Regular Car Reviews: 1976 Chevrolet Chevette

oh you your 1976 area whether you're your precious little squirt oh you caught yourself on your overhead kill yeah more year we gotta get scrunch going all you all be here you cooperated you sipped it when you go to your Co for compute or or you good you co no one serviceable here could be near or get Z got throw the whole thing we and your fourth year you came out you were designating unsafe for highway use partnered with this soon you know how Jia 1976 Chevrolet Chevette when the gas crunch happened all the American manufacturers had to do something and they were freaking out we gotta do something and here it is this is the solution it's something I wasn't kidding about the non serviceable air cleaner it really was one gigantic piece of metal you were supposed to throw out this Shiva zone by Justin Kramer a friend of the show and the guy who gave us the Edelbrock four-barrel carburetor that's going in the Vagabond Falcon Thank You Justin for 12 years the Chevrolet Chevette was the entry-level subcompact selling 2.8 million units over the course of its lifetime it was even produced in South America till nearly 1999 now is decades after they stopped making this thing in the States okay let me rock steady right out of the president into a quick history lesson the Chevette was based around the GM t platform and was developed by General Motors in partnership with Isuzu the goal to create a straightforward rear-wheel drive car something as delightfully uncomplicated as a honeymoon phase in a lousy relationship the unremarkable nature of its design mount that production costs would be low and repair and maintenance expenses would be similarly inexpensive for consumers with the exception of that air cleaner Justin was able to find at a flea market some third party air cleaner that opens up so you can replace the air filter element my General Motors had an air cleaner you couldn't anyway of course even with everything General Motors was putting into the Chevette it wasn't really meant to be a market boomer if anything it was a placeholder until they could get the ex car platform off the ground but that took years so the Chevette was for the guy whose favorite food is sandwiches and whose sexual kink is naked women smiling although it went by plenty of names overseas like the Arcadia and the Gemini GM hoped that the name Chevette would call to mind the Corvette and would be a success through association and it worked considering they managed to sell millions of these things but that had less to do with the name and more to do with the economical efficiency of the car itself on one hand it hovered around 100 horse fat yeah right no way this thing did not make a hundred horsepower no matter what General Motors now justin kramer had this thing that this one's an automatic and this one's in good shape it's a good survivor and it runs and he took it to one of the sloppy mechanics dyno day and this car set the low horsepower record you're ready just guess I'll give you a three-second count guess how much horsepower this makes to the wheels 23 23 horsepower you could get a Chevy Chevette in the 70s for around three thousand dollars new now that's 1970s money so that's about $14,000 today in 2016 that made it one of the lowest price new cars on the market at the time by the time of its death the Chevette was getting hammered in the market by Corollas and civics which were more efficient faster and economical in effect the Corollas and civics of the world became what the Chevette once was when it was new a solid economy car that would eventually become the first car of the teenager in the family a first car for a first job working a mom-and-pop hardware store or delivering Chinese food to stone college kids in fact you could make the argument that this was perfect for teenagers at the time because make no mistake despite the cramped dimensions of the interior teenage boys were gonna find a way around the limitations anything to get their ball band leaders marching in the pink parade today should vets exist as cars to be modded usually for auto cross although that's not always the case some guys will throw on everything from rally wheels and v6 and v8 of course the LS go look on YouTube and just type Chevette LS swap and watch the fun and it is it is a small dumpy looking car that is rear-wheel drive that will accept a lot of modifications so why not but some people hate the Chevette they hate it for its pedestrian functionality and the cheapness it represents maybe they remember the 70s I mean this was crap GM this is not well-made it's fun from a modern standpoint because it's so light but every dash piece in here you can put your hand on it and shove it around these things were slapped together this is mid 70s American engineering this is right there with British Leyland and it makes you appreciate how good cheap cars are today but the people who really hate them remember the Chevette because that's what they had to deal with a lame imitation of the Opel cadet a rush job to make everyone forget about the failure of the Vega but anybody who tries to claim this car was a failure he's a bigger liar than the girlfriend who says I'll eat whatever just pick a restaurant of course to say this car wasn't generic for its time would be a lie as well but if you drive one enough you start forgetting it's a shavette whether that's a good thing or not is up to you but driving a shavette is a lot like when all your female friends are getting married on Facebook and you start forgetting the names you knew them by one minute you're in a shavette in the next minute you're at Wegmans picking up a sixer of troves but no memory of how you got there because the Chevette represents america trying to get their hands and brains around small cheap cars especially when we weren't competing against ourselves when we are competing against other markets it's the automotive equivalent of fondly remembering a rebuilding year on your high school football team things aren't so bad in retrospect it's not so bad it's the only Chevelle we've ever had it's not coming back unless GM starts IV drips of Vlad

Channel: RegularCars

Views: 862,294

Rating: 4.7570653 out of 5

Keywords: Regular Car Reviews, Chevette, A E S T H E T I C, Chevy Chevette, Chevrolet Chevette, Chevette Review, Chevette Retro Review, Sloppy Mechanics

Id: 3yARgE9vosw

Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/ServerOfJustice]

Not to defend it but Wiki says the '76 model with the 1.4L made 53 HP, not 100. The automatic also lacked a locking torque converter until well into the 80s. That's still quite a loss to the wheels though - maybe some mechanical issues?

[u/Nariek]

That took a fascinating turn, and I certainly enjoyed it.

[u/[deleted]]

I guessed 35. And I thought I was low-balling it by 10 or so.

[u/erix84]

My mom had a baby blue Chevette with a manual, it was an 80s model though, she had it in the mid 90s. She also had the oh so great "Chevy Nova" which was actually a Toyota Tercel I think? Both sucked big time.

[u/e2hawkeye]

The driving school for surly wing haired denim clad teenagers that I went to had a fleet of Chevettes.

To this day I remember it as the narrowest car I've ever been in. You put the key in the lock and you'll stab everyone inside

[u/Gregarious_Raconteur]

Now that was a return to form. Well done Mr. /u/regularcars !

[u/[deleted]]

I had to borrow one to go to pick up some parts for my car back in the day. I was just amazed that they drove such a car on a daily basis but hey, it got me back on the road again.

[u/Snappytopher]

If you pause the video at 6:03 you see the manual stating the SAE net horsepower rating is 60.

[u/joecooool418]

My grandmother had one, getting on the highway was a scary experience.