Suddenly, a Chevette!
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@WhoIsTheLeader no, I think more as in the ones they had stayed in the fleet for like 15-20 years, so when someone left, the car got cleaned up and reassigned to the next person, instead of buying a new car
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This seems safe?
We apologize for the inconvenience.
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@WilliamsSW
As long as I’m on this side of the screen it is. -
@WhoIsTheLeader You imagine exactly correctly. Once it was no longer fit for the road it became a 'rally car'. Until the community centre across the street for my townhouse complex clued in that the car wasn't supposed to be parked there all the time and then the towing company got it.
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The first car I ever drove was a T-car (Opel Kadett, '67 I think). Later I borrowed a Shove-It, I remember driving with my elbows against my stomach because there was no place else to put them.
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@ttyymmnn Motorweek wasn't very kind to it at all and that seems fair. I really can't think of a good reason for someone to have bought one new other than the fact that they were readily available.
Was there any particular reason why/how your parents ended up with one? I guess it would be a great kid car because it would be pretty hard to get into real trouble in one. Did they have a higher than average tolerance for stupidity?
@KITT222 I can't imagine how bad the police cars/drivers giving chase must have been to lose to a Chevette. Regardless of what you think about them, they weren't exactly known for their quickness in a straight line or in corners.
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@Mark-Tucker said in Suddenly, a Chevette!:
@WhoIsTheLeader Some people just buy stuff and take care of it. I'm sure it's nothing special to them; they probably have a 40 year old lawnmower and vacuum cleaner, too.
It's on antique plates though. Florida's look much better than Georgia's antique plates but I don't think they do year of manufacture plates either.
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@FTTOHG said in Suddenly, a Chevette!:
My overall take on these boils down to save one for a museum and crush the rest
Clearly you came to this conclusion early on because why else would you have spray painted profanities on it? Was it lasting only a year more due to your treatment of it or was it just that far gone?
Color enthusiast, Citroën fanatic, and Cruze driver
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@RacinBob It's impressive how GM seems to have had entirely the wrong priorities with the Chevette. Though your experience seems unusual as they have been called unreliable. It seems like Chevettes might have been more simple and durable than they were effortlessly reliable.
Color enthusiast, Citroën fanatic, and Cruze driver
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Referenced by
WhoIsTheLeader
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@WhoIsTheLeader But simple and durable is generally reliable right? They used an Opel Kadet front suspension, a Brazilian engine and the rest was sourced from US or wherever. It was OK stuff. So you can't say it was F work because it wasn't. It was C work when the world was moving on to A work.
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@RacinBob Well that was exactly it. It was a functional enough car but it wasn't something the customer or GM could really be proud of. It was kind of a cynical take on a car.
Color enthusiast, Citroën fanatic, and Cruze driver
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@WhoIsTheLeader said in Suddenly, a Chevette!:
It was kind of a cynical take on a car.
I wonder if that is too cruel of a take. In the '70's when the Chevette was launched GM was developing the X car and its FWD derivatives which included all the way to the Cadillac Eldorado. Is it inaccurate to say they couldn't do everything?
I would say the the Chevette was as good of car as they could do with the resources they could justify in 1976 for that segment. Remember, they could have just said that the Nova was their small car and done nothing. They did try, and it was a seller. The Chevette was good for the plant that made it and the dealers that sold it, And customers wanted it.
I don't think that its manufacture was mean or cynical, lets call it GM picking their battles. Big cars and later trucks/SUV's were their priority and where they made their living and the Chevette was about as good as they could do with the resources available for that segment.
I don't recall Honda making a great pickup truck or VW making a great V8 sedan in '76. As such I don't think its fair to call GM out for their limited execution of their Chevette subcompact line when they had more important opportunities to pay attention to in the North American market....
As the Rolling Stones said in '69, "You can't always get what you want".....
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@RacinBob There is some truth to the matter but when you're losing customers long-term because your bottom of the barrel car was so successful then there's definitely a problem.
Though the Citation that they focused on wasn't exactly as amazing as they touted it as either.
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@WhoIsTheLeader the profanities had nothing to do with my opinion of the car. I was honestly just trying to have fun with it at that point. I had no experience with paint. I was 17, thought it was funny because giant curse word and didn’t realize it wasn’t all going to dry a uniform color. That being said… it was just so far gone that I was OK with screwing around with it to that level anyway. I wanted to like it. I liked the overall shape and and idea of it as a practical runabout. And where you’re 16 it is great just to be mobile. But it was crap. It only had something like 50,000 miles on it and my grandma kept up with maintenance. But even the pieces that weren’t broken just weren’t good. I spent a lot of time digging around that car to do things like upgrade the factory 1-speaker stereo and redo the seats and just found awful cost cutting everywhere. It is convenient to say well GM did the best they could with the resources they had and it was a cheap entry level model and it was a good runabout for the price. But beyond maybe the first model year or two it just plain wasn’t. I worked at a garage in a working class neighborhood from ‘00-03 and drove pretty much all the low end stuff from the early 80’s. The Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon came out 2 years later, cost just a tiny bit more (both started under $4k) and was miles ahead. At the same time the Chevette debuted, you could get a VW Rabbit for around the same price. While both left something to be desired in the reliability department, the Rabbit was a much better thing to drive and live with. I’d say the Chevette was interesting because it could be had with a diesel, but so could the Rabbit. I like oddball cars and can make a case to preserve just about anything with some level of good looks, performance, driver engagement, economy, durability and/or general quirkiness… but the Chevette has none of that.
2022 Ascent, 2013 Outback, 2012 SVT Raptor
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@FTTOHG said in Suddenly, a Chevette!:
looks, performance, driver engagement, economy, durability and/or general quirkiness… but the Chevette has none of that
Fair point. It wasn't a very imaginative car, for sure. Today that's how people might describe the Mitsubishi Mirage (or worse, the Mirage G4 sedan), but even that isn't a truly irredeemable car. There really aren't cars being made with that many rough edges today.
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My dad’s company car in New Zealand, 1977.
VAUXHALL Chevette! Yes, this the actual car from a scanned slide.
Can't copy/paste/share, and post edits are usually wonky. Not drunk. Maybe.
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@ash78 The rugged RWD construction probably made it a better fit for New Zealand's endless dirt roads than its competitors using then unproven FWD. I suppose it could have been worse.
