I remember Chevettes pretty well from when I was a kid, and I kind of always liked them despite being quite aware that they were, charitably, kind of crap. When almost every other economy car of the era was moving to new transverse-engine, front-wheel drive designs, the little Chevette was stuck with an old longitudinal front engine/rear drive setup and as a result was less space efficient than its rivals, among other things.
They gamely did their best to sell these things, and Canada even got their own specially-badged version, the Pontiac Acadian. “Acadian” is, of course, referring to a set of French settlers in Canada, and I suppose this made the car more appealing? Maybe the word “Chevette” means something offensive in Canada?
You know, I was just making a sort of half-assed joke there, but I decided to check on if the word chevette has any meaning in French, because it kind of, you know, sounds French. Check this out:
Bedside table? That’s not offensive, but not what I expected. Plus, it’s not so bad! I’m pretty sure I had a cousin who drove a Honda Nightstand, and she seemed fine with that.
Anyway, let’s see how they were trying to move these things in Canada. They claim the Acadian has “twice the cargo space of an average mid-size car,” but I think what they’re not telling you is that’s only with the rear seat down. Or, removed entirely, which was an option, if you were really cheap:
The rear seatless option was called the Chevette Scooter in the US, but I guess Canada didn’t get a special name for that. I also like that supremely dickheaded parking job right in front of that building’s stairs in the upper right picture, and the grand, decadent fantasy of a “two-Acadian family” at the bottom.
The “Rally” option was sort of fun, in a very mild way, with a 1.6-liter engine making 63-ish horsepower instead of the 1.4’s 57 hp. You also get a lower body stripe and a passenger grab handle over the passenger’s door, just like a real rally car!
I don’t think they’re going to be able to get that horse in there, but I’d sure like to watch them try.
Calling that dash “cluster-designed” is pretty hilarious, too. What does that mean, exactly? The instruments are all in one binnacle? As opposed to being just sort of scattered all over the place? Those instruments also include one of those fuel gauges that is 80% empty space.
Some of these “features” feel so desperate, too. A “removable load floor panel with a rubber mat?” Who is this car for, an Emperor? That column-mounted “smart switch” is just a stalk that controls indicators, high beams, and wipers. Not sure what makes that particularly “smart” but I suppose it sounds better than “idiot stalk” or something.
“Full-length drip rails?” What is this, a Rolls-Royce? Body-mounted weatherstrip? Did someone win the lottery?
I couldn’t find any Acadian-specific ads, but here’s some commercials for Chevettes of the same year. Like one that touted how bad Chevettes were for locally-owned businesses:
They had more upbeat ones, too, complete with singing!
Good times! Everyone loved those Chevy Bedside Tables.
Top image: GM
My family had a school bus yellow diesel chevette as a “kid’s car”. Being the youngest, by the time I got my license it was pretty much beat to hell, but it was a car. It could BARELY go on the highway.. I think it took over 20 seconds to get to 60 when it was new, so by the time I got it, it was lucky to make it there. I thankfully only used it for a year or so before I bought my own car, and it went off to torment someone else.
A Chevette is really nothing else than an Opel Kadett C with an ugly front fascia …
FWIW: Canada had both the Chevrolet Chevette and Pontiac Acadian at the same time, merely as badge differentiation. No relation to the French, but following the popular Chevy Nova/Pontiac Acadian (Canso) nomenclatures of years earlier.
True horror story:
I recall working the lot when these arrived. Saddest garbage we’d ever seen. The steering wheel isn’t even centered in front of the driver’s seat. Out of mere conscience the salesmen would ask any lookers if they have checked out a Toyota or Honda yet; usually they would not return. The only sale I witnessed was to a union hardliner who spat “I ain’t gonna let my daughter drive no Jap-crap!” Sold! As she drove it out the driveway, the driver’s window dropped out. When she went to restart after it was fixed, the starter fell out. Believe it or not, the service manager (union) had the balls to ask her if she could bring it back two days later. I felt so bad for her I grabbed a wrench, slid under the car and got her on the road. I was, of course threatened with being fired (union card revoke), for performing a task outside my *union description* and in doing so making other workers look bad.
I could NOT wait to get out of there!
Thanks, that is PEAK malaise!
My BIL bought a Chevette that he was super excited about before he bought it. I can’t remember if it replaced his Pinto or if he replaced it with a Pinto but the Chevette didn’t last long. Moral of the story my BIL has not had great taste in cars. The Pinto was a really nice dark green though.
One of these got me through college. I could put everything I owned in it. It featured an incompetent 3-speed auto transmission. As I recall it was simple to drive:
Yours had AC? Dang living in luxury. My dad’s didn’t, but neither did the used 88 Plymouth Voyager that replaced it. The Chevette did get engine swapped later on though. With a junk carb’d SBC 350 and 4spd it was truly terrifying.
Under Quebec language laws, I think GM would have been obliged to put descriptive badges reading “Petite Boîte à Merde” twice the size of any Chevette emblem, and they probably didn’t want to do that
I loled at the petite boite thing, and loled harder when I noticed the accents were all there and correct.
For the record, having travelled around New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, I can say they make far superior apple pies there to any ‘Mercan crap. We don’t need no stinkin’ Chevys. 😉
What’s funny is that if you drove a Chevette, there was no way you would have a one “night stand”
I’ll see myself out…
Also: “Yeah, I drive a Vette!”
*She looks at “Vette”
*runs away…
(actually gets to where she’s
going…and faster too!)
Yeah, the car may have had more HP than those 2 horses, but I’d still prefer even 1 horse…I’d get there faster and it would be way more exciting!
Ce n’est pas Une Acadiane…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Acadiane
GM Canada has a very interesting history. Meteors, Acadians, and Beaumonts are always fun spots to make in the States. The badge engineering and part swapping that made these happen is fun to document.
Yeah, Acadian was its own, stand-alone brand in both Canada and Chile from 1962-1971, before being revived in Canada as a Pontiac model
Around the same time as the Pontiac Acadian was being introduced, GM was also evaluating whether to call the new small Cadillac the Seville or the LaSalle, so Acadian came close to not being the only defunct brand revived as a model name under a different brand. Then came HUMMER many decades later
The last time I saw or even thought about the Chevette was the opening scene in the Michael Douglas film “Falling Down.” His Chevette (with inoperable A/C in scorching LA) helped drive his character DFens to the edge of insanity – and then hilarity ensued. Great film.
“I remember Chevettes pretty well from when I was a kid”
I remember them too! My brother owned one and my sister owned 3… one after the other. And after having sat in and driven them, I viewed them as cramped and gutless Shitboxes.
And even the fuel economy wasn’t impressive given the lack of performance.
And the automatic ones were especially terrible.
Have a look at this review I wrote years ago that summarizes my observations and experiences with these pieces of shit
http://www.carsurvey.org/reviews/chevrolet/chevette/1987/page-2/
In 1976 I drove a brand new Chevette with A/C almost 200 miles in one day.
Lesson was learned.
Our neighbor, when I was a kid, had a green Chevette with one brown fender. I swear he drove that thing for my entire childhood. They were darn near indestructible and got good mileage, but they looked miserable.
In “French” Chevette might translate to bedside table, but in Québécois Français it probably means baby moose’s foreskin.
It doesn’t translate to bedside table in Euro French, where bedside table is “table de chevet.” Maybe it’s Canadian French, or worse, Belgian.
This could of been summarized as Canada’s version of the T1000 was called Acadian. Check out 60s Acadians they were cool versions of Chevy IIs
Also look up Group B Chevette HSRs from the UK.
The family business had a couple of bare-bones Chevettes as delivery cars. No back seat or passenger seat up front. The drivers all hated them, but Dad loved them due to the low gas bills. I think he never actually drove one though 🙂
smart businessman