33,000 USD for this silver Chevette, more than twice its inflation-adjusted original price. This car’s showroom condition and minimal mileage (just 47 miles on the odometer) are certainly extraordinary, but the thought of spending that much money for any U.S.-market Chevette makes my head spin.
I hope the buyer puts it in a museum, as a four-wheeled time capsule and cautionary tale. Me, I think I was happier assuming the Chevette was finally extinct.
Related Reading
Vintage R&T Review: 1976 Chevrolet Chevette – Technical Analysis and Driving Impressions (by Paul N)
Vintage R&T Road Test: 1976 Chevrolet Chevette Rally 1.6 – Not Quite Rally-Ready (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1977 Chevrolet Chevette – An Econobox For Garden-Variety Americans (by Eric703)
COAL: 1978 Chevrolet Chevette – Finally, My First Car (by Carlsberg66)
Curbside Classic: 1980 Chevette Scooter – A New Category Of Vehicle (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1981 Chevrolet Chevette Diesel – Christmas In June (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1986 Chevrolet Chevette CS Diesel – Beloved Slow Box (by Joseph Dennis)
Not mentioned is that this $33,000 used Chevette does not have the optional air conditioning, as evidenced by the lack of air vents on the outer ends of the dash. My family had a ’76 Chevette (bought new in ’77 at a steep leftover-car discount) and the awesome GM air conditioning was one of the car’s few strong points. Ours was saddled with the 3-speed automatic, so the car didn’t even get very good fuel economy. I found the front seats to have good back support, and the unassisted steering to be direct (though the weird kink in the steering column, along with compensation for it built into the steering wheel itself, made the rim flop back and forth in sharp turns and parking). The rear seatback folded forward easily to create a decent, perfectly flat cargo hold. That’s about all the nice things I can say about the car. In its first year in 1976 it already seemed obsolete compared to a VW Rabbit, but more typical cars its size from that era like the Datsun B-210 weren’t really any better than the Chevette. Once modern small cars like the Omni/Horizon, Escort, and Sentra hit the market though, the Chevette seemed embarrassingly antediluvian.
In 2009 I purchased a 1986 4 Dr Chevette CS that was originally won in a church lottery. The car was fully equipped to the max a/t tilt a/c w/w tires cloth interior etc..I drove it for 6 years as the parts were getting hard to find. The fuel economy was about 19 mpg and the acceleration was. Well you know. I have since sold it to get a Mitsubishi Mirage….that is another story. Anyway I do miss my Chevette it was a work horse. I used to love to tell people that I owned a vette but I left out the Chev.
What a crime to have a 47 mile CHEVETTE! Why couldn’t this have been so many other cool cars from that era!
What’s the saying…There’s a butt for every seat? (or something like that?). I guess somewhere out there there’s a completest who just has to have the best Chevette left in the world, and this is it. If I’m right, one shudders to think of what else he had to have and is thus in his collection.
Somewhere in an article I’ve written here, I have mentioned my Chevette story – which you’re right, I think most of us in the US over the age of 50 probably have one – which involves a 1800 mile, 72 hour road trip in one in 1983. That was in the DIESEL version (extra noise, extra slow, for the win), without air conditioning, from Massachusetts to South Carolina in the late Spring (which is mighty hot and sticky down there, I’m just saying). Truly miserable and memorable.
The fact that intrigues me is just how inexpensive these things were. Yes, they offered little for the price, but if you needed a “new car” (and some people, e.g., the person who owned the turd brown diesel one with the standard vinyl seats that I drove in 1983, just do) and had extremely limited funds, this was something you could get. Or finance. I have to believe that if there was a $15,000 new vehicle offered in 2025, there’d be buyers. I’d like to think that that car would offer more than the Chevette did…but even if not, there’d likely be a market.
Oh Aaron, don’t shudder in horror. Methinks you are way too hard on the Chevette. Yes the Civic was a superior car but 16% more expensive than the Chevette. The Chevette filled a need, I knew several people in my teen years who had them, and my future wife also drove one in her teen years (although it was known as “The Vette”).
In the 80’s I drove a clapped out early 70’s car that required CONSTANT attention, Chevette drivers seemed to arrive at their destinations with less hassle and fuel expenditure that I was experiencing so that’s a win right there.
People got to work because of the Chevette, people made a living screwing them together. My own father in law made good money repairing them and my future wife had a Saturday morning job sandblasting Chevette brake calipers for rebuild.
I dare say looking at the current crop of new small cars and their MSRP the world could use another Chevette for $15,800. Slightly updated, with no air pump.
These days, I’ll occasionally see a nice Chevette at a car show, and it’s always fun because, like you, Aaron, I assumed they had all gone onto their just reward, especially here in Michigan.
I wasn’t all that old by the time these started disappearing around here, but I remember that a lot of older examples seemed to have a ton of negative front camber as they aged. Am I misremembering that? Was that a thing?
I am trying hard to imagine why this one was preserved in its new state all these years. Why??
There’s one still resting peacefully in a side yard just three blocks from my house. I enjoy seeing it every time we walk by.
A real mystery, perhaps for the same reasons some people have bought the last 1966 Studebakers. In Quebec, I remember the time we saw lots of Chevettes (and Pontiac Acadian) on the road besides the Renault 5.
Still, the Chevette wasn’t as bad as the Lada Signet or the Yugo.
I had an 86 in that blue color. The engine and automatic transmission were indestructible provided you changed the oil. The 3 speed with lock up torque converter was MUCH more durable than today’s modern CVTs. Though not as refined or relaxed on the hwy.
Worst thing about Chevette was the automatic choke. An absolute focker. Took the dealers & GM awhile to figure it out back then. Finally around 87 it ceased production and was orphaned of parts.
Chevette’s biggest advantage over the Yugo came as it aged. Chevettes had actually fairly decent factory rustproofing and parts in the ’90s were GM cheap and plentiful, while the Yugo parts supply had almost completely dried up (“It was made in a country that no longer exists”).
I’d like to think that the owner bought it, drove it for a week, stuck it in the back of the barn and bought a Porsche 911. Then had so much driving fun they never gave another thought to the Chevette.
I had a chevette nice little car died after 400,000 miles ran through flood waters and trails that would stop a jeep and kept going when it died we gave it a proper burial
I have two of these. One a diesel and the other a parts car. I left the diesel out in the woods for over 10 years. The day I decided to drag it out I wondered “will it still run”? Sure as heck it started right up. As such, it now resides under cover, waiting for the day it will cruise the roads (slowly) one again.
The engine picture shows one of the absolute beautiful GM “servicability” the distributor (HEI system) resides under the AC compressor so to replace the cap and rotor the compressor with it’s mounting bracket must be taken loose and placed on top of the engine so the parts can be replaced. Now throw in the optional power steering, it is not possible to detach the compressor bracket lower bolt from the engine block without raising the engine off it’s mounts.
One of our local Ford dealers actually bought a Chevette Scooter to put in their showroom next to a base level Pinto, which was only a small amount higher than the Pinto (I believe is was the Pony MPG model). GM made too many basic items optional, same way they did with the Vega (passenger seat in the Vega panel delivery wagon was optional). Chrysler Corporation had far superior sub compacts to either Ford or GM, in the Omni/Horizon pair.
I had driven all kinds of cars and many of them when a Chevette became my rental for a week in San Francisco. It seemed to me that the Chevette never managed to make the fundamental jump — from pieces and parts to an integral whole. It was just awful and in not a single way endearing. Awful.
In the Chevette’s defense, by 1987 the Cavalier had been around for 6 model years, so “nice” subcompact (for GM people, anyway) was in the showroom. After 1982, the Chevette had one mission: to appeal to the working poor or to misers. Its low price was its only reason to exist, and any investment in the car would have been a waste. If not for government compliance problems, GM could have probably gotten several more years out of the Chevette at volumes high enough to have justified its existence.
I could imagine how they would have milked more years of the Chevette like a Chevette V6 or a turbo 4 like the one who was used in the J-body Sunbird/Skyhawk. And a upgrade like the ABS brakes then the Cavalier inherited in 1992.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a61818559/1982-chevrolet-v-6-chevette-archive-test/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/THECHEVETTECOLLECTOR/posts/2097069663650063/
There was really nothing wrong with the Chevette, aside from the usual domestic “dumbing down” of a global platform, something which the Horizon and Escort, even the Westmoreland Rabbit also suffered from. The real problem was that it should have been introduced 3 years earlier and switched over to FWD by 1980. Oh, that’s right, GM did that in Europe and Japan.
Yes, odd. By 1979, GM already had a perfect FWD Rabbit and Omni/Horizon competitor.
I have driven a lot of cars in my day, but hands down the worst was the Chevette. It was slow, cramped and noisy. The seats had a convex shape, making you sit on a high spot. The only reason anyone would buy one is that they were among the cheapest cars on the market.
GM kept the Chevette far too long. I suppose the tooling was paid for early on in the model run so each one produced was at least somewhat profitable.
They kept the Chevette “far too long” because it was still selling in great numbers
They sold 43,000 and change according to the article. Cars like the Toyota Camry sold more than ten times that amount.
That’s the final-year 1987 number, and I think those were all made in calendar 1986. At its’ peak it was moving half a million a year.
Circa 1980 a college friend bought a used Chevette from Hertz. Automatic, of course. If you floored for long enough, and it was a looonnnggg time, it would top out at 78 mph. In 1984 he traded it in on a new Renault Alliance (Motor Trend Car of the Year!). That did not go well either……
Ouch! and OUCH!
Boy, one would think reading this article that GM couldn’t give Chevettes away. Yet it was a top selling model and outsold many other compact cars. I would prefer to believe the professional car test people at Car and Driver who in their December 1976 issue gave the Chevette glowing positive reviews. Here’s a little nugget of information from Car and Driver. ” The Chevette is the most trouble free, slam the hood and forget it, cancel your service writer off the Christmas list machine we’ve ever encountered. Our test car ran faithfully every time we hit the key, consumed only a single quart of oil in 26,000 miles, delivered an average of 27.2 miles for every gallon of fuel, and never once spit a broken part out the back LIKE ALL THE OTHER LONG TERM CARS WE’VE KNOWN We were also happy to remain complete strangers to the local Chevrolet dealers service dept. It means that the Chevette is a tough, proven design which shrugged off our most sadistic punishment, a flatout Nebraska crossing, at least 1000 miles of bottomless Manhattan potholes, forays into the far reaches of the Bronx, and countless freight expeditions through Queens. ‘”Tough means nothing broke. not a wire, not a bolt, not even one light bulb. Without typing the entire article here, they liked the Chevette, mention a good ride
That was in 1976. A lot changed very quickly in the years following. What do you think C&D would have said in 1987?
@ Duaney ;
_THIS_, 1,000 times this .
‘Enthusiasts’ tend to forget the real world .
-Nate
I am not interested in the car at all. What interests me is the psychology of the owner who stored this car away. After that then it is the psychology of the person who bought it and overpayed although that is what auctions do.
” bought it and overpayed although that is what auctions do.”
True, but Dang, I’ve NEVER seen someone ‘overpay’ for a Chevette before.
(Then again, I only Paid $50 for my 81 T-1000, so Perspective and all that). 😉
Back in about 1983 my father was considering buying a second hand subcompact so one day we went car shopping. On the used car lot at the local Chev-Olds dealer were a 1978 Chevette three door, a 1978 Mercury Bobcat Villager wagon and a 1978 Plymouth Horizon. Dad thought that the Chevette was the way to go so he took it for a test drive. That drive convinced him that the Chevette was not what he wanted. So then we went for a ride in the Bobcat, his comment upon our return was that before riding in the Bobcat he didn’t think there was a car worse than the Chevette, but there was. Finally we went for a ride in the Horizon, which he thought was the ugliest of the three. He was very impressed. Although he decided to buy a new truck (1983 Dodge Ram 150) instead of a small car at that time two years later he bought a new 1985 Dodge Omni with the sport package and the 2.2 litre engine. He had that car for six years before selling it to my brother who had it for another three or four years.
I agree the OmniRizon was a “real car” out of that grouping, with a rather nice interior at least the ones I recall from the later 80s. Nice velvety supportive bucket seats. I knew 2 guys who bought new maroon ones, one a stick, and actually liked them.
Of course the GLHS was the one I wanted, and went on to own a couple Shelby Turbo Daytonas that were a hoot.
Dad always said that the Omni’s buckets were some of the most comfortable car seats that he’d ever encountered.
Pinto, Chevette and Omni were each a generation more modern than the last, in that order, despite their overlapping production runs.
I think they were the most spiteful cars GM ever built. “Oh, you want something small and cheap? Okay, we’re gonna build and sell you an awful pile of poo and you’ll buy it anyhow.”
I remember these mostly as fleet cars for the C.O.L.A. ~ they used many as parking patrol cars and they chugged along quite well .
Everyone seems to want an up scale car, there was a time when many Americans just wanted to go from point A. to point B. without any fuss and economically, these fit the bill perfectly .
My middle sister bought a red two door new and loved it .
-Nate
“This low-mileage 1987 Chevette is still grim inside despite extra-cost cloth seats ”
Complete hyperbole. I just rode in a stripper 88 Corolla (in really good condition) and it was a lot more grim inside than the Chevette. I am not saying the Chevette was a great car but the constant bashing is getting silly.
They were thrown together and loud but like most GM cars of the 70s, they ran and ran……even as parts fell off.
I had an ’88 Corolla wagon and it was far from grim. The cloth seating and door inserts were very elegant, and the dash was up to date and beautifully shaped. I liked the slick pull out cupholders. The pics here of the interior of the Chevette look clunky and way out of date in comparison.
This specifically appeals to a specific colorful collector whose other collector car is a Corvette, only for the sake of being able to say “I have two vettes!”
I’ll give GM only one credit with these in that the facelift was an improvement. I have no problem with the core concept of offering a car for an extremely low price devoid of meaningful updates for a decade + if that’s what it takes, but start with something worth keeping forever at least. I have a different perspective on Chevettes than many as I don’t have much exposure to them being a Millennial, but I do remember them being pitched as platforms for engine swaps to go crazy fast given their RWD layout and in spite of the numbers I still go “nah”.
Also for that reason I’m glad it’s overpriced to be left pristine in its intended form (for better or worse) than be cheap enough to be project car fodder for an LS swap. I shouldn’t judge given I have a car that’s almost extinct and modified but I started with them when it was only 11 years old!
Of all the 69 cars I’ve had, NONE was a more mi$erable pile of POO than my purchased new, ’76 Chovette. Reliable? NO, cheep to run? NOT really. A 4 wheeled heap of steaminn poo! 🙁 DFO
These cars were an insult to penalty boxes everywhere.
I knew two people, at different times, who had Shovits. Perhaps that says something about my taste in friends. Er, at any rate, I was asked to drive these for these people, and they were the most uncomfortable things I ever piloted. The driver’s seat felt like you were sitting on a bucket. They were gutless pieces of.
One of these people’s Dad bought them one of these atrocities. This Dad who had the beautiful Delta 88 Royale in the driveway, figured it was a good idea to get this tin can of a car for their kid. This was the same guy who bought a three of the tree Nova for his wife who couldn’t drive a standard – so she wouldn’t take it out too much.
The other Chev was bought on a recommendation of the person’s brother, who himself owned a Firebird. How a sports car owner would recommend this can opener of a car to their sibling was lost on me.
A tale of two Shove-ettes:
I accompanied my gf at the time and her parents while car shopping. Her father had grown weary of the inconveniences and expenses of the breakdowns on her very used up Fiat 128.
We all checked out the Chevettes at the Chevy dealer. At the time the car had a reputation of being inexpensive to buy and maintain.
The first one we examined was a base model Scooter. A real “loss leader” car with NO options other than the 3 speed automatic transmission. It was refrigerator white on the outside with an already dirty looking grey interior, Her Father was quite impressed, her Mother repulsed, my gf indifferent.
The next one, the one they eventually purchased, was a much nicer car and higher optioned model with power steering, factory A/C, the optional interior and exterior chrome, a handsome midnight blue exterior/slightly lighter blue vinyl interior with carpeting and more sound deadening materials. A competent appearing car it appeared to be (for that price range).
My gf’s only lament was that it was a standard transmission model, not the slushbox automatic tranny she preferred. (She did know how to drive a stick shift, thanks to her Father any my instructions).
Even my non-automotive gf commented that the stick shift model felt “peppier” during our test drives.
Her Frugal Father wanted the base line Scooter. Her otherwise prim and proper and polite Mother quietly snarled at her husband: “You are NOTTTT putting out daughter in that trash can POS!”
When the daughter and I went our separate ways 4 years later; she was still driving the stick shift model (5 speed? I cannot recall) and generally pleased with it. Not Honda smooth, but it was considerably cheaper to purchase (the salesman commented to me that they were “discounting the hale outta this one ‘cuz nobody wanted a manual”) and buy parts for as it aged.
Just a long winded example of how you had to “work the option list” to get a decent Amercian small car in that time period,
I had 1987 Pontiac Acadian 2 door, 2 tone grey/silver automatic transmission. As it was the up-level model it also had dual sport mirrors, am/fm stereo radio with rear speakers and a very rare cargo security cover. It was my first car bought brand in late 1987 with a heavy discount as the dealer wanted to clear out last years models and this car was no longer in production. I had it until 1995 with almost 400,000 km’s on the original engine and transmission. It was good on gas, always started in the cold Canadian winters, with decent tires and rear wheel drive was kind of fun to drive and was easy and inexpensive to do repairs myself. I knew many people who had Chevette’s or Acadian’s and they were happy with them.
My grandma had 2 of these. A 1979-1980 ish yellow one, and a later model grayish blue one. As her kids were always borrowing the yellow one, which went from here in Michigan to the Rockies many times, and everywhere around here. She had one of those Foxy Grandma front license plates.
The crazy cat lady hoarder who lived next to my other grandma had a fleet of Chevettes too.
My uncle who lived on top of a long hill had one, and he said it was surprisingly good in the snow. I imagine he loaded up the cargo area with sandbags.
In high school, my buddy’s sister had a T-1000. And a Mercury Lynx. I don’t remember which came first. Probably just chance how she ended up with the less common models.