I’ve had a love/hate relationship with GM products over the years…and I can’t remember any of them being less than polarizing. They’ve either been really good, or would nickle-and-dime me to death. This car is one of the former, thankfully.
With the ’85 S10 not really filling the bill for weekly 8-hour round highway trips, the hunt was on for another vehicle. I wasn’t terribly picky, but my father’s business partner had a friend who was selling her old car, cheap. It was a GM product, which met my father’s approval, and he handled the purchase while I was away working.
It was an ’87 Beretta – a car I knew nothing about. It wasn’t a GT, but did have the fancy gauge cluster, an automatic transmission, and – thankfully, a 2.8 Multiport V6. It was a nice shade of metallic burgundy with silver below the body strip, and burgundy inside as well.
All pictures are of the actual car.
This car struck me as a change from “traditional” GM, in that a lot of the interior fixtures weren’t like a lot of other cars they were making at the time. The column and switches were different to most other GM products I had seen, with the cruise buttons on the wheel. The inside of the car was a lot nicer in my opinion than a Cavalier or Celebrity, with the controls falling close to hand, and the heater controls had round dials if I remember correctly. The seats were decently comfortable, too, with some lumbar support. The fit and finish could have been better – the whole dash understructure was made of brittle plastic, and as a result, the radio and heater unit fell out at one point. The dash pad didn’t crack – but it did lift around the defroster vent. It didn’t have much of a cup holder to speak of, either – I think there was a fold out thing under the red cap at the front of the centre console, but it was shallow and didn’t really hold the cup. Looking at the dash above also brings back a memory – a memory of putting cassettes on the traylike section on the right, and having said cassettes slide right over and out the window on a sharp left turn. But really, these are trivial things. How did the car serve me?
Check out the hubcaps on the Blazer!
I got the car in early 1999, and proceeded to use it every weekend to drive home from Halifax on Fridays, and back on Sundays – about 8 1/2 hours total – 800 kilometers. The 2.8 was lively, and the 3 speed shifted well. It made a nice burble. It handled OK, and was good in the snow. I really liked the look of the car too – sporty but not too rounded. I really only had one major gripe with the car. The seatbelt was in the door, and would rub against my neck.
A very late spring snowfall, most likely May as I had my truck out of winter storage.
The car gave me no issues while I commuted for the work term. After the work term ended in May of 1999, I had enough credits to graduate college with a diploma in business technology with a focus on computers. I then put applications out, and did odd jobs to fill in. Finally, an offer came from a data processing company for a mainframe operator, back in Halifax. Unfortunately, it seemed the car had other ideas. It had developed a knock, with only 117, 000 KM – only broken in. Oil pressure seemed fine, but to be safe, we had Dad’s new mechanic check it out. He diagnosed it as having a failed crank thrust bearing washer, and you could see the crank pulley moving in and out as it was knocking. I was now in need of another car, and the same uncle that had sold me the S10 now had another car for sale. I bought it. And it was the worst car I have ever owned.
My brother, testing a spudgun we made. A future COAL is behind the Beretta…can you guess what it is?
I gave the car to my brother, pictured above. As you can see in the picture, this is two years after I gave it to him. The knock never got any worse, nor did it give him any major trouble. The car finally got so rusty a few years later it wasn’t fit to drive, and it was sold for parts. As a side note, I’d gotten a digital camera for graduating university – so there’ll be a lot more pictures from here on in.
My first guess is the second generation Ford Tempo or Mercury Topaz.
Enjoying your series Marc. Curious to see if you remain faithful to GM and Chevrolet in future COALs. 🙂
I’ll guess that white car as a 90s Olds Cutlass Ciera.
You got it! I’ve had a few more GM products…They were all over the map. The Ciera above wasn’t a good one.
I remember these. The BMW Dealer that my mom used was conjoined to a Chevy dealer, and in the mid-90s (up to late 97) she still dealer serviced her 1981 320i (which she had bought new). At some point she was (stupidly) knocked down to the second or third tier of loaner customers and was frequently given Berettas or Corsica’s as a loaner. I hated the seatbelt and it’s backseat entry.
I don’t know why they did that. One of the reasons for giving new cars of your preferred brand is to dazzle you with them and maybe convince you to upgrade. Compared to a (somewhat worn) 1981 BMW 320i, a Corsica is not an upgrade, even if it did have power windows.
They probably figured that your mom wasn’t ever going to buy another new BMW, so why tantalize her.
Perhaps they did that to make you realize how you had it with the car you had?
A friend of mine had one in the same color scheme as this article’s car.
He bought it from his Aunt, who called it “The Barfetta”, for all of $400.00!
The rear muffler/resonator had a small hole it it; gave off a delightful growl when the V6 engine was stomped hard. It never got louder the 4 years he owned it.
He replaced the worn out shocks/struts with KYB units, added some Michelin X tires to it, religiously doused it with fuel injection cleaner. It drove better than you would believe after these additions.
Always reliable, typically excellent GM HVAC, it outlasted several other much more expensive “Sports Cars” that he purchased to replace the “Barfetta” with.
At least one other person liked and admired it. It was stolen when parked at the curb of his New Orleans home. Never seen again.
My father had about 3 or 4 Corsicas when he was selling real estate. ALL had a 6 cylinder engine with automatic transmission, and he bought them because they were so reliable. Yeah, the interior on 1 or 2 of them slowly disintegrated even under my father’s gentle care. All developed that curling at the corners dash pad….syndrome? And the cup holder was pretty useless.
In my mind, the Beretta and Corsica were typical GM, at least in the 80-90s time period in that the mechanics were nearly bulletproof but the interior slowly fell apart after about the 1st or 2nd year.
“… the whole dash understructure was made of brittle plastic, and as a result, the radio and heater unit fell out at one point.”
“He diagnosed it as having a failed crank thrust bearing washer, and you could see the crank pulley moving in and out as it was knocking.”
“I gave the car to my brother…The knock never got any worse, nor did it give him any major trouble. The car finally got so rusty a few[several] years later it wasn’t fit to drive, and it was sold for parts.”
I think it was somewhere around this generation of GM that I first heard the maxim that
“GM cars run badly longer than most cars run at all”
Ya can’t kill em.
You’ve hit upon a major difference between American and European cars. The American car may crumble to pieces around you but chances are it will still get you where you need to go.The European car, on the other hand, will probably hold together much longer but it might unexpectedly up and quit, leaving you stranded in some inconvenient location. 🙂
I’ve owned almost strictly European cars and I disagree. They hold together better, oh hell yes. They require repair much more frequently for “maintainence” parts that no Toyota owner would ever think would need replacements. Yes.
But In 15 years of owning old high mileage MB products only twice did I need to tow them to the dealer (and one of those was a catastrophic failure of the front pax ball joint ffs). They reliably save you the tow fare so that you can hand it directly to the dealer.
I’ve got that beat. In 14 years and over 200K miles, my Marquis never needed to be introduced to the tow truck. For the rare failures (two that I can count), it always managed to limp home so we could DIY it.
That’s right. My Audi still drove on totally shot suspension arms being held in place by the bolts
Fox body mustang, notch back
My friend had an identical Beretta but with the 4 cyl. It was dangerously slow. It was a rather awful car interior wise. It lost color and dash sort of peeled up and seats showed abnoal wear. Never cared for style. Seemed pointless vs a celebrity or ciera which was nicer.
I owned its Corsica clone. An ’88 stripper special with the 4-cyl and a 5-speed. Had plenty of room and got 34 MPG on the highway. It was quite peppy for what it was.
This was one of the early distributorless GM engines. Achilles’ heel was a thrust bearing that required TWO rebuilds – fortunately, both under warranty – in the three years and 84,000 miles that we owned it. The engine was starting to make noise again when we traded it on an older S-10 Blazer.
I’ve complained many times about the loosey-goosey feeling on GM FWD-based platforms up to about ten years ago. But the Corsica/Beretta were exceptions to that rule. Enjoyable ride.
I owned an ’87 GT in black with a similar maroon-auto shifter interior [maybe a little fancier in GT trim with power windows/locks/cruise etc etc [but basically the same layout]]. It looked very shark like!
Other than the notorious GM late 80s paint issues the car was reliable as hell, good to look at, and fun to drive. In the first 6 months I owned it, no one else seemed to have a GT outfitted quite like mine and I would get a lot of admiring looks esp at stoplights! It felt really good!
Had a car like it.
It was awful.
Pretty attractive, but the interior just fell completely apart. The plastic gave off some kind of an oily gas that smeared the inside of the windshield. The fabric on the seats were like some kind of fuzzy plastic that was also used for soft sunglasses cases. The headliner ended up on your head. The grille on the front of the car – warped.
A cheesy cheap mess – but attractive when new.