I’ve always been a really big fan of the Celebrity Eurosport, but when I saw this rear diffuser-equipped black Eurosport in traffic, my heart skipped more than a few beats. Wow; could this be a genuine Celebrity Eurosport VR?
I tried desperately to catch up with it, but nobody ever passes a Eurosport VR! The 1987 VR was a $4000 package to turn a garden-variety Eurosport into a genuine Testarossa-killer. Or at least an M5 killer. Or… Youthful fantasies could now be fully realized at your local Chevy dealer, although a properly-equipped VR would run some $20k ($38k adjusted) which might just put a bit of a crimp on the youthful budget. But with its giant-killing 130hp 2.8 V6 and three-speed automatic, that $20k bought a lot of street cred. And it still does today. Taurus SHOs, watch out! The General did genuine sport sedans like nobody else.
LOVE it. I’ve seen one of these in my lifetime.. a battered white one headed towards B’ham on Hwy 78 in Adamsville. I’m not looking forward to the upcoming hater posts.
Not real crazy about the solid grille but the rest of the package appeals to me. They are a little more distinguishable than the Cutlass Ciera GTs I’ve seen.
I always thought the later Celebrity rear styling/taillight setup was sharp anyway.
I have a black celebrity just like the one pictured above. We nicknamed it “the Bat Mobile”. I wasn’t aware of how rare it has become. Thanks for sharing.
What would be really fun is one with the 2.8 replaced by one of the larger more powerful 60 degree V6s that would fit. The VRs are so rare I had almost become convinced they were an urban legend.
At least I’ve SEEN the VRs AWD brother the Pontiac 6000 STE.
When I had a Celebrity sedan I fantasized about chopping the rear passenger compartment out and making a two door two passenger vehicle out of it. Much more luggage room that a Fiero… LOL.
Dan, since you speak so often of replacing engines with something else, you have obviously never done it! Try it once and you’ll never do it again. Ca-ching!
Sorry so many vehicles that would have been improved by swaps. Plus I spent too much time as a kid reading Hot Rod Magazine. They’d tell their readers what they really needed in their GM G-body was a 454… 😛
I guess in my fantasy world all M-body Chryslers would have come with 360s (the 318 had a gas guzzler penalty at the end, why not just go with the 360 n say “The hell with it.”) there would be no V6 B-bodys in my world, no pre-2005 w-bodys with anything less than 3800, and no 4cyl family cars with less than 200hp to slowly suck the soul out of family men.
@EdDan: Don’t let anyone discourage you from sharing your ideas. I’ve posted this before, and will probably post again, changing out an engine is a PITA. (This is why I always advocate for more power when making a switch.)
Your postings about swapping out these motors are the logical beginnings of doing just such a swap. You’ll have to try it sometime to see what folks mean.
But in the meantime, keep dreaming. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one.
> turn a garden-variety Eurosport into a genuine Testarossa-killer.
A mid-80s GM sedan that’s wrong-wheel drive with 130hp that can goe toe-to-toe with a contemporary Ferrari? Is this another whimsical article like the Australian Torino one?
I looked a bit online and, as far as I can tell, the VR didn’t have a special engine.
I think you’re seeing thru the BS, BOC 🙂
“…Testarossa-killer. Or at least an M5 killer” )r Camry V6 killer… or Accord Killer… or… actually, it can barely kill or even outran a cockroach, and cockroaches are far more reliable, so it can’t even kill a cockroach. Cars like this is what drives GM (and the whole big three) to bankruptcy.
I read something positive about Ford in some other news site the other day, and there were comments like “Go Ford! Buy American! The sneaky Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor!” and such. Remember that the big three gives us complete piece of shit like this when they “rule” the American market. Their complete disdain and lack of good will toward their customers are what makes them suffer in the latter days, while the Japanese won our hearts with good cars. Funny then, that in their minds it’s as if the Japanese won the car markets unfairly, and the big three were the hero fighting for American causes and lost. Please! They just reap what they sow, as an arrogant corporation concerned only with maximizing profits, and cares little for their customers. Captain America they ain’t.
…sorry for the rant… ;D
Reminds me of the late ’70s Aspen R/T. Stripes, spoilers, alloys – and a Slant Six. Well, at least they looked cooler, and you could get a 318 as an option.
Or a 360, which actually made these pretty quick. IIRC, a 360 Volare or Aspen was actually faster than a contemporary smog/CAFE-strangled Corvette.
I remember the late 70’s Volare Road Runner and Aspen R/T. I lusted after those cars when new because they DID look neat with the styled wheels and Goodyear Polyglass RWL’s. Of course, in the mid-late ’70’s I was in California and that meant top dog was 318 with Torqueflite. A buddy of mine had a ’77 R/T . . . and it could chirp the tires, but the lean-burn 318 would quickly run out of breath. The 49 staters were lucky in that they had a 360 4-bbl option with a 4-speed. Ditto mid-late ’70s California on F-bodies. No sticks. 350 LM-1 for Camaros, from ’77 through ’79 Trans Ams with Olds 403s. Malaise indeed for California. Even Corvettes. L48 only and then the ultimate insult – 4bbl 305’s for California in ’80 and ’81.
No 360 ever came with a 4-speed in any year of these, that was six or 318 only. 360s were all automatic.
Sure about that? I recall seeing a Motor Trend article in ’78 with Petty Replicar Aspens that had the 360 4 bbl with four speed . .
That was a decade earlier, too. Times had changed, a lot actually, by 1987. The Malaise Era was long over, except at GM.
A girl I dated in high school had an 76 or 77 Volare Road Runner, not unlike the one in the pix. Our relationship was rather short and I only got to drive a couple of times. It wasn’t bad for the times, but several years later, there would be Turbo Omnis! Who would have imagined it?
Didn’t the first gen Taurus SHO’s have something like 220 hp? If that’s the case, how could the Chevys possibly have kept up?
Edit: I guess my sarcasm radar was malfunctioning whilst reading the article.
Sorry, count me among the haters…and I’m a Chevy guy. Have been since the age of ten, a long time ago.
But Taurus was a vastly superior car from handling to craftsmanship. Every one I’d driven from a variety of years felt more solid, rode and steered better than comparable GM FWD A-bodies.
I owned a ’93 SHO a few years ago. How it came into my possession is too long and convoluted a story to get into here. It was a BEE-OTCH!! to work on…but it drove as well as any of the Cadillac DTS’s I’d rented during my 3 1/2 years in advertising.
GM finally has its act together in this segment, my issue is that these 80’s Celebrities should have been put together more like the B-bodies than the X-bodies from which this generation sprang.
No offense taken. The Taurus with Vulcan V6 was probably a better vehicle and the V6 SHOs were incredible machines. Just look at the engine….mmm.
I think I remember a beverage spraying out of my nose the first time I heard the term “Celebrity Eurosport.” My reaction remains pretty much the same today. Maybe VR stood for Very Rudimentary.
These things were, to me, they height of GM arrogance. “We will call it Eurosport because our customers are too impossibly stupid to understand that the car is nothing but a regular Celebrity with black trim.” Either that, or they existed in such an echo chamber that they really thought that this car was sporty. I am not sure which is worse.
“Rich Corinthian Swaybars” – Jack Baruth
Marketing departments convinced consumers what they really wanted was an American car with European “flavor.”
I could spend weeks (or a lifetime) rebutting JB’s many assertions, including just about everything in his Avoidable Contact series.
A considerable portion of Americans have always liked sportiness in their cars, going back to the dawn of the automobile. And the fifties and sixties really brought that home, in a major way. Sure, not every buyer of a Chevy SS really was a sporty driver, but it was a key part of the market, and they sold, as well offering true enthusiasts the components to make the cars perform.
The seventies malaise obviously put a crimp in US performance cars, and the Europeans picked up the momentum, which was of course part of a larger shift to import cars.
But by the early eighties, sportiness was very much in demand again, and if GM had built the proper sporty cars to reflect that demand, they might have done much better. Other companies did that, and their image was not nearly as damaged as GM: think Ford in the eighties: Turbo Coupes, SVO, Mustang 5.0, and most of all, in the sedan arena, the Taurus SHO> Very credible indeed. Unlike almost all of GM’s ridiculously half-heated efforts.
The idea that Detroit “convinced” consumers that they didn’t want Broughams is pretty ridiculous. As usual, GM was behind the curve: the sporty sedan market was heating up, and this is what they showed up with.
Sure, just like in the sixties, many Eurosport buyers might have been just as happy with a regular Celebrity; or would they? Like almost all car buyers, they were looking to make a point with their purchase, and that was what was in. Obviously, very few genuine enthusiasts bought Eurosports; why would they? But the ratio for the SHO was undoubtedly very different indeed. It’s all about the product.
Don’t get me wrong; JB is one of the finest writers of fiction out there….
You cant compare cars like the Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, SVO Mustangs and the 5.0 litre to the Celebrity Eurosport VR. GM also did dable into the interesting performance sedans too, before there was an SHO there was a 6000 STE which was praised by many of the magazines at the time, even he Century T-type and Ciera GTs were above average for the time. Not to mention cars like the Turbo Regals and Riviera T-types too.
The VR is like the lowest common denominator of the A-body, its a Euro K-mart body kit on a the bread and butter Chevy sedan.
Granted that some of GM’s other efforts were substantially better in certain regards than the Eurosport, although most of the ones you mentioned weren’t exactly raging successes, the 6000STE being the exception. But I was specifically comparing Chevrolet with Ford, and in that comparison during the eighties, Ford has it won hands down, IMHO.
But neither was the SHO, it was very cool, but it was token of Taurus production, the fact that there was not automatic available on the SHO until the 90’s always kinda hurt it, you could say the same for the T-bird Turbo Coupes and following superchared Super Coupe, which were rare even when new,
Cars like the VR Celebrity are like the 80’s equivalent of Broughaming, where in the 70’s fake luxury touches were added to run of the mill cars, in the 80’s fake sporty touches were added to the same run of the mill cars to create a whiff of sporty-ness, I like to call it “TURBO”
Turbo: Son of Brougham?
Gotta agree here. Chevy had a sporty option for most of it’s cars at the time, except for the Caprice. Sprint turbo, Beretta GT/GTZ/Z26, Cavalier RS/Z24, Corsica LTZ, Monte Carlo SS…. it would make sense to make a de-chromed version of the Celebrity. My ’89 Euro had all the back trim, black trimmed dash, wrapped steering wheel, and rallye wheels… A/C & V6 Automatic for a sticker price of $12,800. Cheap indeed… but it got you a reliable (and economical) car that kept up in traffic just fine and didn’t look all that bad doing it.
educatordan: I don’t think JB said that anywhere in his article. American marketing departments had been convincing customers that they wanted soft, pillow-tufted seats and a good ride. Those were not `fake’ luxury items in any sense of the term. However, blackout plastic trim and vinyl seats just to give the lousy vibe of an older BMW interior *is* faking it, but marketing departments never actually managed to convince anyone did they? 🙂
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/02/avoidable-contact-rich-corinthian-swaybars/
I was paraphrasing and that was what I got out of the article. He did however hold the Celebrity Eurosport up as a prime example.
As a regular reader of Avoidable Contact, I agree. But you sorta created a straw man for Paul 😉 Cheers!
Jack and Paul go together like peanut butter and pickles, sardines and chocolate sauce, beer and ice cream
I never liked the term “Eurosport”. It smacks of focus groups and condescension.
I owned an ’89 Eurosport. While the regular sedan and wagon had the 4-speed auto box by then, the Euro still had the older 3 speeds, which made them a bit quicker (read: less laggy) both off the line and in the passing lane. Also, it had uprated springs and brakes. I can tell you my car did handle (slightly) better than the base CL model, but the ride quality suffered. The original mid-80’s VR’s had the H.O. carburated 2.8, which was good for something like 145hp. That option only lasted a year or two. I only ever remember seeing a couple of those cars back then.
The carburated 2.8 HO was rated at 135hp. When it got FI in 1987, it dropped to 130 hp. In 1988 it crept back up to 135 hp.
My ex sister in law had one of these. If ever there were a recommendation not to buy, that would be it.
Hate to pile on Paul but the 2.8 is one of those deal killers for me. I understand that GM had a fair to middlin 3.8 that was available when this came out. I’ve got a 4.3 that might have been a little heavy but would still have been an improvement and it pretty strong.
If I see one of these for sale….. I think I’ll pass.
Celebrity AMG…..
I wonder if when this was rolled out into the styling studio the Pontiac guys had an issue with Chevy cribbing the monochromeness of Boneville SSE.
I owned a 1986 eurosport. I liked the car, but it had a bad case of tinworm. t started rusting within a few weeks after I bought it. And never quit until I totaled it.
I had an ’88 Eurosport Celebrity wagon. It had the four-speed automatic, and the 135hp 2.8 V-6. Yes, Paul – I like your tongue-in-cheek article, but my Celebrity (and I also had a ’90 wagon with the 3.1 V-6 – very torquey – ) both wagons were good vehicles for their intended purpose. My kids were small at the time; I was living/stationed in Cleveland and those cars pulled beautifully through the snow. I could get up to 30mpg in the 2.8 V-6 ’88 wagon on the highway at 65-70mph speeds. The ’90 would get about 25-27mpg. “Eurosport” yes, the moniker was kind of a joke, but they did look nice and were very durable vehicles. I remember seeing a VR new in 1987 back in Santa Rosa (California) – in fact two; one was black and one was red. I did like the ground effects and the blanked out grillework. I didn’t necessarily think it was a “lame euro-contender”, but I took it for what it was – a graphic-contemporary version of a bread and butter FWD A body GM sedan.
I was and am a fan of the “A” bodies, but the later fuel injected versions . . .
A Taurus SHO cost lest than a comparably-equipped Eurosport VR. It wasn’t a “lame contender”.
SHO less than the VR?
Neither one of those went out of the dealer’s lot without a heavy heavy discount on them…as in..can’t give them away discount.
I doubt there was one VR that sold for MSRP in the country, and doubt many were loaded either.
During the late 80s GM actually did build a car that ONLY a Ferrari could catch GM UK sent a Vauxhall Carlton to Lotus and said make it go. Lotus bored a Senator engine to 3.6L fitted twin turbos and imported the same transmission and rear axle the groupA Holden used and sent it back. Due to UK govt pressure the Vauxhall Lotus Carlton Elite was speed limited to around 170mph. Taurus shit heap option dont make me laugh a stock standard Falcon or Commodore would blow the doors off it. Nothing not a Corvette or anything from the US or Europe could catch GMs 4door rocketship except for the Ferrari Tesstarossa Chevy Celebrity oh please not even in the hunt.
I always thought that the Eurosports were GMs way of saying “This is what we build, you will like it and you will buy it”.
I liked the Celebrity but like Paul mentioned above Ford and even Chrysler were years ahead of GM by the late 80s.
The nice thing about the Celeb is that a Caddy 4.9 can be made to fit in the engine bay fairly easily. That would be a Eurosport!
200hp and 275 lb ft of torque FTW!
I understand that the Caddy swap can be done but it’s far from a drop in and there are some accessory location issues — like there is no place for an A/C compressor.
I wonder if Adrian Newey had anything to do with that rear diffuser?
When these came on the market my main driver was a V8 4-speed Monza 2+2, and my playtoys were various V8 finned Chryslers and Plymouths. I did test-drive one, and wasn’t highly impressed.
Wow, not hard to tell how the author feels about GM.
The sporty A-bodies where pretty competative when they were out. You can’t compare the SHO to the Eurosport, the SHO was a Grand Prix STE rival, where you could get a turbo 3.1 or later the Twin Cam 3.4
To make some corrections….the 3 speed auto was the “standard” transmission all years, while the 4 speed auto was the optional transmission.
The the HO 2.8 went fuel injection in 85, a lower performance 2.8 with a carb was still available.
The 3.1 started in 88 with 6000 STE’s with AWD only..then standard in 89 6000 STE’s and later was phased in mid year to replace the 2.8 in all automatic transmission applications, 89 5 speeds still lived with the 2.8
My article is about the Celebrity Eurosport VR, not GM. Have you checked out my GM’s Greatest Hits Series?
“But with its giant-killing 130hp 2.8 V6 and three-speed automatic” Yeah baby!
The trouble with hopping up these fwd GM cars is the torque-steer, which is truly horrendous. Almost any fwd platform beats GM’s offerings, unless you drive in a very relaxed manner. If I have to get somewhere in a hurry, I prefer to take the F150. The ’98 Lesabre is downright scary when rushed, though it’s pleasant enough otherwise. Yes, I say the Ford pickup handles better than the GM family car. Hell, for that matter so does my avatar!
@Btrig
Torque steer is/was an issue with all FWD cars of the era.
The car in my avatar would try to rip your hands off at 14psi on Drag Radials with or without equal shafts.
I kind of have to laugh at torque-steer issues only because I’ve driven lots of Iron Duke equipped FWD A-bodies.
It’s probably a valid comment though as I let a ragged out ’86ish GrandAm with the Quad 4 get away from me — I didn’t think it was possible to lose control of a FWD car until then.
Seeing this made me realize I had snapped some photos of a Celebrity Eurosport (not sure what year, late 80s) that I forgot to post to the CC Cohort. They are there now (blurry but there). These are really quite rare now, even without a VR package!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mistergreen/7271272132/in/pool-1648121@N23/
I like the photos of the Eurosport in the parking garage, they have a Miami Vice vibe to them.
Nice car. I like the dash layout of these cars. Finding one with the digital tach is even tougher: they mount in place of the auto-trans indicator directly over the steering column. Here’s a shot of two (from Cardomain).
The thing that is the strongest argument against GM are the arguments for GM. The GM apologists remind me of a woman in an abusive relationship.
The Celebrity was a bread and butter family line of cars, with Eurosport and VR variant adding a little (cynical) pizzazz to the series. Back in that time period, they were never on my radar, I paid little attention to them. When the first Eurosports were released, I thought, oh this is a bit of cynical marketing; but folks snapped them up.
Chevy, being low man on the GM totem pole, was never going to get a 6000 STE killer, or a SHO killer, that wasn’t in the plan. Whoever approved the VR variant, must have been seeing something else none of us were seeing at the time. I hope they’ve gotten help by now.
Of course, another entry in the annals of cynical marketing was the Toyota Camry “American Edition”. 4 banger, plastic wheel covers, the de riguer 90’s spoiler, and usually the ‘gold’ package. Kind of like the Celebrity Eurosport’s evil doppelganger.
What’s even more cynical is Ford’s attempt at making a small Mercury to rope in a younger clientele (and the real reason why I came to post here today) the 1991 Capri Convertible.
That was some good marketing, there folks. My vitriol will follow in that posting.
I would argue that the Camry “American” proved that there will always be a market for the Lexus variant of the Camry… 😛
I owned a Celebrity with the infamous Quad-4 motor… needless to say, after all the break-downs, I didn’t buy another Chevy for over 20 years…
They never put the Quad 4 into the Celebrity, or any A body for that matter. 2.2, 2.5, 2.8, 3.0, 3.1, 3.3, 3.8 and 4.3 diesel
My second car was a ’92 Lumina Z34, which had the Dual Twin Cam V6. I was rather proud of its 200 horsepower (210 with a manual transmission). It was a decent attempt at an SHO fighter, but would blow a head gasket at the slightest hint of overheating. That’s what happened to mine at 160k miles. Sure looked cool, though!