One of the more challenging aspects of writing about cars is leaving your biases somewhere other than on your written pages. And when it comes to a Chevrolet Chevette, such as this 1986 example, that becomes a tough row to hoe because you see, I was a Chevette custodian way back – and I have never forgotten the experience. So, with objective thoughts in mind, allow me to continue. Today’s subject car is located in Anthem, Arizona and is available, here on craigslist for $2,700. Thanks to Pat L. for this tip!
By ’86, the Chevette was on the way out. Having been introduced in ’76 as a salve for the memorable-for-all-the- wrong-reasons Chevrolet Vega, the Chevette was really a borrowed Opel design powered by a smaller, but more reliable engine, not afflicted with the foibles that destroyed the Vega’s reputation and for some, put Chevrolet in the doghouse for years to come. By ’87, the Chevette was history being succeeded by the Sprint which was a Suzuki model at heart. Generally found as a two-door coupe, a lengthened four-door sedan was added in ’78. Successful? Depends on how you measure success. Based on sales, the diminutive Chevy T-Body regularly sold more than 100K units per year and even managed to knock out 46K in its final abbreviated ’87 model year which ended in December of ’86.
The seller refers to this Chevy as a survivor and it does seem to fit that bill. The two-tone finish of this 70K mile example is flat but Arizona’s unrelenting sun will do that to the best of automobile finishes over time. The seller mentions that the bottom of the doors have been Bondoed but there is only scale and surface rust underneath. The Bondo could be the result of rot repair but it could also be the result of snagging something low lying like a close to the road fire hydrant – this is an Arizona car now, but perhaps not always. Nevertheless, the body shows well and nothing is obviously out of place – the black steel wheel/chrome trim ring provides a more updated and modern appearance.
Under the hood is a 65 net HP, 1.6 liter, four-cylinder motor working its hardest through a three-speed automatic transmission that, “Starts, runs and drives great“. It runs great if you have time. My ’80 Chevette had the dual-squirrel 74 net HP engine/four-speed manual transmission combo and it wouldn’t get out of its own way. Everyone’s expectations are relative I guess and this could be a lot worse as there was an “optional” 51 HP diesel engine available too. The seller suggests that the brakes are soft but the car stops well so some brake work may be in this Chevy’s future.
The interior is surprisingly clean and shows minimal wear – no rips, tears, etc. in the upholstery. The headliner is supposedly fine but the dash pad is revealing the stress of sun and age right around the speaker vent – a very typical problem. Here’s a surprise – check out the speedometer/odometer – it’s metric! Perhaps this Chevette was an import from Canada? Overall, the interior is a spartan affair, as economy cars were in ’86, but it’s still functional and pleasant enough.
So, who’s going to buy this $2,700 compact sedan? Based on my difficult experience, I’ll take a hard pass but there’s a hindside for every seat and there are those, that actually have an excitement factor for these mostly forgotten (except by me) Chevy compacts. Someone will scoop up this sedan and probably enjoy it, wouldn’t you agree?
I don’t know how anyone could enjoy 65hp. Especially with an auto trans. The only appeal I can see here is as a first car for one of your kids; they’ll never get a speeding ticket. 😂🤣
My wife had a Pontiac T1000. I got a speeding ticket with it. 83 mph, radar verified. The officer asked me why I was going that fast, I told him that was a fast as it went. I had it floored.
Were you going downhill?
Yes, this would be a great first car for one of your kids.
Especially if you have a daughter.
NO room for any hanky panky. lol !!!!
I can verify that you CAN, in fact, conduct hanky panky in a Chevette.
Years ago a friend of mine had a diesel model. He took it to the local gas station for an oil change. The lift was the type that you drove onto the lift. He said everyone at that gas station was laughing at him because the Chevette didn’t have enough power to drive onto the lift. The mechanics had to push the Chevette onto the lift while my friend was driving. An insult to the name Vette.
I had a diesel model, and parted out several others. That diesel engine was the best engineered part of the car.
LOL yes no speeding ticket. I had a 1974 Mercedes 240D with a 4 speed manual. Cop pulled me over trying to say I was doing 80 up a hill. lol
If I absolutely had to drive one of these, I think I’d rather have the Oakbug H1.
I am the oddball that loves this thing. I have the cash in the bank, but after being a guest of the fine state of Wisconsin for the last year, I need to keep in the bank what I already have, and put even more in the account. If I still had a license, and could work my night job along with my day job, this would be heading to Wisconsin already. But alas, with no license, my career driving nights are over for now, money doesn’t stretch like it did Pre-corona virus, so instead of adding to my little collection of toys, I gotta continue thinning the herd. That sucks, because I see oddball cars like this, and I want to add them to the herd. Especially cheap ones like this. I’ve been drooling at this one since I discovered it 10 days ago, right after my release to the real world.
Care to elaborate on that guest status?
I had a pleasant stay @ the state of Wisconsin Graybar hotel for a dui. In Wisconsin, every time you get a dui your legal b.a.c. goes down. I blew .04, the law is .08 for anyone who hasn’t had any d.u.i.’s. But I had prior, the most recent was now 12 years ago. There is not one other state where I would have been charged at .04. In Wisconsin, you get charged & convicted, then thrown in prison for a year. I got off light. It is usually a minimum of 18 months, but because of my exceedingly low b.a.c. they went light on me.
Truth is, I knew what the law is. I knew I was over the .02 which is my legal limit in Wisconsin. I had one tapper of light & two shots of Jack Daniel’s, & that what I drank would put me over.02. I guess I deserved what I got.
I have 4 years to serve on parole, then I am out of this god-forsaken frigid hell-hole of a state.
Reading through your thread, I’ll tip my hat to you for your sense of accountability. It’s refreshing to hear someone own their behavior. As for the Wisconsin law… Sounds ridiculous! A .04 based upon a conviction from 12 years ago? At a time when most states are letting more egregious crimes go totally unpunished. Good luck to you sir.
Thank you for the kind words. My last one was in 2008, convicted in 2009. But I had others prior to that, my first on being 30 years ago. In Wisconsin, like many other states, they stay on your record for life. The differences are that in Wisconsin, every time you get one, your personal legal b.a.c. goes down.
This was my 6th offense, but in any other state of our union, 4 of them (including this one) I would have never been charged because I was under .08, which is pretty much standard dui b.a.c. nation wide.
After the first time that happened, and I learned what the law is, that should have taught me a lesson. Obviously I’m a slow learner. Now I’m too old for this crap. I can’t, & won’t let it happen again.
I wish you all a wonderful labor day weekend!
@Stevieg, after (6) DUI’s, you are obviously lucky too, that you didn’t kill yourself or someone else.
@Stevieg, I also applaud your admittance of responsibility, but I question your judgement in general. Six DUIs? After the first I would have decided that ANY alcohol and driving would be verboten. In Norway (per my family there), your first DUI is five years in prison (though Norwegian prisons are more like summer camp than punishment). They have little problem with repeat drunk drivers, which is a good thing as they have some of the scariest roads in the world. Forgive me if I sound judgmental, I lost a very good friend to a repeat drunk driver. I guess I am still bitter over such a senseless loss of life.
Stevieg, glad to see you’re free and praying for you in the future. Always enjoy your posts and hope you’ll be here for many more years.
Thank you Mr. Bush. I hope I’m here in the future too.
Either way, I wish a safe and peaceful existence for all of us.
Apparently this Chevette seat now has an as…oops, “hindside”in it–Craigslist ad deleted.
I worked at Oursman Chevrolet here in the DC area and they sold tons of these! That was some good times!
I college I dated a girl who had an orange manual Chevette…. Spent a lot of time in her car… because she didn’t like my Volvo. To the uninitiated….both looked cute and tempting….but after spending many hours trying to find joy and fun…and realizing their was no possibility in either….both had to go! I reminisce about my old Volvo – not at all about the Chevy or her owner.
The manual that came with it was orange? Was that rare?
Rarer than the brown Manuel.
Nicest One Left?
This or a Yugo…🤔
Can’t understand the lack of “put an LS in it” comments.
You CAN put an LS in it. The only question then is where does the driver sit?
We had a 79 4sp and it ran pretty well with decent mIleage. Good second car and never any issues for the 90k Mike’s we had it.
Chevette was the 2nd attempt to replace the Corvair. Sprint and Spectrum were 3rd and 4th. Geo’s were 5th. The Cobalt 6th and the Cruze, now dead means there is NO replacement for the Corvair.
They should make it again.
The Chevy II/Nova and Camaro replaced the Corvair.
Actually Cobalt and Cruze followed the Cavalier…they were compacts rather than sub compacts like the others.
Chevettes are collectible? Who woulda thunk it!
In the early 90s I was buying these things from abandoned car auctions for $25- $100 bucks and selling off parts to people who were trying to keep theirs on the road a little longer and selling the rest for scrap made a good living until it didn’t.
The car is most certainly a Canadian Car with the metric Speedometer and the tell-tale dealer nameplate on the rear “Carter – Winnepeg” , a dealer in Manitoba… this might explain some bondo in the bottoms of the doors…
Winnipeg!
I loved mine with a manual trans. The AC was cold. The heater hot. It started every time. I added a header, lost the pellet Cat added a good muffler and fattened the mix up 2 sizes. Exhaust CHOKED the life out of these. Mine woke right up to the point the clutch had a tough time holding in 1st. Got 45mpg on the highway. It was nice driving all week for $10. If this had under 50k miles, I’d be a buyer. They do show up now and then.
I had an ’83 back in the day, not the WORST 1st car for a young man to own……..
Got a Chevette once for my son to drive to work. It got rear-ended & totaled, but was still driveable. Might have been the best thing that ever happened to that car. Worst thing would have been the day I bought it. What a cheap piece of junk!
Carter Chev Olds. A Winnipeg GM Dealer. What is a Winnipeg car doing in Arizona? Maybe when the Jets 1st edition moved to Phoenix in the 1990s, one of the Jets brought it with him? Ha Ha.
I don’t think there’s anyone out there who would buy this car at any price. If there is, better look under those carpet pieces on the floor first. And for anyone who thinks this might be a great “first car” for their teenage daughter, save your money. There isn’t a teenage girl out there who would ever be caught dead behind the wheel of this “car”.
You will be surprised! Hehehehehe
The girl I dated who had one might as well have been dead – and to think her dad bought her that car – always made me wonder what he thought of her!
Shaking my head with all the condescending comments on this Chevette. Cars like these filled a notch in the new or used car buying echelon for those that needed an extremely affordable new car with good MPGs but did not want to buy a Honda or Toyota but rather wanted to stick to one of the offerings by the Big Three from the dealerships that at that time greatly outnumbered those of the foreign marques. So for the American consumer at this price point it was Chevette/T-1000 from Chevy/Pontiac, Omni/Horizon from Dodge/Plymouth, or Escort/Lynx from Ford/Mercury.
The consumer type of the Chevy Chevette back in the day still exists today but that consumer type now purchases the Chevy Spark which like the Chevette is truly intended to be a “short term disposable” car with an anticipated lifespan of about 5 years before sent to the crusher.
When I was a teen in the 1980’s, my family was in the income level that limited the choices of cars my parents could afford. For those alive back then, we need to remember that cars typically did not last as long as they do now nor were they as reliable as they are now. So the buying public typically stuck to purchasing a new vehicle that fit their income level or tried to find a gently used 1 or 2 year old car and hoped for the best for the new or used vehicle. We had this exact same model year Chevette but ours was two-tone brown. Parents bought it when it was 1 year old and we had it for 1 year before I got t-boned in it at an intersection. Foolishly, I was not wearing a seat belt and I flew across the front seat compartment and my head went through the passenger door window. Surprisingly I walked away with scratches and maybe my bell rung and as for the car although it was “totaled” astonishingly it held up well to the other car plowing into the side of it as the “a” and “b” pillars (respectively between the front fender and front door and front door and rear drivers side door) did its job of protecting the interior cabin like the “cage” safety design intended to it to perform. Somebody mentioned the Corvair in comments above, so it appears that Ralph Nader’s “unsafe at any speed” attacks on Chevy and their Corvair just two decades earlier obviously forced Chevy and other manufacturers to up their safety game and doing so it saved my life and allowed me to be sitting here typing this up 30+ years later after totaling my parents Chevette.
However, this experience for me as a teen coupled with growing up impacted by my parents limited income (which as explained affected their car purchasing ability) led me to grasp and take advantage of the investment this nation makes in all of us citizens for 13 years with a free K-12 education. Doing so allows us to set ourselves up to earn more than our parents in most cases. When that free K-12 education is coupled with further personal investment in ourselves via further higher education or training or workplace development and dedication, it raises our income potential even greater.
Ultimately, as the years and decades went by, making that investment in myself allowed me to purchase safer and better if not new then gently used vehicles. Vehicles that last much longer (if not t-boned or other wise wrecked) than those vehicles we could afford when I was growing up. Lastly, as some mentioned above in regards to cars for our own children, that investment in myself allowed me just last year to hand over to our college bound daughter the keys to our 2014 Rav4 (well cared for since new yet 6 years old with 100k miles on the clock) knowing not only did my investment in myself allowed me to do so but also knowing that here in the 2020’s that vehicle will not only keep her extremely safe but with her continued care and caution it will serve her another 6 years for her college years and beginning career years and likely many more beyond that for the next owner.
Now, if I were not handing over keys to our vehicles to my own two daughters, maybe I could have pursued adding this Chevette to my collection as a “nostalgia experience” but by all means skipping the part were I get t-boned and total the car!
Well-written, and thank you.
Somebody help me with this please . . . I know that the 1.8 diesel used in these was an Isuzu product, and I’m pretty sure that the rest of the car was built by Opel . . . can anybody verify this?
Found online:
“Other cars built on the same platform included the Opel Kadett (Germany), the Holden Gemini (Australia), the Isuzu Piazza (Japan) and the Daewoo Maepsy (South Korea).”
@connbackroads
No, the north American Chevette was not built by open. The design was heavily based on the Opel Kadett (another one of GM’s T-body “world” cars). Vauxhall had a version too (England). (Google Vauxhall Chevette HSR for some cool chevette rally cars).
Anyway, the North American Chevette, and Pontiac T1000 and Acadian (Pontiac Chevette in Canada) was built in Wilmington Delaware or Lakewood, Georgia. These were very much American made cars and that fact helped them reach some very good sales figures in the late 70’s early 80’s when there was still a very strong “Buy American” sentiment.
The Chevette wasn’t an awful car like so many on here like to claim. It was actually a pretty reliable small car and very inexpensive to buy and maintain. But people (most of whom never owned one) like to throw mud at anything that isn’t considered “cool”.
Thanks Erik. Interesting story. I gotta hunch your daughter would have politely said thanks but no thanks if you handed her the keys to a Chevette rather than a Rav4.
Whole lotta Chevette hating’ going on here. Out of high school bought a slightly used one at local Chevy dealer in NJ. Dad co-signed so I could start to establish a credit history. Drove it thru community college, job 60 miles each day. Later the police academy and after sold it with over 100K to my Sgt.’s wife who used it on a mail route till floor rusted out. Car never missed a beat. Will always have good memories of that car.
Bought a used one for my son when he turned 16. I figured he couldn’t get into to much trouble. After a couple of weeks he had a flat left front tire. The sidewall was worn completely off! When I asked him, He swore he wasn’t cornering very fast.