Junkyard Find: 1981 Chevrolet Chevette
North Americans could buy the Chevrolet Chevette, featuring the finest in affordable early-1970s Opel Kadett C technology, starting with the 1976 model year. Chevette sales continued all the way through 1987, amazingly enough, because it could be manufactured and sold so cheaply.
Since the Chevette was so simple and sold in such large numbers, enough have survived that I still find them in the big self-service wrecking yards to this day. Here’s a grimy, beat-up ’81 spotted in a Denver yard last winter.
I found 2007-tagged collector-car license plates and a 2007 Harbor Freight ad in the car, so I’m pretty sure it sat outside for the 12 years prior to arriving here.
The can of Radiator Stop-Leak tells us that the car suffered some overheating problems prior to being parked.
Nearly all of the Chevettes I’ve seen have had manual transmissions, because Chevette buyers wanted cheap transportation, period, and paying extra for two-pedal convenience didn’t make much sense. This car has the luxurious automatic, though.
An overheating Chevette that got crashed and then sat outside in High Plains Colorado for more than a decade won’t get rescued. This car might have donated some useful parts to a surviving Chevette prior to being eaten by The Crusher, though.
Car of choice for cheap priests!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMsXLYFU0pU 1982 Pontiac version (T1000) with GASOLINE power and 3 spd slushbox. Foot to the floor 0-60 30.0 sec Passing 45-60 12.8 sec Good GOD that's slow.
I learned how to drive a manual transmission in the chevette. ALL my cousins in Louisville ky had one literally all of them from brand new chevettes to.... One of my cousins drove from Louisville to visit us in Nyc (the brand new chevette).