The 1973 oil embargo and subsequent 1979 oil crisis forced domestic automakers to produce smaller vehicles with more efficient gas or diesel four-cylinder engines. For General Motors, this resulted in cars like the Cadillac Cimmaron and Chevrolet Chevette – definite dark spots in the automaker’s otherwise bright past.
But while the Chevette is now seen as a bit of an embarrassing part of GM’s history, it was an undeniably important vehicle for the automaker in the post-oil crisis era. The Chevette was America’s best-selling car for the 1981 model year, so for 1982, GM sought to continue that success with an ad campaign touting the car’s various available features, impressive highway fuel economy and low MSRP.
We recently stumbled across one of GM’s ads for the 1982 model-year Chevrolet Chevette on YouTube. The ad touts the car’s standard equipment, which included things like an AM radio, reclining seats (yes, that was considered an option at the time), white stripe tires and fold-down rear seats, and brags of the car’s EPA-estimated 30 mpg fuel economy rating. The EPA also rated the Chevette at an impressive 42 mpg highway, which would be a good rating for a modern-day compact car, let alone one from the early 1980s. Then again, modern-day cars are quite heavy compared to the Chevette thanks to their additional safety features and technology.
The big selling point for the Chevrolet Chevette, though, was its price. The Chevette started in the low-to-mid $5,000 range in 1982, equivalent to about $14,000 in today’s money. With a price tag like that, it’s really no wonder why the Chevette sold so well – even if wasn’t really GM’s best effort.
Check out the vintage early ’80s ad embedded below.
Subscribe to GM Authority for more GM car vintage news, Chevrolet news, and 24/7 GM news coverage.
Comments
I owned an 84 diesel chevette with the 3 speed auto. Got it used and it had seen better days but I thought it was a blast to drive. It was easy to work on and the Isuzu 4FB1 diesel engine was bulletproof. Loud, lots of smoke and underpowered but fun.
jimmy you got parts left from that chevette. iam looking for a fuel pump with sending unit my car is 82 1.8 diesel , hope you san help me. thank you Charlie.
People wanted a fairly basis form of transportation then, and they want it now. Goodbye to domestic branded cars and hello to foreign branded cars that fill that gap that never should have been given up on.
I drove to engineering school and started my seafood business in a silver 78 Chevette 4 door hatchback . I pulled the passenger and back seats out filled the car with 50# cartons of fish , soft crabs, hard crabs and clams and carried 8 bushel of oysters on the roof from Md to Ny twice a week for 1.5 years while working another job in Tarrytown Ny . It only had a 1.6 or 1.8 liter motor with a 4 speed and I used to blow the doors off of the little BMWs and anything in its class. A guy ran into the back of me one night in NJ and smashed his import up pretty bad , he was 1/2 drunk and offed me $100 for the small dent and slightly bent bumper. That was like $1000 back then so I took it . We named the car the Battle Chevette and after a few more years and 250K miles and after the business took off and we bought 2 Chevrolet 6 wheelers I gave it to my younger brother who wrecked it the first weekend he had it. It went to a local junk yard and last I heard in the early 90s the engine had been removed installed in another Chevette and was still running! My business does 25 million a year now and I owe a lot to that lil car. It never let me down
I had a 1976 Chevette. I really liked the car. It had an indoor pool on the passenger side. Every time it rained the car would fill with water. When you turned a corner there would be a big wave. In the winter there was an ice rink.
I found that out too. Easy fix I found was to put silicone between the gap at the base of the windshield where the front fender and the cowl meet. not pretty but totally effective.
I think this article is incorrect to label the Chevette an embarrassment akin to the Cimarron. The Chevette was a solid little car that sold well, was proven to be reliable, and did no long term damage to the Chevy brand. It was essentially an Americanized version of Opel’s small hatchback that’d been serving Europeans well. It gave Chevrolet a legitimate competitor to the rising Japanese brands offering low priced, fuel efficient cars to a changing America. Cimarron was a disaster of a whole different magnitude that began a 40 year decline of America’s most prestigious car brand. There’s really no comparison.
People repeat that the Cimarron was a disaster of its time, BUT that same Cimarron formula is found in the “luxury” priced German makes today. Instead of naming it a disaster… ahead of its time is more appropriate.
Could you cite an example of a German make doing what Cadillac did?
Remember Cimarron was a fully equipped Chevrolet Cavalier with leather seats, a “sporty” Pontiac steering wheel, aluminum wheels, revised taillights, and a plastic “Cadillac” grille augmented by quad headlights. GM finished off the package with revised spring rates and bushings. It wasn’t much in terms of new or unique parts.
A Cimarron cost roughly $12,000. while a nice Cavalier CL could be had for about 30 percent less or about $8,000. Considering that it was essentially the same product, it was a significant markup. I know of no BMW or Mercedes created from the bones of a entry level commodity brand product.
Having said that, your argument that Cimarron was ahead of its time may still be true. GM still creates the Cadillac Escalade using the same formula as it’s merely a thinly disguised Tahoe. I think the difference is that a Tahoe is a large high-end Chevy whereas Cavalier was an entry level car with an unrefined 88 horsepower 1.8 I-4. It was a very low-end car and they tried to make a Cadillac out of it.
A lot of people don’t know it but MB sort of copied that idea in recent years to come out with a cheaper line of cars , as their entry level A & B transverse engine front wheel drive based lines are based on the Nissan Sentra.
BMW just decided to follow by offering cheaper FWD based lines based on their Mini.
When it first came out us Corvette owners did not like the fact that the name sounded like Corvette so we called it the Shitette! But over the years I did get a few of them as dealer lowner’s and they where fun to drive!
We had a 1983 Base (not Scooter) 5-door, in Baby Blue, AM Radio, 3-speed automatic, untinted PPG Glass, cloth/vinyl upholstery, and little else. Owned until 1991, still remember when it was towed away. I’ve read that Plymouth Horizon/Dodge Omni were superior cars and have no doubt in my mind that they were, but always liked the Chevette.
The Chevette was officially announced by Chevrolet in 1976. There was an ad promoting the smaller Chevys, including the Corvette, and near the end it says “and announcing the newest Chevy, the Chevette” The end song words were “Six new Chevys for 76”. It was birthed by the 1974 oil crisis (another Chevy, the Citation, was birthed from the 1979 oil crisis). One item that I remember from that period is that it was the smallest four door compact sold in the U.S. At the job I held in the 1970’s, the transportation department opened a request for bids to buy a fleet of compacts. One of the qualifications was that the offered vehicle had four doors. The only supplier that arrived and won was a Chevrolet dealer, and he told me that the Chevette was the only vehicle that qualified.
I had a 1977 Chevette 4 speed purchased new. One of the most reliable fun cars I every owned.
I worked on many of these when they were in their decline. To be honest they were not pretty and maybe some things did not work but they always ran and if they needed anything fixed it was cheap and easy to fix.
While Honda and Toyota FWD models began to dominate the Chevette kept rolling along.
The timing belt breaks in a Honda you are buying an engine. In the Chevette you just get a new belt and it was fixed in an hour.
The same for the Vega it fundamentally was a good car. Where it fell short was the cost savings areas. The Vega rusted and used oil but would always start and run. Imagine where the. Vega would have been if it had no rust issues and had iron sleeves…
GM Engineering was good it was the cost savings that always killed them.
I also think this article is incorrect to label the Chevette an embarrassment akin to the Cimarron.
They were also popular in the EU and I rode in one in 84 after hitch hiking on the autobahn and thought it did quite well. I also road in friends cars back in the day and they were known to be reliable and tough and I still see one or two on the road locally! It’s RWD chassis no doubt helped the handling and made for simple to work on reliable engineering.
Please excuse me as I should have said I rode in friends cars….
Anyone else think this looks like the new Trailblazer? What goes around comes around.
Although I’ve never owned one, I’ve always liked them. They were inexpensive and reliable transportation, just like they were meant to be. I know many people who did own them and loved them. The were cute in their own way, and I feel the quality level was about par for the time. I do not agree with the article saying it was a bad car for GM/Chevy. I even knew a couple people who had the diesel version and those things would always crack the 50+ mpg mark with no issues. Loud? Slow? Yes. But just good little cars. Today’s version is the Spark. After a tiny discount and the small rebate applied, you can pick up a brand new 2020 Spark LS auto (CVT) with A/C, Apple Carplay, backup camera and more for around $14,000. Not bad!
Dad had 2 and I had a tan 2dr auto. Used it to move from apt to first house. Hatch back was handy, as always. Great around town and commuter.
What kinda car you drive? I drive a Vette………. That was the line people used with this car.
That`s very interesting!
My uncle had one and my 1964 VW Beetle was quicker then his Chevette. Shame on GM for producing a car that was underpowered and proud to call it a Chevrolet Chevette!
They actually weren’t under powered compared to the competition and perhaps an AT version was being compared to the VW Beetle which had a std trans. which almost all had.
They were also trying to get max MPG out of cars in the mid 70’s on with the gas crisis and pollution control devices where new then and also sucked the horse power down. The 1964 cars didn’t have any of those issues.
The Diesel version with an AT would have been especially slow let alone the std. trans. version as they were also a heavier car,even with the gas engine.
Anyway auto trans. really suck the horse power out of small low power engines as they can take 25 HP to run the transmission on a small car.
I bought a 1982, maroon, with cute pinstripe detailing, manual trans, 2 door, Chevette right off the show room floor. I was young and dumb and had never had money or a new car. I had just enough to buy it at 6000.00. Now are you waiting to hear how I wasted my only money? Well keep waiting because that was the most dependable car to get myself to work and my kids to school. I sold it in the late 90s but would bet its out there somewhere ready to go and will crank first try. You might need to pat the gas once first. 😉 If it was such a failure they sure kept pumping them out there for years!
Just one more thought before I go. If ya wanna talk failure let’s not talk Chevette let’s talk Vega! I had one of those as well and yes this story ends in a bad way. It ran hot one day and siezed up before it could be pulled to the side the road. It was a failed experiment we were guinea pigs for.