Text and photos submitted by Victor Van Tress.
For today, one more car from my earlier days. This one, unlike the others, is no longer with me, but its memory is worth sharing.
I’ve already mentioned some of this in previous posts, when I talked about my long ownership of a Peugeot 305 and MGB. But the information is worth repeating to get you all into context.
The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) has had many categories for racing cars many years ago. One of the categories has been the Showroom Stock class, consisting of SSGT, SSA, SSB and SSC. The cars had to be absolutely as manufactured and no more than 4 years old. They had to have stock-size street tires and even pass emissions. Further, roll cages had to be a bolt-in version so as to not stiffen the chassis. In other words, Walter Mitty goes car racing.
Car manufacturers –who never miss a chance– took notice of this and offered money to race their cars. Usually $500, $250 and $100 for first, second, or third in class back in the 1980s, all the way to 2000. There was also money for National and Regional championships.
One of those manufacturers was Renault, which in Europe had been doing versions of this style of racing for many years. However, Renault knew the R5 was not going to be competitive against a Pinto or Vega. So they offered money to the highest finishing R5 in class. BOOM. Lots of people took advantage of this offer, as a driver only had to beat other R5s.
In my case. I had friends who entered R5s. However, at the time, I worked at a Chevrolet dealer and was not going to buy a Renault. Enter, at this point of the story, a very high mileage two year old 1977 Chevy Chevette.
Used cars wore out quicker back then, but this Chevette had been towed behind a motorhome for 90,000 miles and was really in pretty good shape. It came with the 1600cc 4-cyl. engine and 4-speed manual. I then added a roll cage, racing seat belts, a fire bottle, and away I went.
As it turned out, the car was very competitive against the R5. The R5 would come off the corner better, but the Chevette would enter corners better and had slightly more top end speed (an important feature a Riverside Raceway). At the end of the year, we actually tied for 1st place in what we called SSD. The next year, I got a ’79 SSA Mustang Cobra V8 (with all of 135hp back then). It didn’t win against 280ZXs, Turbo Mustangs, and RX7s, but at least we had a potential for profit and got to write-off our expenses. (That Mustang probably deserves its own story, too).
After 1979 and 1980 seasons, I sold the Chevette to a friend of mine who eventually moved to Lake Tahoe. He eventually sent me a photo of the car’s speedometer pointing at eighty miles an hour. In that photo, the odometer was rolling over to 00,000 for a second time. Over 200,000 miles by then.
Related CC reading:
Vauxhall Chevette HSR – The Chevette Goes Racing, Quite Successfully
Curbside Classic: 1980 Chevette Scooter – A New Category Of Vehicle
Very cool.
I wasn’t paying attention to racing much in those days, and don’t remember a thing about this—and interesting tale.
I do remember several friends having Chevette as “their first new car”—-and eventually rolling up many years of low-cost miles. I suppose Corvair:Chevy II = Vega:Chevette in a certain way.
Here’s a link to Dave Wolins book on Showroom Stock and other racing adventures.
https://us.amazon.com/stores/Dave-Wolin/author/B0BWNZS7ZX?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
As a two-season SSC driver (1979-1980) in San Francisco Region, I’m quite sure we competed against some of the same folks, but I don’t remember you or any Chevettes up here. But SSD, I love it. We had a few R5’s and Pinto’s but SSC pretty quickly converged on Rabbit, Fiesta, and Colt in 1979, with a few X1/9’s and Gremlins becoming very quick in 1980. There are a couple of photo’s of my own Fiesta about a quarter of the way into my COAL https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/my-cars-of-a-lifetime-43-years-of-mostly-mundane-motoring/
While I ran regionals in 1980, I think I only ran Riverside and Holtville. By 1981 we had the SSA Mustang and my partner quickly rolled it over at Willow first time out. But fear not, I got it pounded back together and we raced that until the Renault Cup in 1983 through 1985. Then the Peugeot 505 Turbo where I got two National Championships. Who knew how fast a Peugeot really was.
Most a the “Chevettes” I knew of got “weezy” just going up a hill
I have PTSD reading this …
After my brother totaled mom’s ’65 Dodge Dart sedan in early 1979, she got a 1978 Chevette with 1.8L auto and A/C. That’s was the worst car she ever had–it was a slug. What I remember best is that how anemic it was from a standing start, and during the summer I discovered that when I started when the light turned green, as soon as I started rolling I would turn the A/C off and it was like the turbo boost flipped on–it wasn’t like Mad Max turning on the N2O, but it was a noticeable jolt, from worm to turtle. The automatic transmission was also prone to slipping, especially when doing a sharp 90 R turn. But mom was horrible at noticing things so long as it started and took her to the hospital and back, that car could take some serious neglect and abuse. In 1984 she got a new ’85 Chrysler New Yorker. She wouldn’t let me drive it, but I preferred to borrow dad’s ’75 Toyota Hi-Lux 5 sp manual and the Corolla engine, now that was a quick vehicle!
I trust that on the track you kept the A/C off….
To paraphrase a famous saying about the other ‘Vette, all Chevettes are non-a/c and manual. The rest are just mistakes.
Nice to see some love for this generally hated and maligned economy champ .
-Nate