Some folks sure seem to love their Chevettes. When I ran across this ’86 I thought I’d walked into a wormhole. The fact that it’s sporting the highly desirable and rare Sport appearance package really adds to its charisma. Wait till you see the interior.
Wow! Might as well be sitting on the dealer’s lot still. Or maybe that’s what happened; it got lost in the bowels of a storage lot. Except it would have had to be covered.
The grain on those black stripes are a nice touch.
Looks like there’s a bit of wax build-up on those black stripes. Or? Someone’s picked their car for the next thirty years.
I hit a car show at the end of summer that featured a Chevette or all things. It was in quite nice shape too but not as desirable as that two “Sport” model.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveseven/6244658695/
You decry the Chevette as a car not to be preserved. ANY vehicle with proper maintenance will last a lifetime. My wife had a new 1981 2 door Chevette before we were married. The worst thing I did was trade it in for a Cavalier that saw 27 trips to the dealer the first year. I later owned 2 Chevettes and many times felt the snow brushing on the floorboards on my way to work on unplowed NH roads at 2 AM. They were reliable and compared to what else Chevrolet had for entry models, ie Citation, they were affordable.
Build quality- They put the “K” in Quality. Genuine UAW at it’s best.
I remember reading of one converted with a Forklift motor and the internal hidden decay spots near the rear struts was dismal. This may be the same vehicle-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolinick/sets/72157613532662724/
Call me crazy, but if I found a Chevette like this for sale under, say, $800, I’d buy it and happily drive it to work every day. These were great basic transportation.
WOW that Chevette is a dead ringer for one that was driven by a girl who was one year younger than me in college. She was 5 foot nothing (I’m 5’11”) was a (don’t ask me how I know) size 0 from the waist up but had a size 2 booty… her name was Charity… wait I’m sorry where were we? Oh yes, Chevette…
Thing was a POS in one area, the electrical system, I actually taught her how to plug and unplug the wiper motor cause otherwise the suckers would run anytime the ignition was on. If it started raining the poor girl had to plug in the wipers.
I see a few well cared for Vauxhall versions on Trademe for quite good money but even though Im very familier with Viva power trains Im not tempted. A good HC Viva the right model would be ok some of ours had Canadian spec heavier suspension and handle well.
Not only a “Sport” model, but a radio-delete one at that!
Good eye!
I had to go back up and look again.
This could be one of the cleanest, but there are a few of them out there, a few years ago there a was a real clean 1977 Chevette Woody on ebay, California car from the estate of a little old lady(of course) it was in near showroom condition with 56K on the clock.
There also was a super clean 1978 Chevette Sandpiper(yellow on yellow special edtion with a stripe down the side) on ebay a while back to, those were 2 of the cleanest ones I had ever seen.
Of course I think GM has Chevette numero uno at the Heratige Center, so that might be the cleanest one of them all.
Does the engine sound that good that the radio delete option would be a good idea?
That is an attractive car, all things considered.
I remember how ubiquitous the Chevette was at the time, but my parents had already decided on a ’77 Suburban and some other un-named black Chevrolet sedan that was traded for a Celebrity wagon that served reliably for many years. I have zero experience with the ‘vette aside from seeing quite a few of them moving under their own power in the next lane.
I was kind of under the impression that the Chevette was made out of compressed rust.
They all disappeared from my heavily salted corner of the world years ago.
But Saturns, man those plastic body panels are still going.
Here in the UK, Chevettes do not have the ‘loser car’ stigma that they do in the US. Indeed, they are developing into quite the craze for young kids, because they are RWD and have a small (and thus low insurance) engine. The fact that there was a ‘hot’ version helps too.
Cost wise, although there was an ‘E’ which was the equivalent of the Scooter, or any other hairshirt-mobile, the majority were quite nicely trimmed, and closer to an Opel or Isuzu than their American namesake. In the UK, there is also a 2 door saloon that is I think a UK only body style, as its not the ‘fastback’ saloon that most markets have. One of the reasons that these can be found in quite good shape in spite of their Fiat-like tendency to rust is that they were priced and sized to appeal to pensioners who had to hand in their company car and wanted something small to last them til they stopped driving. Hence, its quite easy to find very nice low mileage examples of the higher trim levels.
Its perhaps endemic of the problems at GM that they had a ‘world car’ but used different body shells, engines, interiors and just about everything else in each market. This inefficient engineering was later copied by Chrysler with the Horizon, and Ford with the Escort. Aside from being able to sell the cars to punters as ‘european’, there can’t have been any cost savings in this approach.
The 2 door saloon was the basic Opel version, and then they added a 2 door wagon, the fastback coupe, and eventually the hatch ( using parts sent from England I think).I had the loan of a wagon for a day or two when my car was in for repair, and the only trouble was the lack of legroom for rear seat passengers.
I don’t get why it lasted so long on the same dealer floor as the Cavalier – and the NUMMI Nova by ’86. Who was still buying this car by then?
Dominos.
People who were really cheap. Or not interested in keeping this car as nothing more than a liability, in the economic sense of the word.
I noted this in another post, I thought about one of these as a DD as I worked in a rough part of town at that time and didn’t want to ruin a nice car.
A guy I worked with back then had one as a commuter module, as he had a 70 mile round trip every day. He was the company comptroller, and only bought cars for their numbers. Low insurance, good gas mileage and low cost of entry, all gave him a stiffy, I swear…
Hey! I resemble that remark…
I’ve always loved cars. Loved learning to work on them. As a little kid, loved the annual model change, and loved learning to find the evolutionary steps between models five or so years apart that had nothing in common.
But…what I, as a realities-constrained grownup choose…is a small Toy Yoda. Bland; reliable; zero motoring pleasure, aside from just getting where you’re going, dry and comfortable.
Why that choice? No surprises. Surprises, as you get older, are less and less fun.
“Surprises, as you get older, are less and less fun.”
SIng it, brother. 🙂 I love my boring weekends today more than (most of) the “fun” ones in college.
October 2018: a competitor emerges: https://annarbor.craigslist.org/cto/d/1985-chevette-extremely-low/6670399491.html