25k Mile Granny’s Car: 1980 Chevrolet Chevette
This snow-white, low-mile 1980 Chevrolet Chevette has just over 25,000 miles on it and it was a “granny’s car”, according to the seller. They have it listed here on craigslist in Westminster, Maryland and they’re asking $3,000 or best offer. Thanks to Rocco B. for sending in this tip!
Like them or not, I’m personally glad to see so many great looking, almost-like-new cars showing up here on Barn Finds. Not all of them are dusty and broken-down former residents of dark and dirty barns and storage units. Sometimes, a car like this Chevette shows up and it tells me that there are still a lot of vehicles hiding out there in garages, storage units, and yes, even in barns.
It appears that the rear bumper filler piece is missing but there are no photos showing the driver’s side rear 3/4 view to know for sure. The seller says that this car is nice enough to be in a museum but you’ll want to get that bumper filler in there first. Otherwise, they may not be far from the truth. They say that it has a Pennsylvania title so it has lived in rust country for 40 years now and to have survived this long, and in white, is amazing.
The interior shows some wear, and could that be the original fabric on the seats? If so, that’s pretty cool. There sure is a lot going on inside with colors and patterns for such a small car that’s just plain ol’ white on the exterior. This one has an automatic which should have been a GM Turbo-Hydromatic 3-speed. A 4-speed would have been available but being a “granny’s car”, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten a manual transmission, depending on whether she was a “granny” when she bought the car or when she quit driving it.
The engine should be GM’s 1.6L inline-four with around 70 hp. The seller says that it runs and drives great and is a one-owner car, so they must not have transferred the title over to their name. That might be a problem for some states to “skip” like that, but hopefully it will work out for the next owner. Have any of your grandparents owned a Chevette?!
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Comments
That has to be one of the cleanest Chevettes that I have seen posted on Barn Finds. As for belonging in a museum, do they have a museum of slow?
Is that the same museum with all of the VW Bugs, Ladas, Skodas, Citroens and Yugos?
A friend’s parents ordered a brand new Chevette 4-door in 1980. We were still reeling from the 1979 oil embargo, gas prices were at record highs, inflation was out of control, interest rates were in the high-teens, U.S. hostages were in Iran, and probably the worst President in modern times was in the Oval Office. So I guess ordering a brand new Chevy Chevette was totally appropriate for the mood.
Anyway, when it finally arrived, it was Bright Yellow, not the Light Blue Metallic they ordered. They just took it, not wanting to wait another 4-6 weeks.
Funny, I liked the car and the President. 1980 wasn’t so bad. High rates? Easy to live on a CD, much less risky then an investment is now. Home prices were lower because of the rates, it is all relative The mini vette here is nice, too bad it is not a stick and a four door, that is what we had and it rocked.. People were more realistic 40 years ago, we didn’t ask too much from a car, just grateful for what it was.
They definitely sold a lot of these. Almost 3 million during the whole model run.
It’s hard for anybody who wasn’t around back then to relate to but there was real panic. This is the era where there were fist fights over new shipments of VW Rabbit diesels.
I don’t think housing got cheaper, and I remember huge car price increases due to inflation, which were particularly rough with 17% interest rates.
There was just a general sense of impending doom. It’s not called the malaise era for nothing!
I can just imagine how slow this is with only 70hp, especially hooked to an auto trans. Probably best suited for city driving as that little 4 cylinder putt-putt might be a little terrifying trying to keep up on today’s highways. I’m sure someone will like it but it’s a strong pass for me.
0-60 in 15.5 with the auto and 13.4 with the manual per automobile catalog. Slow? Absolutely. But there was a lot slower during that era believe it or not.
Peugeot 504 diesel for one, regardless of the transmission. I want to say 21.4 second 0-60? I like the ‘Vette, but it would have to be a manual. Hot Rod magazine did an article on a V-6 swap using factory parts…
You didn’t have to go more then 55 MPH anyway. Why such the hurry? Trust me, the older you get, the more you want to stop, slow down, smell them nice little roses.
I had a 1980 full size Chevy Impala as a company car. Had a tiny V8, and would barely fall out of bed unless you pushed it. That was BEFORE the catalytic converted was plugged up – again… To cross a busy cross street, I would hold the accelerator to the floor, then take my foot off the brake to “launch” myself across the street.
Yeah, … the American auto industry was something to be proud of, wasn’t it ? (insert puking icon here)
15 years previous, cars were just getting better and better. Then 1970 happened and they just got crappier and crappier, all the while their advertising “mouth” told the drone masses how those old cars were “bad” and how much better the new sh@t was.
Yup, that stinger hood swap should put it on par with a manual equipped version. Without making it so fast that others fail to appreciate the modification!
The striped seats were one-year-only, all the 1980 Chevette seat patterns were. The all-vinyl had a patchwork pattern and the Custom Interior cloth had vertical stripes and a two-tone effect.
I’m wondering if the passenger side door panels are off another car with a beige interior or if the blue ones faded that badly on their own, the driver’s side ones seem to match.
Discussing the fine points of Chevettes and the era is like dicing a turd, looking for something that isn’t there. They were a POS when new, and getting nostalgic about a dump you took years ago …. really ? It was a grim time for many things American, that had formerly been bright spots in our culture, and the Chevette is something of a icon of a bad time that way. Shove this ugly box into the crusher and try to forget the nightmare.
Do I come off as overly negative on Chevettes ? 🦄🌈🕺🏿💩💥
YES, EXCESSIVELY SO.
If I was looking for quirky summer commuter I’d buy this up immediately.. IMO good price and condition seems great..
70 horsepower was pretty much the norm for small cars back in the early 80,s. They were ridiculously slow with a manual let alone an automatic.
If I had the money, I would buy it, even though I have an intense dislike for GM cars. This would be practical for putting around the city.
Easy to roll the odometer back on any GM car with a mechanical odometer.
Note: Requires actual disassembly down to the roll and removal of the anti-roll back plastic tab and replacing after ”correcting” the milage. The number roll was also available as a service part back in the day at any GM dealership.
And then there was the mechanical gear box that caused the speedometer to read half of the actual speed and miles. Inserted between the cruise control and the speedometer or at the transmission where the speedometer cable hooked to the transmission.
Don’t ask me how I know about this.
Still this car looks like actual miles imo, but i am not a buyer; no desire.
Shortly after I talked a (later found out to be cheating) girlfriend into buying one of these piles in 1980, she gave me the heave-ho. Soon after, her and her new boyfriend were last seen slowly driving the heap into the sunset. I got the boot, and she got the Chevette. Now that’s what I call a win!
I’m guessing most of the people against the Chevette never owned one. I owned a 1983, two door, white with whitewall tires, and five speed stick. No it wasn’t fast, but it was cheap to run, it was extremely reliable and maybe it was the fact that I cared for it in the same manner as my older muscle cars, but it was quite durable. I replaced the timing belt at 117,000 just as cheap insurance and never had any issues whatsoever. Nothing but routine maintenance, oil changes, tires, batteries and one windshield replacement. I sold it in 2000 to a co worker. It had 189,000 miles on it at that point but the passenger side floor was starting to get soft from years of Ohio winters and humidity. There was no rust anywhere else, again due to cleaning the salt off as soon as I got home from work. If you bought one of these for the same purpose I did, to have an inexpensive, durable commuter scooter and cared for it like I did, it rewarded you in spades. If you expected tire shredding performance then you certainly were looking in the wrong place. As an aside, my little Chevette could pull the snow covered hill leading up to my house without a problem. My co workers Camry would spin its front wheels and slide backwards no matter what you did. I had a round trip commute of 80 miles a day back then and most of it was on I 275 going from Northern Cincinnati into northern Kentucky and that little Chevette never let me down. I’m all out of room in my garages or I’d jump on this one.
Cool! If you had a 1983, that was possibly the 1.6L HO believe it or not. Instead of 70 HP it put out 76HP…haha. Great fun cars. We swapped out the 1.6 for a 2.8 V6 from a Malibu. It was fun for a short while until things started rattling apart..
I owned a 76 Chevrolet Chevette. It was baby blue, and pretty much in excellent condition. I bought it from a guy who said it was in his family, and different family members drove it even a teenager for about 2 years in high school. When I bought it, it only had about 30k on it. It was the 1.4 or 1.6 with a manual 4 speed. The interior was blue and in excellent condition. When the engine started to die on occasion while driving, and I could not remedy it. I decided to trade it for a 85 Jeep Wagoneer 2.8L in 2016 rather than throw more money at it. I have seen it driven around today by what appears to be the same guy who bought it off the guy who I traded it for.
If memory serves me correctly it was the best selling car in the country for the 1979- 80 model years. 1978 saw the introduction of the four-door which really kicked up sales. We built over 2 million Chevettes at Wilmington Delaware assembly plant from 1976 to 1984. We did max overtime of ten hours six days a week and had every third Saturday off. It was the only time that we raised our line speed from 60 to 70 jobs per hour to meet demand. A plant employee ordered the 2 millionth one. I have pictures of it coming off the assembly line and still has the car.
Makes me wonder about the Geo Metro which was around the same time this car came out. They got really good mileage but looked dangerous.
Geo Metro came out years later. The Metro evolved from the Chevy Sprint (both actually made by Suzuki in Japan). But even the Sprint was several years after this Chevette. I believe 1986 was the start of the Chevy Sprint.
1985 for the Sprint, California only. Rest of the country got them in 1986. I had one for 4 years, bought it as a trade in from the original CA owner. Great little car with the 4 speed. Pulled close to 50mpg but had a tough time with hills!
I owned a 1980 model for about 6 months in 1983; it was a yellow 4dr with a 4 speed tranny. I was 19 years old and I hated it because it was a Chevette…so uncool! It was like new really (it had less than 20k miles on it), but it was so cheap looking inside (especially) and out! In retrospect it was thrifty, reliable, and I liked the utility afforded by the hatchback and fold-down rear seat. It was totaled when a pickup ran a light and I slammed into the side of it. I replaced it with an infinitely better 1981 Isuzu I-Mark LS diesel (ironic since the Isuzu/Opel platform was shared with the Chevette).
A friend of mine bought one of these with a diesel and 5speed it went 300K and was pretty much trouble free !
But was it ugly-free ? The answer is “no”.
For those who only care about troublefree miles and not a wit about aesthetics, the Chevette was probably a wonder car. For those of us that knew the 50’s and 60’s cars, cars like the Chevette were nothing but cheap trash being foisted on the American public as “something better”. To add insult to injury, the marketing often told us how awful those old cars were and how much better this crap was.
To be fair, you eastern road salters DO face a real problem with what to drive in winter, and I suppose an ugly little box is just as good of a throw-away winter beater as anything. Out west, rust and salt just are not a problem, so most old cars just get junked when the owner gets tired of mechanical work, not because the body fell down over the wheels !
Well, my response would be, I specifically picked the Chevette. I thought it wasn’t bad looking for a small car. A friend had a W Rabbit which looked like an origami box to me AND was constantly in the shop for one thing or another. And I was not one to believe the bit about older cars being bad. At the time I owned my Chevette I also owned 65,68 and 69 Impalas, a 68 Chevelle and a 68 Nova SS, all still in my garage except the 65, and the Chevelle.
Total chick repellent
What the Chevette could have been. GM North America ruined a perfect car (The Opel Kadett) by Americanizing it for what they thought were American tastes. https://bestcarmag.com/makes/Opel/Kadett/1975-Opel-Kadett
I think it depends on what part of the country that you were in to say how popular the Chevette was. I asked my Dad about the car, and he said he doesn’t remember seeing any around Albuquerque, NM back in the day it was produced.
Ha. I just looked at the ad and it appears to be a guy I bought a car from years ago… his ads are always in CAPS and he specializes in “granny cars” or cars that “come from a very nice upscale neighborhood with super low miles”… rest assured it will NOT be as nice as it looks in the ad… he used to sell on ebay and he had a LOT of negative feedback and he can’t sell it with a Md title. Buyer beware.
We had a 78 Chevette 4 door, 4 speed with air conditioning. It had a factory stripe package (yellow and gold) on brown paint with plaid interior in like tones. There was the word “Sport” stamped in the metal work parts of the suspension – wierd enough given the 70 horsepower. You could feel the air conditioner compressor cycle in and out while cruising the interstate – it might maintain 65mph with the accelerator matted. The plastic or nylon shifter forks wore so badly at 70 k miles the transmission wouldn’t hold reverse even by pressing on the shifter. Parts recyclers didn’t have many manual transmissions around due to that problem. I don’t remember what we paid for the little car but it’s fun to remember it.
78 Chevette was the first year to have 4 doors. 76 and 77 did not.