We all have certain items that we appreciate for no rational reason – for me, one such example would be wood-paneled family rooms. Though I’ve never lived in a house with such a feature, I’ve always found wood-paneling to be relaxing and comforting – even if the “wood” isn’t quite real.
So maybe I would have been the target market for Chevrolet’s “estate equipment package” that debuted on Celebrity wagons for 1985.
Chevrolet added the FWD Celebrity its lineup for 1982, though its first two years included only 2- and 4-door sedans, as Chevy’s mid-size wagon offering remained the RWD Malibu through 1983. Once Malibu production ended, a wagon joined the Celebrity lineup. Wood-paneling enthusiasts must have despaired, however, because Chevy provided no “estate package” for 1984 Celebrity wagons. If there was such a group of enthusiasts, they must have made their collective voice heard, for just such a package premiered for 1985. This package included the “simulated wood-grain exterior applique,” special wheel opening moldings, and badges on the front doors that read Celebrity Estate.
It’s unclear how many estate packages found their way to customers, but they were always a rather unusual sight. Still, Chevrolet offered the package through the 1987 model year.
Although I’ve readily professed my soft spot for wood paneling, I probably wouldn’t have paid $325 (that’s $850 in 2021 dollars) for the privilege of adding such trim to a Celebrity. But I sure would like to find one of these that’s still on the road!
And since our featured ad hints at wood-paneled family rooms, we might as well enjoy an ad for actual wood paneling. In my opinion, this house is fit for a Celebrity.
In my memory the FWD A-body wagons were more common than the early Chrysler minivans; the latter’s fixed second-row windows were a deal breaker in a part of the country where the a/c take rate was relatively low. Usually without woodgrain, even as a Buick/Olds.
All A Body FWD wagon all did have roll down rear windows and flip out side rear quarter widows in the 3rd seat was ordered.
The G Body RWD Wagon, didn’t have roll down windows
But they only rolled down half way.
At least, you have the fresh air rushing in.
When I lived in Dallas, Texas, I borrowed 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon fastback for a few weeks while I figured out the melted/burnt spaghetti bowl of emission control in my Buick Skylard (misspell is intentional).
The Cutlass had a broken air conditioning system. It was at the height of scorching summer heat, I must add. The small flip-out rear quarter windows didn’t do much to move the stifting hot air out of the rear passenger seats. My friends were dying there and fought with each other to ride shotgun on the next rides. Eventually, they refused to ride in the rear seats until I got my Buick fixed and running.
B-list Celebrity at best, more likely C-list. Or D?
We had one of these. Or rather my parents did after I had already moved out. I believe it was in fact a 1985 and in that same vanilla color as the ad one but without the woodgrain. Or any other option that I could tell. The rear wheels would lock up under even moderate braking, I’m 99% sure it had the wheezy Iron Duke, and the vinyl bench seats in the L.A. summer were horrible.
Nowadays we may look back wistfully (and I’ll admit, the styling of the wagons especially has grown on me), but back then as a mid 1980s model it just seemed so…underwhelming. The Accord was available, the Camry existed, and Ford was about to release the Taurus.
After my Dad passed I think my Mom drove it for a few more years before finally buying a new Focus. Nobody missed or misses the Celebrity.
Interesting how fake wood came to signify luxury, even for consumers too young to remember the original woody wagons from decades past. I recall my dad derisively sneering at the wood-sided pretentions of our neighbors’ Town & Country wagon. To me, the plastic wood just meant they paid a lot.
My father also sneered at wood-paneled wagons. But inexplicably, he actually bought a wood-paneled Plymouth Voyager in 1984.
At first, dad set out looking for a sparsely-equipped Voyager SE. But somehow, he ultimately splurged for a mink brown Voyager LE with every conceivable option, including wood, and wire wheel covers. It was the most un-my-dad thing to buy. I’ve never figured out just what prompted him to make that purchase, but dad owned and liked the Voyager for 4 years.
I don’t like wooden bodies, they’re too short lived if you actually use the vehicle .
Own a 1920’s Chevrolet and you’ll soon grasp why so few survived .
The rear brakes locking up was like my 1981 Citation, a car that was not just incredibly cheaply made but unsafe .
I’m old so I like wood paneling inside a room , it makes it feel homier to some generations .
-Nate
The A body wagons were miserable to ride in. My parents had a century. It was super cramped and looked like a downsized 70s car. Even as a kid I could see GMs hubris and future failure because it was all out there for you to see in every part of the dated design. I was happy when it died. My dad replaced it with a taurus which amazing compared to the celebrity.
The only Celebrity I owned was an ’87 Eurosport, and it was a really goid car for us. Lots of room, great visibility (remember that?) and great MPG.
Ive never been in one of the wagons, but it looks like the visibility would be excellent. As far as woodgrain goes, I can only take it in small amounts. Dash trim and such. Details. Having the whole side covered in it just seems weird.
I like the the black-trimmed one in the ad.
The backbone of Celebrity [etc.] is the much discussed FWD X car. GM got their $ worth from the so called “flop” car line. All the way to 1996. Who knew at the time it would last 17 years? 😉
The X-Car could have been a sales smash hit and game changer, too bad .
-Nate
It was a game changer–it drove thousands away from GM for good.
Ralph ;
I’m still an older Chevy / GM Fanboi but that Citation and the Malibu’s at the time really put me off GM .
The wood paneling craze was a lot longer than twenty years ! it began in the 1930’s and for a while painted wood look dashboards were a thing too .
Bricks are nice, not safe in So. Cal. , I cringe every time I see yet another paited over brick or slate retaining wall or building .
Yellow brick look glorious .
I love tiles too .
-Nate
The paneled one in the brochure page appears to have a rear vent window, but these didn’t have a third row. I don’t believe the rear door windows went down very far, but that was better than the ’78 midsizes.
In the brochure excerpt above, it says seating available for up to 8 with the third seat. One car has the vent window, the other doesn’t. It may be that the vent window is indicative of the third row.
That’s right… Celebrity wagons came in a 2-seat or 3-seat (i.e., 8-passenger) configuration — the 3rd seat added about $190 to the price in 1985.
Swing-out rear quarter windows came standard with the 3-seat model, but the windows were also available as a $75 standalone option for the 2-seat wagons.
Nearly bought a new Eurosport wagon in 1985… seemed the best of a mediocre lot at the time (this was before the Taurus came out). The second of an eventual four kids was about to make his appearance, and our ’82 Accord sedan wasn’t going to cut it.
I had the Accord on our driveway with a “for sale” sign, and a neighbor who owned a Volvo dealership asked me what we were buying. I told him, and he asked why not a Volvo? Our eventual deal on a new 245 was only about $1500 above what the Celebrity deal would have been. We never looked back.
they were still good then. Ever since the nxt gen it’s been a dwn slide (just like MB, simultaneous).
This car was from the tail end of the “fake wood” suburbia fad. Think about it, you rode to the grocery store in your fake wood wagon. Your basement or den had fake wood paneling. Your tv was one of those console jobs surrounded by more fake wood. Your house on the outside had that ugly t1-11 pressed wood siding, Your kitchen counters were that ugly faux butcher block formica. Its hilaroius how pervasve fake wood became, and the fad lasted for over 20 years
The first color TV my family purchased in 1967 was a Zenith 23-inch console made of real walnut. What i don’t recall is if the walnut was solid or it was a veneer applied over cheaper wood.
Us also, but a 25 inch Zenith. I think it wasn’t real walnut, but when it conked out by 1971, my Father gave the set to a friend who was building a Heathkit TV and wanted the console to house the “guts” from Heathkit. Grandparents also had a Zenith console, a bit newer, had one of those “tuning fork” remote controls where a hammer hit a rod and the sound allowed you to change the channel, maybe turn on/off the TV (don’t remember about volume adjustment).
We replaced it with a smaller, 19″ Sylvania, which was OK until about 1975, when a capacitor expanded and shattered the circuit board it was attached to. Believe it or not, the repair shop pieced the circuit board together to get it running (not sure how much labor was back then, or replacement cost for new TV, but several hundred dollars more than likely) and I guess replacement boards were no longer available…anyhow, we had the Sylvania through the end of the 70’s when we got another 19″ set from JC Penney.
I took a high school electronics class in the mid-70’s, the 2nd year covered TV repair. We worked on Motorola “works in a drawer” sets…the instructor would put bugs on them and we’d have to troubleshoot the symptoms. We also learned to do convergence and other procedures. Not sure how they got around the hazardous nature of working on TVs, we being (well, teenagers)…but they didn’t offer computer classes (my Dad changed jobs and I ended up taking one the next year)…computers were still expensive in the mid 70’s so classes were still more college than high-school level for a few more years. Anyhow didn’t get more than a minor zap; actually got shocked more working under a sink with non-insulated trouble light helping my Dad with plumbing (maybe disposal, or dishwasher work).
Wood was a big deal in the 70s, my Mother’s house was built in 1974 and had wood paneling in not only the family room, but the kitchen/dinette area, and the garage…where the heat finally got to much of it, maybe should have coated it with mineral oil, but much of it is peeling off leaving wallboard without the thin walnut veneer.
My ’00 Golf hasn’t got a bit of wood either fake or real inside or outside. I don’t mind it inside, but don’t care for the contact paper woodgrain that used to be on most wagons like this (I guess until domestic wagons just about went extinct).
Never grew up with a dinoc sided wagon, or any wagon. But my parents house had wood paneling in the lower level. Only on one wall, the others were finished and painted drywall. It was your typical Mid Century Modern suburban home. Home was brick, and any wood trim, such as the fascia on the wide low eaves, was cedar, which resisted rot. it was of course painted. Looked all of one floor in front. but out back presented the walk out lower level. My exposure to the fake wood was limited to that found in my Parents Pontiacs. and that was only in the late 60s. before that was real wood, if only a veneer. Kitchen cabinets were real oak. but the breakfast bar counter did suffer the MCM fad of Laminate with articles of color and the odd boomerang shape. It held up well. I do like the look on the right car. I think it was getting out of hand in 68, when both Mercury and Chrysler offered it on specialty model convertibles.
To be fair, I seem to recall that lots of early Chrysler Corporation minivans were slathered in dinoc, and when the Chrysler Town & Country came along, it seemed like they were all “woodies” at least for the first couple years.
Count me as a fan of wood paneling, both on cars and in houses.
I like to watch those HGTV/DIY shows with my wife sometimes and they, of course, always rip out any wood paneling. One episode recently, they were looking at homes to choose which to renovate and one candidate was a older home with lots of real wood paneling (not the fake kind) in perfect condition. I was relieved that they didn’t pick that one, as maybe it was still bought by someone who left it in place. I much prefer the real wood paneling, not because the fake paneling looks so bad, just that it looks cheap.
Same with cars. I much prefer real wood, from the actual woody era. But fake wood has its charms. A Celebrity doesn’t have many charms, but it would have at least one if it had the (probably pretty rare) woodgrain option!
Another HGTV/DIY fix up is to paint over the exterior brick. The whole idea of brick is to never having to paint again.
My Dad’s house was lap board and I remember scrapping and painting that house every 5-6 years. I probably have 2 lbs of lead in my blood stream from inhaling the dust from the electric sander.
My house has late 60’s blonde brick and it will stay that way till they carry me feet first out of the house.
The whole trend of painting wood paneling and brick reminds me of a realtor we had several years ago who would immediately shriek “Oh, that just NEEDS to be painted!” whenever we’d walk into a house with brick or wood inside. Needless to say, that particular realtor didn’t impress us much – glad we didn’t use her services when we bought our house.
I knew a self – anointed ‘interior designer’ who did this. Took lovely, costly vintage wood paneling and trims and slathered it in paint.
She had no idea paint is popular because its cheap. Paint allows one to use cheap MDF doors and cabinets, and cheap foam moldings instead of classic (and costly) wood items.
Has anyone thought of putting fake brick on the sides of a car as a joke?
No, Chevy! It’s a joke. Don’t you dare put that on your trucks.
Maybe on the front to cover that ugly grille and light combo…
When the six-doored brick-patterned Chevy SUV arrives you know they read my comments.
Been done to a Volvo, a model nicknamed the “brick” hence the joke.
https://www.carscoops.com/2020/02/heres-what-an-old-volvo-looks-like-if-you-peel-away-the-paint/
Oh man, I love that Volvo. Not that I’d want it and god knows how much it must weigh, but talk about an art car. Looks like real bricks, well, thin ones, half an inch thick or so, but looks like real mortar in between.
We had one of these. I didn’t realize they were rare. It was white with the wood grain, red interior and 3rd seat. it was a pretty loaded car for the day. We sold it in 1991 to the next door neighbor who was driving an early 70s beat to crap wagon.
Wood paneling on houses never went away, it just migrated from the walls to the floors, and snobbery rages between real and fake there to this day. It’s actually a wonder hardwood floors in cars aren’t a thing, given the “eew carpet” reaction people elicit with unrenovated homes today.
In cars I never saw the big deal, but I think the wood paneled wagon backlash is a Gen Xer “I’m not going to be like my parents” thing I missed as a millenial(we have an aversion to minivans). If you’re aversion is the faux aspect of it, you may as well backlash to the fake leather, and fake “titanium” paint that classes up your average crossover.
My father installed wood paneling when he enclosed in the car port of the house. He then added it to the kitchen which I helped him install (1966 I think). It was still there when we sold the house as part of the estate sale. We have home movies of kids blowing out birthday candles with the wood paneling in the background.
I doubt it survived when the new owner tried to flip the house.
Wood panelling can look great when it’s done right. But it’s so sad to see these house renovation shows on TV where they gut all the interesting design features, or paint over the panelling. It’s like the bad old days of stripping out Victorian details in favour of Thirties/Forties simplicity. My in-laws had a lovely seventies-style house with panelling, ceiling beams, the works, ornate light fittings, stained glass detailing. Not throughout, just nicely done here and there as an accent. The next owner stripped out all the period features and painted it greyscale throughout. Shaking my head…. if you don’t like it, why buy it?
In Australia wood on a wagon would elicit a “Huh?” reaction. The Celerity looks okay with it, but I think I’d like it more in a red or brown rather then the white shown; less stark contrast, more of a wood-tone colour.
The one and only aspect of a property that cannot be changed is the location of it. Hence, when a house is available and the location is perfect for the buyer, then everything else can be changed to suit their taste. The house is available to anyone who wants it or likes it when it is up for sale, yet when a new owner elects to significantly change something or everything it becomes obvious that nobody else valued it as highly at the time it was for sale. Frequently someone likes whatever decorating style is “in” and would possibly choose to purchase a brand new house were one available, however often the best and most desirable locations were built on years and decades ago, so a previously owned home is the best choice along with whatever changes are entailed to make it suit the new owner. It’s not really much different than buying a car and changing the wheels and tires when the original ones were perfectly fine from a technical standpoint.
It’s a lot of the same “everything I own is an investment” you see in cars that makes them cookie cutter today, keeping a house up to date with trends means more value in the home and quicker sale than if you installed a fun firepole to move floor to floor and a rainforest themed living room filled to the gills with fake plants. Every house flip involves blowing out literally every wall for open concept, changing laminate countertops to granite, appliances to stainless steel, walls to greyscale and floors to hardwood, there’s no intrinsic reason to actually like that bleak modernist hellhole for most buyers but it’s ultimately desirable as an investment, especially if you don’t plan to live there forever.
A flagpole would be awesome!
But with my old knees and added weight these last few years I might just crash through the floor when I land.
But that would look kind of awesome, too.
(Don’t try at home, kids!)
Cars like this remind me of what cars used to look like before the Taurus came out.
OBTW : Someone mentioned DiNoc in brick look, yes it’s been done, I didn’t like it but that wagon was a popular one .
-Nate
The ’50s house my brother and I bought in the 80’s had real pine paneling in most of the basement rec room. We discovered it was DIY when I tried to clean it. Only about 2/3rds of each plank had varnish, the rest absorbed more dirt. We couldn’t decide if the previous owner was drunk or he let his kids varnish it.
At least the windows in the rear doors went down in the Celebrity wagons, unlike on the Malibus! A definite plus. And I think the faux-woodgrain adds a touch of distinction to Chevy’s edition of this corporate platform.
I do like the wood-panel effect in houses (if done cleanly, in a ’70s kind of way).
I did not know this model even existed. It seemed to me that most Chevy Celebrities were the Eurosport 4 door sedan models which were attractive vehicles for their time. I seem to remember that folks that had them with the V6 engines were pleased with the fuel economy and performance.
I had a 1986 Celebrity with 2.8-litre carburetted V6 engine, and the performance sucked big time. They were getting more difficult to tune up for emission complicance as they got older. It took me a few fixes before the car could pass annual inspection, including emission control, in Texas. I got rid of the car as soon as I moved to Colorado.
The V6 with multiport fuel injection system was much better.
What Jim says. Very true. I spent some happy years in the early-mid 1970s living in an architect designed house from the late 1930s in Raleigh, NC. The bedrooms were paneled with real tongue and grove wood, as was the built in photo darkroom (the original owner was a photographer) in the basement. Beautiful house on a very nice in-town lot. When I finally sold it (out of my parents’ estate in the early 2000s), it went to a buyer who reduced it to a pile of rubble in days, cut down the trees, and built a MacMansion. It turns out that he was a real estate developer (my attorney in NC didn’t choose to disclose that to me) who had apparently been waiting for a lot on that street to come up for sale. Raleigh (at least not at that time) didn’t have the zoning laws to prevent such things. So it goes.
My only other experience with paneling came in the house we lived in after moving from Raleigh, and that was using it to constitute walls for the basement darkroom I built in that house. I was on my own in terms of paying to build the room (my dad told me I could have a darkroom if I could pay for it and built it myself)…so not being able to afford plywood or sheetrock after framing out the walls, I opted for the next cheapest thing at Hechingers, 4×8 sheets of “oak” (photo-printed) composite board paneling. It was hell to work with, you needed special nails to hold it up, and sagged over time (at least mine did). Awful stuff.
As for di-noc on cars. Meh. The Town and Country wagon we had at the same time as living in the Raleigh house had it. I think in that case it worked for the car as it somehow seemed to make the car look a bit smaller? human-scaled? than those that didn’t have the di-noc. I’ve seen many fuselage-bodied wagons without the di-noc and they always look somewhat industrial or commercial. Not a good look.
Otherwise, I’m a wagon fan who would rather have his wagons appliqué free.
My favorite wood paneled room was also in North Carolina. When I was in graduate school in Chapel Hill, a friend of mine lived in a 1920s-era house that had been purchased by the university and (sadly) used as student housing. The living room was paneled in “pecky cypress” — cypress that appears to have worm tunnels (or something similar) running through it.
It was very dramatic and elegant. I don’t remember that house’s exact location, but I doubt it’s there any longer.
Yep, that’s what it was in my house…pecky cypress.
https://southendreclaimed.com/pecky-non-reclaimed-cypress-wall-ceiling-planking/
Ours was exceptionally wide (at least 6″ wide, I actually think 8′). Odds are all of that valuable wood was hauled off to the dump with the rubble of the house.