Note: None of these pictures are of my actual car
During the ownership of the Mazda B2000 in last week’s COAL, I described how some particular issues sidelined the truck for the first winter of ownership. I was in need of a winter beater, and my meagre budget limited what I could afford. Hmmm – What would $250 get me in 1994?
We had a local weekly buy and sell paper – the Maritime Merchant – and once the new edition came out I started calling around. There wasn’t much available for that price – but a gold-coloured 4-door Acadian was found, for $250. Dad and I went to look at it. The body looked OK – some rust for sure – but, what can you expect for that price? We ended up getting it for $225.
Image via thatcarguy.typepad.com
It was identical to the one above – a kind of butterscotch interior with the tartanlike vinyl covering on the seats. Feature-wise, it had a 4-speed, manual steering, and power brakes. There was a radio, and something resembling a heater. We don’t get really cold winters here in Cape Breton, but the heater sure is handy to keep the windows clear. On cold days upon getting out of high school, the battery didn’t have enough power to spin the engine over fast enough to get it to start. I’d recruit a few friends to give me a push, and I could catch it in gear to get it to start. Money being tight, I just lived with it the way it was.
Image via autoblog.com
Looking at the picture above, a few things jog my memory. The arrangement of the valve covers – much like a pitched roof – with one of each side was something I haven’t seen on any other engine. The engine was an overhead cam crossflow unit, but didn’t seem to take any advantage of it, as it was reluctant to make any significant amount of power anywhere in the rev range. Also looking at the left of the picture, I see the heater box, and what I recall was the blend door control which directs the somewhat heated air to the windshield or floor. It had broken, and if you wanted to change the flow of air you’d have to pop the hood and move it manually. Ah, the quirks of a really cheap car.
The dash was mostly typical of its day. The most noteworthy thing I can say is that it was probably the first GM car (in North America, anyway) with the wiper and dimmer control on the signal light stalk.
The winter wasn’t kind to it. It developed some bad holes in the floor under the seat where snow would push in, and the torque tube pulled away from the floor while trying to do some donuts! The final straw was a boneheaded move by me, when I tried to sneak around on the right of someone indicating a left turn. I just about got by, and the old lady in the Buick turned right and hooked my rear door and wheelwell. I was found to be in the wrong. Ouch. As injury to insult, when I tried to pry the mangled dog-leg off of the rear wheel, I sliced my thumb and nail to the bone…double ouch. My nail is still messed up to this day.
I nursed the car through till May, and went back to driving the 1970 Chevy truck for the summer. It found a home with a Chevette enthusiast, who used its engine as a donor for his own car. My next car purchase was to find a suitable donor for an engine for the aforementioned truck.
A great reminder of what we put up with in the cheap cars of youth.
I love your reference to the “Chevette enthusiast”, two words I would never have thought to combine.
I can say something about a Chevette: When it came in fabric, as in my sister’s ’79 model, that tartan plaid seat fabric looked and felt very nice to the touch, especially during a cold Iowa winter. And it held up very well. There, I just said something nice about a Chevette.
It’s hard to find anything mean to say about a car that only cost $225 Canadian.
Paraphrasing Dr. Johnson (who was talking about a dog who could walk on his hind legs), “It is not a question of how well a $225 Canadian Chevette runs; what is remarkable is that it runs at all”.
Great story! Reminds me of my 74 Datsun B210 hatchback, except for the heater. That little hunk of rust had the BEST heater, ever. As much heat as I could stand about 5 minutes after start-up. Never overheated in the summer, either.
Because I only owned one Chevette, I don’t qualify for enthusiast status, but I’m probably one of the biggest Chevette fans on CC. I will concede that it took GM about 5 or 6 years to get them right.
Mine was an 84 2-door hatchback with 4-speed transmission, no A/C and power nothing. Purchased at 37K miles. Gave 7 years and about 100K additional miles of dependable service. My secrets were: Never defer maintenance, especially front end lubrication. Upgrade tires, shocks, battery, etc. as budget allows. Mine came from the used car lot with some new, but really dreadful bias ply tires. Just switching to slightly wider all season radials did wonders for the ride & handling. Upgrading to gas shocks was also a big help.
When traded for my next car, my little blue ‘Vette still ran and drove great and had virtually no body rust in spite of DD service during salty central Ohio winters.
Other than the safety aspects of older budget compact cars, I think it’d be cool to have another Chevette. I haven’t seen one in ages.
This looked to be one of the early Acadians – before they had to send some back to the States as the T1000, than just 1000. This model looked to be from 1979, as nice as these would ever look, plus some new features like delay wipers and (not new, but awesome) factory A/C which blew colder than that of the uppity snobs down the road with their BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, Jaguars, or any exotic import. Lots of interior trim combos available. varied some year to year. Not an awful car in the sense of a Vega or Citation, just a bit behind the times.
My family only became a 2-car family in 1977 (despite there being 6 of us), and this was accomplished through the acquisition of a 1971 Datsun 510, which augmented the 1975 Dodge Monaco we had at the time. The Datsun was a superb yet lightly built 4 door sedan, though it had early stage rust by 1977.
By 1979 my father was contemplating a new second car, and I vividly recall him bringing home a brochure for a Pontiac Acadian. I encouraged him as much as I could to buy this, being naive about cars and only wanting to see my parents get something new. I also recommended (in my 14 year old wisdom) that he consider a Fiat X19! My father was a practical man, an engineer who understood cars and who had owned and enjoyed motorcycles and a couple of MG T-series way back when they were new and before he was subsumed into a Ward Cleaver-like reality. He just couldn’t buy an Acadian as it offended his sensibilities I guess, plus he was becoming repulsed by the continuously terrible experiences of American car ownership that had plagued him for over 10 years by that time. Unless you lived through it, one today cannot begin to imagine how poor the build quality was on cars of this era – truly disgraceful and unmitigated by any virtue I can cite – other than possibly smooth highway operation. Faint praise indeed.
He ended up buying a 1980 Datsun 200SX, and I was sold the Datsun 510 on 6 easy payments when I turned 16 at the end of 1980. He never bought another new American car, and stayed with either an Audi or several very long term Japanese cars for the rest of his life. His wretched impression of American cars would not have been elevated by the ownership experience on offer by an Acadian or Chevette, I am certain of that.
For the next 10 years I had a number of experiences myelf with Chevettes and Acadians, fortunately none of them tainted by actual ownership. Friends owned them, I worked at rental companies that had them in fleets or I worked as a lot guy at a large Chrysler dealership where they were continuously traded in – on various Omni/Horizons and K cars – how bad must they have been!.
This broad experience came to mean that Chevettes/Acadians were constantly invoked as a profane oath of disgust amongst my car loving friends and I, whenever we needed to make an exaggerated point concerning the particular deficiencies of any vehicle. We derided and defamed them as the absolute bottom of the automotive gene pool, and time has barely softened our yet persistent invective today. They could have been good cars, but they weren’t.
During this era, which for me lasted about 10-12 years, when I needed cheap wheels, I always bought larger, older American cars as they were everywhere, parts were plentiful and, though they were mostly bad vehicles as well, they were predictably bad and not hard to fix myself. I did not buy small cars to speak of and though the fuel economy of these large cars was poor, I did not drive enough annual distance that it was a large component of the operating cost mix. I wanted good HVAC, at least some torque, and space – the Acadian/Chevette’s had none of those things; neither did many other small cars, but at least some of them were better built.
My $225 Canadian car story was a 1968 Chevelle Malibu 4 dr. sedan, 6 cyl, no PS or PB but it was the cheapest, most reliable car I ever owned during this time. Why buy a Chevette when you could have that? I would have kept my 510 but it was destroyed in an accident that was not my fault.
In 2 weeks time I will be doing one on an 85 Horizon – it was a vastly better car in every conceivable way.
Body rot is a big problem here. Not too often nice old iron like that Malibu would show up for that kind of money!
I was drafted in 1968 and had sold my 1954 Porsche. i needed a cheap beater for one month. My friend had a 1959 Ford Taunus 17M parked under an apple tree. The fuel pump was bad. $50 for the car, $4.50 for a fuel pump. He charged the battery in his living room next to his Triumph motorcycle. We put the battery in backwards using a newspaper torch for light. It ran but didn’t charge. Reversed the battery and all was well.
I had a flat.The jack fit into a socket which was rusty and mostly fell apart. Put the spare on. it had a large monkey bubble in the sidewall which blew out in one or two revolutions, and the tire fell off the rim. Carried the rim to a nearby gas station. Found a suitable tire in the junk pile and foot stomped it on. The joys of driving junk.
Glad you survived It as wonder you are still alive!
Cheapest car I ever had was an ’82 AMC Concord 2-dr in D/L trim. It was 10 or 11 yrs old at the time and I bought it from my mechanic for $150 Canadian. The silver grey paint was badly faded but remarkably it didn’t have any rust, even on the inner rocker panel area under the front seats which was a very rust-prone area on these cars. It had a lovely burgundy cloth interior. Drove that car for nearly 2 yrs before I finally tired of the 2-dr configuration and swapped it out for an ’82 Concord wagon in blue (big mistake!).
There was a comment on a previous CC that mentioned Car and Driver called the Chevette the American Skoda. Frankly, it seems more like an American Trabant in that, as this story (and many others) highlight, in most circumstances, a roll of duct tape and some bailing wire will keep an old Chevette going.
In fact, it might be said that the Chevette is one of the few cars that gets better with age. For truly basic transportation on the cheap (and we’re talking ‘dirt’ cheap here), an old Chevette with lots of miles really can’t be beat. Or, rather, it can be beaten, mercilessly, and come back saying, “Thank you, sir! May I have another?”.
I’d be inclined to think it’d be the kind of car to put in perspective how good new cheap cars have gotten!
I never owned a Chevette, much less an Acadian, but the Chevettes in the U.S. had an OHV engine and not an OHC engine. And they only had one valve cover, the engine pictured almost looks like a V6.
As the owner of a Pinto, I do find the Chevette somewhat appealing. But after reading about all the other Chevettes available around the world that were superior to this one….I would feel like an idiot for settling for such a mediocre car.
The Chevette was OHC from day one (1976), using an engine developed from an Opel design. The valve covers look a bit odd, but that is a Chevette four.
For proof, see the attached image- It’s a list of the (OHC) camshaft timing belts available for the Chevette from an online parts store.
A minor correction, but the Chevette motors were all Isuzu designs. GM license-built the gas 1.4 and 1.6 fours from their G-series family, and the diesel was the F-series built directly by Isuzu.
Dave:
I was going on the Wikipedia entries that state the Chevette’s engine is OHV. Even from the pictures shown here, this doesn’t look like an OHC engine.
Finally, many websites attribute the Chevy Chevette engines to Isuzu (thank you cjiguy). A visit to the Wikipedia page on the Isuzu G and F series shows that the Chevette engines are OHV.
I will admit though that a timing belt for an OHV engine is a puzzler. A possible explanation? Chevy/Isuzu used a belt in place of a chain to try to quell noise.
BIG OOPS:
I didn’t read the Wikipedia entry on the Isuzu G series correctly/completely….the G161 used in the Chevette was indeed an OHC variation of an OHV design.
Working at a small town Ford agency in high school & early college, we could buy trade-ins too far gone to be repaired for scrap metal prices. The cheapest one I ever had was a ’59 Biscayne for the princely some of $10. The fan switch didn’t work, so I jumped the connection with a wire and let it run constantly on high. I replaced the broken back window with a junkyard (as in very brittle) piece and patched the exhaust holes with muffler wrap. Kept the crankcase filled with drain oil (taken on oil changes from customer cars) and drove it through winter. Sold it for $100 in spring. Always wondered how the new owner coped with the heater blowing on high all summer and where he got the oil he’d need to refill the crankcase about every 200 miles.
My wife bought a four door or should I say five-door Acadian and loved it. Not much for options; whitewall tires, block heater and AM radio. It had the nicer cloth and vinyl interior. Not a bad highway car, a little buzzy at 120 km/ph.
Sold a few months after we were married because of a move to another city. Pity, it would have been then hide all car during the early 80’s recession.
My college dorm mate had a 4 door version, with cloth seats, 4 speed manual and factory air conditioning.
The car remained reliable in spite of the abuse the owner heaped on it! Always started, stopped and shifted ok.
The factory air conditioning was typical GM; that is to say excellent. He and I joked that the A/C compressor was more powerful than the engine attached to it.
It was noisy slow, crude and rough riding…..but “Maytag reliable”.
I have posted before about my 1st car bought brand new in 1987. 2 door 2 tone grey on silver Pontiac Acadian. Mine was the top line model – automatic, upgraded cloth interior, am/fm stereo radio with rear speakers, cargo cover and sport mirrors. Say what you want but that car was like a timex watch – always started in the harsh Canadian winters and never broke down on me in my 9 years of ownership and around 400,000 km`s when I got rid of it due to under carriage rust. That car was basic transportation at best, but with rear wheel drive, decent tires and upgraded shocks was pretty fun to drive. Also, had a cassette player installed in glove box and upgraded all speakers but kept the factory grills so if thieves ever looked inside would never suspect that there was a pretty decent stereo inside that car – who would want to steal a factory am/fm radio? The best part was the freedom and independence that car gave a teenager living way out in suburbia in Toronto.
Still have my $600 1999 Ford Ranger. Came into the dealership on a Saturday that I was off. Customer complaint was transmission doesn’t shift. I was the only trans tech in the shop (small dealer on the cape that unfortunately went belly up in the prelude to the financial crisis in 2007). It was the first repair order I got on the following Monday, and a quick road test verified that the trans wouldn’t shift because the rear axle speed sensor didn’t produce a signal anymore. Before I could write up the estimate, the sales manager came out to tell me the customer was afraid of wasting money on a rebuild of the tranny, and had traded the truck in, but don’t worry they’d cover my diagnosis time. He then said I could have the truck for the trade in price if I wanted it, $600. I told him to start the paperwork, and I’d walk over to the ATM behind the dealership. I said not one word about what the truck needed. Parked it out back, when the title came in I popped in a new speed sensor and have had it ever since. That was 12 years ago. Since then the odometer sits now at 168,000. I’ve treated it to a set of tires, timing belt, fuel pump and filter, upper control arms and lower ball joints, brakes and some brake lines, and the requisite LOFs. Perfect little trucklet, it’s refrigerator white, 2.5l 4cyl automatic with A/C.
That sensor did in a lot of 96-07 Taurus and Sable cars.
When this thing died, the speedo still worked but the trans slipped going from 1st to second. Most folks junked the car because a shop would say it needed a new trans.
My folks 2003 Sable had that issue. $50 and 20mins of my time fixed it.
A friend of mine bought an ‘84 Acadian for $1000 (Canadian) in 1993 to replace a ‘79 Ford Country Squire that needed too much work. He’d bought the Ford for $300 and while he was able to fix a lot of its problems (mostly due to the previous owner’s neglect) it got to the point where it was no longer worth the time and effort to keep it running. The Acadian was pretty basic (4-speed stick, a radio, and not much else) but it was in nice shape inside and out, and he got two years of good service before selling it. He was able to break even on the sale, getting about what he initially paid for the car. No complaints – it was the car he needed at the time, and it did everything he asked of it, which included bringing his oldest daughter home from the hospital.
In 1975 I ‘snagged’ a ’66 Plymouth Belvedere I utility company 2 door sedan. Only options (?) were a heater and AM radio. $15. Replacing the shag carpet remnants that covered the holes in the floor cost more.
Lasted 6 weeks. First car; mission accomplished.
it’s so cool to read about this. I bought my 1980 Pontiac Acadian (yellow) for $500 in 1995. It was just about as crappy as yours. Lots of things didn’t work on it, and I think the last straw was when we had to weld a piece back onto the engine. Lots of good memories of being young, broke and stupid though 🙂
This story is a near carbon copy of mine, and was a joy to read. Thanks so much for writing it.
I turned 16 in the summer of 1994 and had saved money for a car. My parents found a 1980 Pontiac Acadian on Vancouver Island (we lived in Vancouver).
For $500, I got a 1980 Acadian. Yellow. Just like the photos here. It was an automatic with less than 100k kilometres.
That year was (and still is) the most ‘eventful’ car ownership experience of my life.
The heater was absolutely garbage, and barely blew air. When it did… it was usually cold.
The timing belt. I forget. Something went wrong with the wheel and we ended up getting it WELDED back into place.
I also made some poor driving choices and learned about the physics of doing donuts in snow covered parking lots. That’s how I dented the rear drivers wheel rim and quarter size panel.
Heck. I think the front license plate holder must’ve broke because I remember having a license plate on my dashboard. As I made a right hand turn the license plate slid down off the dashboard and jammed itself between the door and my hand.
My hand was on the turn sign and steering wheel. The license plate caused me to get stuck with the wheel in the turn position. I cranked my hand against the license plate to avoid going into a ditch. That broke the turn signal off the stock.
So, I just re-inserted it and used the “I’ll hold it in place when using it” method. The signal stick would regularly just fall off the steering column.
I was the only one of our friend group with a car and would often be driving a group of us all over town. Oftentimes we’d have more people than seatbelts and would cram the extra people in the hatchback.
Near the end of my time with it (and the end of its life) something happened to cause it to run on only 3 cylinders. That was fun.
I eventually bought a new vehicle and tried to sell the Acadian. Another kid from down the road was thinking of buying it. We gave him the keys to drive it up and down the alley. But… he decided it would be super cool to go show his Gramma in Abbotsford. There wasn’t any insurance on the vehicle, and he had never driven before. No license or anything.
He rear ended someone on the highway and destroyed the car. Thankfully no one was injured. He fully admitted the whole thing was his fault and I didn’t have any insurance liability personally.
I still miss my Acadian and daydream about getting another one. In fact, I woke up from JUST having a dream about finding my original Acadian and negotiating to buy it from the guy for $600. It was an awesome dream.
Then I started a 2:00am search for “1980 Pontiac Acadians for sale” and came across your blog.
I suspect I just need to appreciate the fun memories, but not actually buy a shitbox car and dump money into it 🙂