Yes, it’s another 1980s front-driver from McTaggart, the patron saint of automotive lost causes. Bear with me on this one, because this is one of the strangest oddballs I’ve come across in the last few months. You remember the Chevrolet Celebrity, right? Ok, refresher if you don’t remember (or purposefully forgot): mid-size front driver, best selling car of 1986, everything you know about 1980s GM balled up into one car. Came in coupe, sedan and wagon forms, only ran for one season and was ultimately dumped for everybody’s favorite “why did they bother” sedan, the Lumina. Summed up nicely enough? Ok, moving on then.
This 1984 sedan isn’t the worst-looking Celebrity out there. The gray paint looks good, we’re digging the blacked-out trim, and the ROH-styled wheels raided from a 1990s front-drive W-body look pretty tasteful on the car. That doesn’t really offset the 2.5L four-banger underhood, or that it’s wrong-wheel-drive, but so far, for a 1980s commuter box, it’s not bad. For the whole “Pro Commuter” deal I’ve got in my head (a non-boring daily that gets good mileage), it’s spot on. Don’t believe me? Look inside.
How many Celebrities possibly came with a third pedal? Not many, we’d wager. What’s strange is that it’s a four-speed manual transaxle, not the five-speed Getrag unit that was a available later on down the line. If you still think I’m out of my head for even considering a build on a Chevrolet Celebrity, here’s some final talking points: they sold them with a transverse-mounted 4.3L diesel engine, so there is room in the bay for a V6, there’s no possible way you could be any more anonymous than in a Celebrity, and you could always step up to the Getrag 5-speed transaxle found in Lumina Z34s and Pontiac Grand Prix.
So how would you put this car together? You know that little punk up the street with the clapped-out fourth-gen Firebird he thinks is God’s gift to hot-rodding? How much fun would it be to show him the taillights of some old-ass mom-mobile as it flat-out spanks him?
Craigslist Link: 1984 Chevrolet Celebrity
This looks like a marriage between a Fox Body Mustang and a Volvo. So swap in a 5.0 litre Ford motor just to piss off the Chevy lovers. Then you’d have quite a neat little car as the paint, detailing and interior are quite superb – especially for a Chevy…
I’d skip the 5spd, and go straight for the g6 6 spd f40 manual bolted to a 3800 series III s/c don’t want a blower, a 3.4 will work..
either pushrod or dohc.
The euro trim black out helps.. but still looks sleeper..
An LS4 might ruin the sleeper vibe with its exhaust note – so how about keeping it four cylinder? I’m thinking the 2.0 Turbo Ecotec out of a SAAB 9-3.
Loved our \’86 mpi V6 which might still be on the road if it had a manual trans, although 54.73% of Jalopnik readers didn\’t care for this exact car Wednesday.
One dark night in the \’90s a built tri-five Chevy got beat racing up our mountain road by a gray front-wheel-drive station wagon. Had\’ta suck for him.
To keep it bangshifty… it’s hard to find but you could hunt down the cosworth iron duke overhead cam conversion… use the 3.0 mercury marine bottom end to get some more displacement…. there’s still plenty of Iron Duke/pontiac super duty/mercury marine parts out there that you could Coble together a monster sleeper fairly easily.
If they made a supercharger kit, then that’s the ticket. Leave it alone otherwise.
I have managed to not own a front wheel drive car yet . That ones not going to suck me in . It is in nice shape so if I did inherent it or something, I’d just drive it till it died .
northstar, northstar, northstar
Lack of room in the engine bay. a 3.8L V6 has just enough room. a V8 is too long with out major surgery.
And one thing I might add, being as the last time I drove ours was 2011 and it was a better-looking car than this one in my opinion, with better paint, lower stance, the smaller grille and spoke wheels that don\’t look like hubcaps…
…You look like a dork driving one of these down the road. Of course they are not new enough but they are not yet near old enough to entertain the possibility of being cool. Give them another 15 years, there may be a chance they stand out as notable in a good way. If this is the kind of car you like, you\’re gonna hafta hang in and be hard core.
Better yet, how about the drivetrain from one of the new Ford cop cars, just to get the wanker Geordie going?
A buddy of mine in the south takes the FWD GM A-bodies and puts turbochargers on them. He found a 1984 Ciera Convertible. It now has a Draw Threw TBI 3.8L Turbo. It it built with a combination of parts from a 1979-1980 Turbo Rivera, later FWD 3.8L goodies mixed with same vintage as car 3.0 & 3.8L parts. The car now has a Hybrid TH440 with 4T60E parts. If you search youtube enought you can find the built vids.
So for me I’d take the car down south, spend some money and get a good 350+ HP sleeper. 375-500 foot pounds of toqrue will split that FWD manual box.