There’s no point in sugar-coating this: The Chevette was a miserable car from a miserable era of American motoring. The 1973 gas shortage had sent automakers into a panic and Chevy had “borrowed” essentially everything from their German GM property Opel to make the most economical car they could. That meant a whopping 52 horsepower from the standard 1.4-liter four cylinder. Yet, there’s something particularly intriguing about this early-year ‘78 Chevette Scooter for sale in Maryland.
The Scooter trim was the stripper base model version that famously had chintzy door cards and an optional back seat. I’ll say that again: an optional back seat. GM cut as many cheap corners as they could to offer an MSRP a few bucks under the then-revolutionary Volkswagen Rabbit. While the Rabbit is almost certainly far more car for the money, there’s something to be said for the Chevette’s simplicity. This one comes with some sweet Malaise Era tape stripes and three-color rear light lenses.
The interior was surprisingly well-done for its time and price point. The two-spoke steering wheel looked fairly modern and the four-instrument dashboard was the paragon of functional simplicity. Even the climate control and radio controls are extremely simple yet laid out in an simple way.
Blah blah blah, you say. This thing is still old and slow and you remember how terrible these were. But Curbside Classic absolutely nailed this: The Chevette—and specifically the plebeian Scooter trim—was the quintessential pizza delivery beater: cheap, easy to maintain, and ultimately disposable. It’s not hard to imagine the pizzeria manager saying, “You blew up the Chevette delivering those seven pizzas to the stoners on the edge of campus? OK, we’ll buy another one tomorrow from the drop at the end of the night.”
That any of them survives is remarkable, let alone this one in such good condition.
The seller claims the engine was rebuilt recently with just 36,000 miles on the odometer, which isn’t particularly surprising, although the $4,995 asking price is a bit shocking when the sticker price was probably somewhere around $3,000 in 1978 (~$11,000 in today’s money). One has to wonder if a more modern four-cylinder engine—like the 1.6-liter Mazda B-Series from a Miata, for example—would make a Chevette a reasonable driver in terms of power and efficiency.
Regardless, the Chevette Scooter is simply a car for which there is no modern analogue. You can’t even buy a car with manual windows anymore, let alone a car with an optional back seat. No-frills transportation seems a lost demographic, which lends this proletarian Chevette a wisp of (probably misplaced) nostalgia.
Shitty as they were, they were everywhere.
stuff a new f body turbo 4 in it and go hunting rabbit..
The common death for chevettes was the crankshaft bolt snapping off,then losing the lower pulley,balancer and lower timing gear.
The fun of being a dealer mechanic back then.
Chevette feature, the automotive version of a xxx snuff video.
Yeah, they were everywhere in England to. The U.K. Version had prettier front and rear styling.Google Chevette HS and HR we had them in small numbers with a 2.3 16v slant four running side draughts,ZF or Getrag box and an uptated suspension package.They did ok at rallying for a while.I had a 1.3 with a 2.3 and 4speed OD box when I was 17. Happy days
The 2016 Chevy Sonic LS comes with manual windows in both sedan and hatchback configurations. I just got off the chevy website confirming this. It’s annoying because the previous years’ models had power windows (and satellite radio, and alloy wheels) standard. So as a profit making attempt, the 2016 Sonic LT = 2015 Sonic LS in terms of standard equipment.