Well my fellow Curb Dwellers, this longrooffan is still down here in toney Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, being a wife for my friend Kris. Thus far I have purchased about $7,000 worth of super nice furniture, about 20 new outfits for her, returned another 45 (pretty good on base percentage me thinks), and assisted in her selection of a slightly used Mercedes E class to help maintain that image her cosmetic surgeon brother thinks she needs. While we were out car shopping, I spotted this vintage Chevette and grabbed an image of it out the passenger window. Yeah Kris was driving like any good husband does. BTW, her driving scares the hell out of me plus she texts while driving, much to my chagrin. After I captured this image, Kris asked me, “Why did you take a picture of that SUV?” I just laughed and told her she wouldn’t get it!
WOW a little Holden Gemini/Vauxhall Chevette or Chevy in that part of the planet really not much of a car where ever it was sold except if you got the HotRod Vauxhall version then it went like stink 130+mph on gravel Vauxhall managed to fit a 2.3litre Bedford van motor into these and the result was awesome compared to the 1256cc Viva engine thats standard.
No such luck on this continent. The Chevette was a transportation appliance, pure and simple. No hot-rodded versions were offered stateside, at least not from the factory.
2.3 litres? How quaint. Once these transportation appliances hit the scrapheap, hot rodders took them and stuffed anything from 5.7 to 8.2L engines in them! No, they weren’t safe or possibly even road legal but boy could they go fast! 🙂
I have a history with the Chevette.
A 1978 was my first new car…I was nineteen and that car was an urgency and a compromise. My first choice would have been a Honda; then a Rabbit….Hondas, when I was car-shopping, were all sold out. Rabbits…this was December 1977 and Vee-Dub had just made the decision to take the Rabbit upscale; abandon the loss-leader segment of the market. So I couldn’t afford. Chevette it was.
I knew I wasn’t getting a top-end product. What I wasn’t ready for was just HOW shoddy was the car; the service behind the car; the cynical premises that followed that car from conception to crusher.
Right away, about a month in, the brake warning light came on. Brakes felt okay, so I took it to the dealer. Had they not screwed up double, and closed the hood on a roll of electrical tape (putting a crease in the hood where it met the fender) I would never have seen the fix: cut the wires to the sensor and tape them off. Cute.
Then the odometer snaps. Just stops clicking off the miles; the tenth wheel keeps spinning impotently. New speedo; and it feels (this being the pre-GPS era) that the speedometer seemed reading a little fast. And I knew traffic on the Interstate wasn’t going along at 80 miles an hour, in that Double-Nickel Zero-Tolerance era.
But the fix…they yanked the head out and flailed about for an “adapter.” Which they never got; I have no idea how fast I was going; or how many miles recorded that I didn’t travel. In the end it didn’t matter.
Along the way, I stripped reverse gear…it still backed up but made a horrible noise every so many feet.
The capper, though, was when the thing first started a deep-inside clunking at faster than idle. Before I could get it into the shop, me being out in the country, thing threw a connecting rod. 30,000 and some change on the mile-o-meter.
I made a pledge; a pledge I have kept: NEVER another GM product. No matter HOW cheap or HOW attractive. If it were new and free, it would still be overpriced.
I wished GM and everyone connected with it, to eternal damnation; and nothing would have pleased me more than had they become a brand of a Chinese manufacturer. Instead, they got me again – raiding my tax money…
Yeah quality they werent but you may have got a metric speedo 50mph is 80kph, We suffered both kinds of these the English and japanese the Jappa was better but only just
Dear Mr. longrooffan: What, pray tell, is a longrooffan?
I’ll answer for him, in case he’s feeling shy: a long roof is a wagon version of a sedan; he’s a fan of them. At least I think that’s right.
You got it right Paul. And the pillarless hardtop longroofs rule the roost!
How about a 1960 Dodge Polara hardtop wagon? Those were wild with their reverse fins and clear steering rim with gold flecks in it!
What happenned to the Niedermeyer rule of asking permission before photos?~?
If she purchased 20 and only returned 45, she is still able to be retrained…..
Now I can comment on the Chevette. Perhaps my least favorite car ever. Not that I ever drove one, or even rode in one. But while they were still on the road they seemed to be forever in the left lane doing 50 or in front of you accelerating a pace that could only be described as glacial.
Fortunately, they have all rusted out in these parts, and plauge my drives though town no more.
Walter, After we kids were grown, my Mom actually owned a Chevette and later a Pontiac T1000. I think you may have been following her back in the day.
Anyone else remember the catchy tune in the commercials that ran when the Chevette was introduced?
“It’s about time/For a new kind of car/ And we’ve got it/Chevette is a new kind of American car!”
I guess the “new kind of American car” at that time had stone-age engineering, and was practically disposable…
Catchy commercial that was–but yeah, the Chevette sucked.
http://youtu.be/UVeLuJY-ygs
Fortunately, in another year there was actually a good Chevrolet on the way–with another catchy commercial song! http://youtu.be/WRfarOd7jxw
Now that’s more like it!
GM was SOOOO much better at big cars.
That’s the one! Thanks for sharing the link…
Ahh…being of my generation (born 1972) the car commercial that always rings in my head is the one from when Chevy first introduced the Citation…”It’s the first / Chevy of the 80s”
Not all examples were terrible. I have worked with refugee resettlement for a long time. Sometime around 1985 a friend donated and old Chevette with lots of miles to a Cuban refugee family. The car looked pretty awful I though but it would run OK. I do not think the father was mechanically inclined but he probably knew others in the Cuban community who were. (Cubans were/are famous for keeping old cars running. Probably more CCs there than anywhere.) Anyway, the car lasted for 4-5 more years and made numerous trips between Houston and Miami. Goes to show that what we are ready to discard can be of great service to someone else.
Wow my grandmother died in St. Petersburg in 1998 with a Chevette just like that in the carport. (Even the same stupid front plate.) I think I know what happened to it now.
FYI I will have a personal article on a vehicle that has been in my family since 1967 ready by Friday.
A Chevette on Northlake Blvd? A rare sighting indeed. The RX with the gold-pack is much more common in these parts.
btw, offleaseonly.com in Lake Worth is a good place to find that E-Class
This is one of those cars that gives me dreams of swappage.
It’s driven by the right end so..Maybe a supercharged 3.8 from a T-Bird Super Coupe? Turbocharged or supercharged Ecotec? A Lima 2.3 is too tall but a Turbo 2.2/2.5 Mopar might fit thanks to it listing to the right a bit.. GM made tons of Quad 4 engines. SHO power?
I could go on all night.
It’s funny how tiny the Chevette seems, especially with all of those SUVs surrounding it, it seems even more Lilliputian. I knew a slew of people who had these back in the day, and the newer ones were better (mechanically) than the older ones. During one of my times between owning cars, I considered buying one as a commuter for myself. With my supplier discount, the car would have been cheaper than a new Yugo back then. I never did it though, and I’m not sorry.
I did know a couple of folks who put V8’s in these, but its tough getting such a short wheelbase car to hook up properly on the drag strip. Even though a Vega or a Monza isn’t that much bigger, the longer wheelbase allows you to launch without fear of the car pulling it’s front wheels off of the ground. Much easier to steer with the front wheels on terra firma…
This post is one of the most hilarious things I’ve read on CC. ??
(Nicely done, longrooffan, and stellar find.)