It’s hard to believe that the Chevette was made until the end of 1987. Much more modern vehicles with front-wheel-drive were being made with airbags and stereos with tiny-button equalizers and everything, yet the Chevette soldiered on. This 1984 Chevrolet Chevette CS can be found posted here on craigslist in Manchester, Michigan and the seller is asking $5,000. Here is the original listing and thanks to Pat L. for another great tip!
I love that opening photo, it looks almost like an old vehicle ad where a guy (usually) is shown in a hard hat at a construction site looking at a set of building plans. I don’t know a construction worker who would have had a Chevette, though, but maybe there were a few who did own one. It can’t be any more far-fetched than this ad showing major car guy Tim Allen in a Chevette ad. These are the original tires, by the way.
This car appears to be in absolutely outstanding condition from the exterior photos, doesn’t it? I don’t see one flaw anywhere from front to back. The Chevette was made from 1975 for the 1976 model year and they were sold until the end of 1987, that modern year that we were talking about earlier. The year that the Minnesota Twins won the first of their two World Series championships (shameless plug).
Despite this car’s outstanding exterior appearance and only having 21,750 miles, there are lurking rust issues which is unfortunate to hear about. That pile of papers on the driver’s floor isn’t just from a road trip, there’s a rust hole under there that’ll have to be fixed. The worst of it seems to be the underside of the hood where the hinges connect to the hood. Ouch, both sides are like that. The seller says that this car was hidden away in a barn two decades ago under a cover and they also mention that the muffler is “completely rusted.”
There’s a bit of surface rust on the engine components but if I didn’t know about the hood hinge mounting locations and the driver’s floor I would have guessed that this car was rock solid. The engine should be Chevrolet’s 1.6-liter OHC inline-four which had 65 horsepower and 85 lb-ft of torque. The seller doesn’t say how it runs or even if it runs but since it has a new battery and master cylinder, I’m assuming that it runs. Even though this car looks great, body and interior-wise, with the rust underneath, I’m not sure if they’ll get that asking price. What do you think?
That engine says 121k miles…
Thank you
My X and I had this for our first car even though it was not my choice. Between shifts the engine would continue to rev for 2 seconds no matter how you tried making it difficult to shift. I figured it was a pollution component problem.
It had the worst giddyup of anything out there! On the way to trade it, because there was no way anybody would by it, I was Tboned by a huge Lincoln. Still got the trade and the insurance money. It made our new Golf all the sweeter.
Odd the hood would only rust in those 2 places – cheaper steel used there? planned obsolescence? Those seats look comfy – can i assume they would bolt into a 1st & 2nd gen f-body?
If those are orig tires, the odometer reading is probably correct.
I’m surprised at the availability of fiberglass parts …
http://www.showcars-bodyparts.com/chevette.html
Unless you are driving your F-body a 1/4 mile at a time, I would stay away from these seats. They are not as comfy as they look.
Great writing Scotty: “tiny-button equalizers”, “hard hat at a construction site” — I can visualize that pic.
This Chevette: it may or may not have 21k miles, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Cars deteriorate just from the passage of time, notably underhood where the original finishes were rudimentary, unless stored in climate-controlled conditions. And even under good storage conditions, finishes “go away”. So if this has been stored in a barn, it’s going to look not perfect. Those rust spots are curious, however.
Exactly Bob. Long term storage can be harder on a car than using it regularly. It’s not surprising to pull a car out of storage and find something broken on it that wasn’t broken when you put it away.
A car stored away in Michigan is subject to continual wet dripping humidity, unless the building is heated and de-humidified and a dry floor. I feel sorry for vehicles sitting in Michigan unless they have extrodinary good climate control
I had a girlfriend in college and an ex-wife who both had one of these when I met them. They both were truly gorgeous, and both Sh*tvette’s were one of the worst cars I ever had the the displeasure of driving. I owned a 1980 Pinto, and it was luxurious compared to this POS. There had better be a bag of cash in this for me to take it off their hand’s. It has rampant rust, runs like crap,rides like crap, of course it’s crap. I almost spit up my beer when I saw the asking price. Just get an oil soaked cloth, put it in the tank, light it, and run like hell.
I do not recommend you watch the 1976 tv version of the game show, Concentration(before Trebek was host) – I believe for the entire season an orange Chevette was the grand prize. lol Worst of all, the “winner” had to pay sales tax on it. Even worse, they may have had a Chevy Vega on there in other years. I know they did in the early ’70s on “Let’s Make a Deal”.
I remember on one episode of Let’s Make A Deal they had a 68-69 RoadRunner. The catch? The motor was, I believe, a 426 Hemi and it was completely disassembled. A lady won it and had to reassemble the motor and it had to run for her to own it. A Chrysler factory tech was there to assist with heavy lifting and advice but was not allowed to help with the actual motor reassembly. She got it running and took delivery. That would have been a hell of a car to have won!
You don’t now how lucky you are that they drove Chevettes. Most hot chicks in the ’70s drove Mustangs & Camaros and never would look twice at a guy driving a Pinto.
I thought the pretty younger ones drove mostly Celicas in the ’70s & ’80s – do such girls even have a license today? If they do, what lame “car” are they driving? Hard to believe Toyota not only no longer makes the Celica(& put in a poor motor in the last gen), but foolishly does not cater to single people now – or is(along with all the other car companies) trying to convince singles that 4 doors are kool with all their lame commercials.
You need to drive one of these every now and then to remind yourself how much better a 1984 civic is.
Maybe were you’re from, but on the East coast , those Civics rotted away while these were still chugging around . The Chevettes rot prone area was right above the catalytic converter , the passenger floor pan would rot out there
Little bit of a scandal for Honda there with the rust issues…
I don’t think the Chevette & Civic are in the same class. I don’t think Honda had a car in the ’80s comparable in size to the Chevette – Toyota had the Starlet.
I certainly would rather have even a ’76 Chevette than a Renault LeCar, Fiat Strada, Yugo, Plymouth Cricket, or a VW bug(poor heater!).
Not sure if this car was any good tho …
http://www.datsun1200.com/modules/mediawiki/index.php?title=B210_Honey_Bee
People may have bought a lot of “vettes” because it was the only tiny car with rear wheel drive, i believe.
They are in the same class. These were minis. The Civic eventually outgrew the class. As did the Accord.
The Chevette was introduced in 1976. The Civic in ’73. Corolla. Same market at that time.
By the ’80s, the Civic eventually outgrew the class. As did the Corolla.
It was less rear wheel drive than price and a Chevrolet service and parts department in most good sized towns that drove sales of Chevettes.
Japanese sales quotas and a call to “patriotism” to buy American [while moving everything offshore and raising prices] sold a bunch in the early ’80s with artificial shortages created by the quota. People bought other brands.
Uh-oh. Someone forgot to put a finger over the license plate. Quick! Somebody do whatever it is that shady people do with exposed license plates!
LMAO.
The Craigslist Paranoia Finger.
Motor Trend used to have a contest every month with a page full of license plate photos in it. And if you had the lucky plate you got a year’s sub or something like that.
reminder: it IS a chevette. and it’s overpriced by about $4999.00.
Well it’s probably worth about $500 for scrap metal that would make it overpriced by about $4500! I certainly agree it’s not worth what they are asking even if it was brand-new with only 1 mile on it!
Small (perhaps picky) correction.
First line states: “It’s hard to believe that the Chevette was made until the end of 1987”.
Actually, according to all known information, the Chevette only made it into the beginning of the 1987 model year, and none were actually produced in the 1987 calendar year. Final Chevette’s were assembled in December of 1986.
Many of the final Chevette’s were Fleet sales; Avis and Hertz among them, but also a great number of sales to local municipalities. Oddly, the final FULL year of Chevette sales (1986) managed to exceed 100k units. Crazy considering how outdated the car had become and the more modern competition, even within the same Chevrolet Dealerships (Chevy Sprint, Chevy Spectrum, Chevy Nova, and Chevy Cavalier…. all small front wheel drive cars).
It might have been that they made them for those final years to satisfy a union obligation. It’s a guess, I know that’s what happened with the Taurus. They made those for many more years beyond what the public could buy – they all went to fleets.
Absolute dogs. Mine had a clutch cable instead of hydraulic, it broke at 40,000 miles. I HATED that rolling pile of junk. Next car was a turbo Colt. What a difference!
I had one of these. I was driving it following a friend to the junk yard as he was going to leave it there. The car had no rust or dents and the interior was great. We pulled over and I told him I couldn’t let him drop it off at the junk yard. He gave it to me on the spot. This car had absolutely no options. It was grey with a black interior. The heat coming through the firewall area was horrific. When shifting, you could hear a little rattle in the engine, which sounded distinctly like rod bearings. About 5k miles later, there was no question about it when the engine went. Back in the early 80’s I didn’t have the means for a nice new car and this car filled a hole nicely. Seeing the opening picture brought back memories, both good and bad I hadn’t thought of in decades. GLWTS, he’s going to need lots of it.
Put it back in the barn where it belongs.
What did the barn do to you?
Um, no, a hard NO.
Uh, Scotty, Why would it be a shame that this is rusted? The shame is that it hasn’t rested a bit more and fallen in a heap. We had these at the LA airport and they were to be used only around town. It was rather amusing when someone trying to drive one over the grapevine on five and they wouldn’t make it up the hill very far. They were all manual transmission floor shift cars and the shift levers tended it come out. We will drill them and secure them with a sheet metal screw.
Another Chevette, another group of Chevette haters come out. There probably were Chevettes that were poorly maintained and gave trouble to some, but I defer to the experts at “CAR and DRIVER”. Their 26,000 mile test of the Chevette in 1976 said, “The Chevette is the most troublefree, slam the hood and forget it, cancel your service writer off the Christmas list machine we’ve ever encountered” In other words, Car and Driver had never had a long term test of any other car that was as tough and dependable as the Chevette.
What did Car and Driver say about what it was like to DRIVE the Chevette?
Thought so.
Gotta love the comments by the Chevette haters. Most of which likely didn’t own one. Duaney is right, when the car was introduced it was a VERY capable, very dependable small car (something that hadn’t been accomplished by any American car maker before that).
As for Ignoramus J Reilly’s comment: Car and Driver thought that driving the Chevette was very much like driving other small cars at the time. Several years later in a large small car comparsion test, the Chevette was said to be the only one of the group that you could likely rack up 100k miles on without problems cropping up (and that test included the likes of the beloved Toyota and Honda small cars).
Comapring a Chevette to what cars are like today, is a fool’s practice. Of course they were small, they were noisy, they were underpowered. Just like all the small cars of the time. But unlike the others, the Chevette was actually quite the durable little car. I had one with over 200k on it, and aside from crazy high idle at start up, it ran/drove just fine.
You thought I had all day to watch for comments to reply too? Without repeating the entire 4 page article, Car And Driver was mostly impressed with the trouble free experience. They say the Chevette-Opel designed all coil suspension has a friendly way with bumps, benefitting from lengthy wheel travel and tapered rear coil springs that provide a progressive ride rate. A likeable personality and general competence as an around town go getter. Pennies per mile cost that is lower than any new car going. Remember it was the best selling small car for several years.
A Chevette with rotten floors and questionable mileage claims, 5K? Yeah….NO.
In a barn parked on dirt = RUST. I’ve seen showroom quality cars for $5k…
I owned 3 Chevette’s in my teens to early 20’s. One was an 80 with the 1.6 HO engine which put out 74 HP and did the 1/4 mile in just over 18 seconds. Perfect car for a teen to not get in trouble with. Favorite part was the RWD with the 4 speed stick. Awesome fun in the snow! Second one was an 81 Diesel with a 5 speed stick. Don’t remember the HP rating but the 1/4 mile times were in the 15 to 20 minute range….. I liked them all, especially because the rally wheels off the Monza with 60 series tires looked awesome on these cars! Down in Brazil they drop in VW 2 liter Turbo engines and use them for drifting.
I worked in a Chevy/Honda/Cadillac/Pontiac dealership and drove these all the time. My favorite was a black/black stick two door with gold stripes and wheels, it was kinda cool. I could change a heater core in 15 minutes on these. Rust issues, sure on salt covered roads and no maintenance. My Honda CVCC was rusty also. Toyota trucks needed the frames replaced and we had at one time 12 frames stacked up for disposal. Japanese cars are not the perfect cars the media made them out to be. We had recall looks (3) and they were 10″ thick, Chevys were no where that big.
I certainly agree that back then Japanese cars had rust problems and recall problems in the American cars were much better. However they have turned around these days, the Japanese cars have significantly fewer recalls than the American cars do and they do just as well, maybe better, as far as rusting issues go.
Hey, it’s blue with a blue interior which is something that is tough to find today except in a Porsche or maybe BMW. And it’s a stick! And rear-wheel drive!
I don’t want to deal with rust but it would be cool to lower this a little, make the exhaust sound better than stock and just drive it for fun. If you wanted a little more fun, drop a GM Ecotech 2.2 in the engine bay backed with a 5-speed.
Would I pay $5k for it? Probably not but I might be in at $3,500 if the rust wasn’t too bad.
I had a chevette and about froze to death in it in the wintertime.The heater would not function in the wintertime.
The heater core was probably plugged up – cooling system may not have been serviced at proper intervals – i don’t think they had 5 yr antifreeze back then – let alone 10 year. It had to be changed every year or 2!
In my chevette i could not turn the heat off in the summer – had to stuff rags in the foot vents lol – easier than shutting off coolant to the core in the summer.
Chevette …… The Bic lighter of the car world.
I drove one of these on a daily basis for the newspaper I worked for from age 16-22. We would load them up with 500lbs of Sunday papers + Inserts and drive them into the ground. Ours were all automatics but would manually shift them, the transmissions would be replaced every 15k miles. I remember rolling up to a paper boy who needed more papers and jamming the shifter into park only for it to break off sending my fist into the radio. They had good traction in the winter time and plenty of E-brake fun on icy roads.
You could always drop in a 500 ci Caddy engine. It’s been done…Remember Hot Rod magazine’s “Bad Seed?”
I think it’s a nice little car and probably worth $5K given the condition, the fact that it runs and has A/C. As far as the hood rust, I’m sure water was trapped in there and that’s what happens. At least it’s not the door panels.
A friend of mine had one “back in the day”… I think he drove it pretty hard and it wouldn’t win many races but it held up as I recall.
So much hate for the little car from some people… they drive a cheap car and then complain that it feels cheap or doesn’t have a lot of power. That doesn’t make the car bad, it’s just that some cars are economy cars. Buy a big, expensive Caddie if you don’t like little cheap cars. Geez.
Finally. Thanks.
My neighbor had one with problems he said if you cant push it Chuvette
When going up a moderately steep hill, one would dare not turn on the A/C. I swear I remember a bicyclist passing us on that hill.
To a car lover from western North Carolina, it is shocking for me to see all the rust that cars from the northern states accumulate. I can only imagine what the chassis parts look like on this little Chevette not to mention the floorboards. Pitiful.
The 1980 I had, the floors were rusted through in the mid 90’s. This was actually helpful because you could pick the car up and run with it if you needed to pass someone….
And yes, the northeast is not nice to vehicles. Actually the crap they put on the roads in winter kill these things. My son lives in Mooresville and I can agree it’s nice to see a mid 80’s S-10 running down the road rust free!
The floors most likely rusted because WATER got INSIDE the car(even just sitting outside & not moving in the rain) through leaky front & rear window seals & poorly sealed body seams. This was not only confined to the Vega, but applied to most cars from the ’80s & older sooner or later. If you had pulled out the carpet & insulation early & permanently, & kept an eye out for leaks & wiped them up quick & tried to fix the leaks with clear sealer, the floor would hold up. Even if you couldn’t stop the leak(s), properly placed newspapers on the floor/tubs in the trunk would hold the water until you changed them/dumped the water out. Was a big PITA tho if it rained often. lol
These days, if such cars are not used regularly & are outside, just cover them.
I bought a 1983 Chevette new. I owned it until the early 90s and when I sold it, it didn’t have one speck of rust anywhere. I took excellent care of that little car, drove it like it should have been driven, maintained it religiously as I have done with all of my cars, ran nothing but Mobil 1 oil in it and kept it in my home garage. And I never had any problems with my Chevette. It had somewhere around 85k miles at the time of sale.
It was a 2-door in black with Sand Gray (Chevrolet’s name for it) interior and was a 4-speed with air.
I sold that car to a family who knew how I took care of my cars. They gave it to their daughter who was heading off to college about 200 miles away. She drove it back and forth the whole four years she was in college and never had any problems with it either.
Upon her graduation, her parents sold the Chevette and bought their daughter a new car. I’ve often wondered how long that car lasted.
Scotty Gilbertson and all the rest of you who are posting trash comments on this car. It would be kinder to just reach out and ask your questions instead of speculating all about what you have no idea what you are even talking about. The car was posted a month ago right out of the barn. That’s what it looked like. It wasn’t buried in some weed field. We have hugh amounts of stuff to take care of. Yes the car drives. I drove it home. I have since reposted this exact car on Marketplace, in Groups, and elsewhere. Search 1984 Chevette to find current postings (links don’t seem to work in this comment field). If you read the current posting you will see the stuff that needed to be done and it drives fine, but it is all original parts and tires and wiper blades and belts. We have since found all the original paperwork, all receipts, all maintenance records, all manuals, all logs, original issue title. The car was undercoated by the dealer at new. That is why there is very little rust, but there is some. Certainly an exposed muffler on a barn floor will rust in that many years. No it wasn’t leaking through the roof. Look at many Chevettes and it was very common to have rusted on at least the driver floorboard. It is original miles, never been painted. I cleaned it out and cleaned it up and put a few coats of wax on it. The seats had not been sat on as they were covered with blankets and towels. The floors had paper in the original post because my mom had rubber mats over carpeted mats and didn’t want to get mud on the rubber mats, so she put down newspaper to keep my dad’s dirty shoes off the rubber mats when he moved it around in the barn. It is NOT that we are trying to hide a bunch of rust holes from the inside. See the photos of the floor from the inside or I can send more. The inside is immaculate. And yes her living room sofa is covered in plastic and never sat on either. I have no idea what it is worth with all the original records. Most of the ones the Chevette groups have posted are completely trashed, insides are filthy, paint is completely worn off, they are not original owners and have no history. I priced it at what similar ones were at high bid from my area. If you want to politely talk about the car and make some reasonable offer, I’m open. Otherwise, please be kind in your words.