At my local Rad-era car meetup, Triangle Rad, there’s someone who brings in a beautifully preserved Chevy Celebrity wagon. I see the car, and I appreciate that it still exists and all that, but if I’m honest, all it really does is remind me of how powerfully I don’t give a shit about the Chevy Celebrity. The shits I don’t give about these cars are some of the finest ever crafted by human colons. My apathy is just that intense — a bright, burning intensely beige glow of who-gives-a-shit. That’s because I was surrounded by all manner of Chevy Celebrities growing up, and they were very much the NPC of cars. In the grand salad of the automotive landscape, they were iceberg lettuce. They took up space, filled in the holes, and were the means by which people could start in one place, sit for a while, and end up in another. There was one Celebrity, however, that did sort of stand out, at least a little bit: The Celebrity Eurosport VR. These weren’t great cars, but they’re interestingly revealing cars — odd artifacts that give an insight into the American automotive mind at that time and place. In short, they’re Glorious Garbage.
I guess I should talk about the basic Chevy Celebrity first, huh? I may as well. Built between 1982 and 1990, the Celebrity was part of the GM A platform, its first front-engine/front-wheel drive mid-size platform. They sold over two million of these things in their various body styles – sedans, coupés, and wagons. The reason I felt like I saw them everywhere is because they very much were everywhere. The most common setup for a Celebrity seemed to be the three-speed auto with a 90 horsepower 2.5-liter Iron Duke engine. Not exactly pulse-quickening.
They also came in diesel versions and with 2.8-liter V6 or a 3.1-liter V6 at the very end, but I don’t think most people bought these for the performance or driving dynamics. I think most people bought these because the Celebrity was A Car.
Of course, that wasn’t enough for at least some of the designers and engineers at Chevy, who felt there needed to be a more engaging version of the Celebrity, and, in what I can only read as a strange act of national insecurity, this version was called the Eurosport. Because, I suppose, at the time, Europe was more associated with cars that emphasized performance and driving engagement, the most obvious example of which was likely the BMW 3 series. Maybe some Audis, too?
While generally the same basic shape, the Celebrity was very much not a BMW 3 series, but I think that’s what the designers and engineers and marketing people were targeting. Seeing exactly what was done to the basic Celebrity to “Euro-ify” it is pretty fascinating, because I think it gives a glimpse into what GM’s people felt the crucial differences in American and European car design were. Looking at the result, you’d think the biggest defining trait of Europe was a severe distaste for chrome and a love for black paint.
As you can see, mostly the Eurosport just blacked out all the chrome on the door handles and window trim and bumpers, added some red accent lines around the car and on the seat piping, and, boom, it’s like you’re spending a week in Berlin.
Aside from blacking out the chrome, the Eurosport also got a black steering wheel, heavier-duty suspension, and the option of the 2.8-liter V6 engine making a fiercely adequate 130 hp.
I mean, the blacked-out/red detailing-look wasn’t bad, but I’m not really sure how it equated to European. I guess the Volkswagen GTI did some stuff like this? And, sure, Europe generally didn’t have the same fetish for chrome everywhere that America had – I mean, nobody did, really. Also, they missed out on an easy way to enEuro-ificate the car: add amber rear indicators! But no, GM wasn’t willing to go that far. Don’t forget, on the Vega they put in amber rear lenses and then cheaped out on putting bulbs behind them.
Now, this mild Euro-ization, which added about as much Europe to the car as spreading a bit of Nutella on the car and letting it complain to you about how we don’t appreciate the National Parks System in America, just wasn’t enough. Chevy wanted a halo Celebrity, so they needed to do something more.
GM looked to a smaller company called AutoStyle to help them out, and started the process in 1986 by building a show car called the Celebrity Eurosport RS. This one-off added a lot of body kit plastic to the lower nether regions of the Celebrity, giving it a sort of Euro-tuner look, like what Alpina might have done if they wanted to make BMW feel jealous, or at least a little less secure. The engine was 3.3-liter V6 with an alloy block that never actually made it to production.
Reaction to the show car must have been pretty positive, because starting in 1987 anyone buying a Celebrity sedan – or, significantly, a wagon! (and the next year, the coupé) – could shell out an anus-clamping $3,500 for the VR option package, which was the production interpretation of the RS show car. For reference, back in 1987, the VR package would have cost about $9,500 in today’s money, and this on a car that started at $10,265 (about $28,000 today), so we’re talking tacking on a third more of the whole price of the car for this advanced Euro-ization.
So, what did all that cash get you, exactly? There were the styling changes, most notably, including the new bumper skins with air dams and the other stuck-on ground effect plastics, but most noticeably is the strange grille-delete option. Yes, the grille was replaced with an odd silver-ish blanking panel, because who wants all that superfluous air getting into that 2.8-liter V6? I guess the enlarged under-bumper air intake provided enough cooling, and maybe there was some aero advantage to swapping that grille for a wall.
The engine and suspension in the VR weren’t any different than the normal Eurosport, so we’re still talking about 145 hp and getting from parked to 60 in about 9 seconds. Not terrible, but hardly amazing, even for the era, and certainly nothing to Compuserve-message home about. The VR in came in black, silver, white, and that Code Red color from Corvettes and Camaros. You could get it with a five-speed Getrag manual shifter, or, if you hated yourself a bit, a four-speed automatic, and, if you hated yourself a lot, you could even get a three-speed auto shoved in there.
The Celebrity was never really planned on being a car where people would be shifting their own gears, so there wasn’t a nice big tachometer offered. The manual VR really demanded one, leading GM to make one of the most gloriously half-assed tachometers ever:
Look at that! In the little window normally reserved for the automatic’s PRNDL indicator, GM developed a tiny, tiny LED-based tachometer. You drop about a third the price of the whole car for this VR package, and GM was still too cheap to design a new instrument cluster with a real tachometer? Think how much better a couple of round gauges would have looked in that cluster, with a nice big, graphic tach! As it is, all GM proved is that they’re absolutely loath to let a perfectly good hole in the dash go to waste, no matter how tiny.
So, if we’re re-capping here, what’s the overall take on the Celebrity Eurosport VR? It was a boring-ass car with some kind of silly faux-Euroification and body kit plastic that had some mild performance enhancements, but very little that justified the huge cost of the option package, especially since the regular Eurosport drove about as well. That all adds up to the Garbage part of Glorious Garbage nicely. So where do we find the glory?
I think in this case, all the glory comes from this one significant detail: you could get all of this stuff on a wagon.
A fast (ish) tough-looking wagon available pretty much anywhere in 1980s America was a glorious thing. Hell, it still is! A wagon that was roomy and useful and could do all the wagon things but still let you jam a gearshift around and make mouth vroom sounds when you threw it into a corner, your un-seat-belted children smacking their heads against window glass with screeches of delight and maybe some pain as they slide around that back seat like a hockey player’s teeth on the ice.
Of course, hardly anyone took advantage of this incredible wagon-tunity offered them, since only a bit over 1600 Celebrity Eurosport VRs were actually sold.
There was no way the Celebrity Eurosport VR was ever really competition to the actual Euro cars from BMW or Audi or Mercedes or even Volvo, but in a way, I like that they tried. Sure, it was sort of a Halloween costume for an American family car to dress up like a 3-Series, but if you’re having fun, who gives a shit, right?
The Celebrity Eurosport VR was, objectively, garbage. But, put all that crap on a wagon, and then, somehow it transforms into something magical! Still pretty shitty, yes, but magically shitty. Or at least shitty with an optional rear-facing jump seat.
Yeah, it’s funny because the 6000 did offer a tach, so they could’ve just used the 6000’s dash.
If any of these cars are still around and not rusted to death, it should be easy enough to swap in a more modern 3400 (170 hp) or even the 3.5/3.9 engines with as much as 240 hp!
Do you think an LS4 would fit under that hood? 😛
How did they not get Gary Numan to advertise this?
About the gauges, I was never a fan of the light bar tach that came in a small handful of these cars. The Buick Century had the same tach available, possibly even rarer. I have one in my garage, don’t know if it works.
Another thing is the Celebrity “full gauge package” didn’t include an oil pressure gauge. What a ripoff! Except for the rare police package, had an oil pressure gauge literally carved into the passenger side dash. Hackjob and ugly as sin.
So using some spare Celebrity and 6000 clusters, I fixed that. I mounted a 6000 analog tach to a plexiglass plate and mounted it to the left of the steering wheel. Carved out a window in the bezel and boxed it with the radius sections from another radio hole to make it look more proper. Printed a suitable label.
For the oil pressure gauge, I regrouped all the applicable idiot lights to the left side. In the rightmost opening I combined a Celebrity temp gauge and needle, Pontiac 6000 oil pressure gauge movement, and a waterslide decal made by a coworker. He was limited in his color availability but it does the job.
Did this in 2003. Both still work, and the oil gauge saved my ass once when the sender started pissing oil out the connector and lost a quart per mile.
Hope this works.
https://tinypic.host/image/73481-Gauges-122-236lo.Kj5eH
Well whatever you want to say about the car, their ad folks were doing some awesome work. Is that Nancy Reagan peering at us from way far away at the other end of that bench seat? And you have to love the phrase “dynamic monotone”! I bet someone got a raise just for that.
Rented one of these “Eurosports” when assigned to a client out of state. One of the things GM did to get “Euro” handling (note the phase in quotes, mine, not GM’s) was to lower the power-steering boost compared to the regular cars in their lineup. As if lowering the power-steering boost was going to get Euro-handling. What got Euro-handling for the time was short lock-to-lock steering and regular power-steering boost. Which almost gave similar feel but less turns from lock-to-lock. My unboosted ’88 VW Fox had better steering feel.
Remember seeing 3 of these with a V8 factory installed. And drove one of them about 10 miles. With that engine it was a beast, better than the Ford SHO. They were being serviced at the local Chevy joint. Doing long range testing in the Deep South.
Agree that the cost was obscene for these, especially considering what you got for that cash.
But as someone who drove probably 100 of these turds, for their time they were really pretty damn decent.
That is considering it’s a GM.
I was a huge loather of chrome back then. Still am. And I’m a sucker for red pinstripes. So I guess they built the Eurosport just for me. I did not return the favor and buy one.
As was I, and neither did I. Of course I had the excuse of being 10 years old in 1984.
If they had commissioned a promo I would’ve certainly bought the derived MPC model kit, likely several times over by now, though.
Oh, not just that. They could’ve just used the Olds Cutlass Ciera dash which already had round gauges and a tach as a regular option.
Didn’t it also have bad-ass fake wood paneling sometimes? Or am I misremembering that?
The Celebrity CL package had the fake wood dash and shifter bezels.
Oh how soon we forget the early years, Torch… http://www.automobiliac.com/display/ShowImage?imageUrl=/storage/celebrity.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1335237992635
My grandpa had a mid 80’s Celebrity wagon (still had sealed beam headlights I think) in a meh burgundy color, with the 2.8″ V6. It was so doggy that it made my brother’s Mazda 323 4 spd 2dr hatch seem positively fast. It was not pleasant to drive, but it DID do me a solid when I passed my driver’s test in it. Everybody was amazed that he let me use it– he actually offered it. I miss him, but not the car. He still had it when he passed in 1995. He was a grumpy, crotchety old man, but he loved his people in his own way.
Love the conclusion on the wagons. My mom seems to have a soft spot for turbo cars starting in the early 1990s. 1988 Volvo 740 Turbo Wagon 5MT, 2001 Volvo V70 2.4T 5AT, 2012 Mini Clubman S 6MT — now a 2023 Mazda CX-5 Turbo
These were great cars. I still have a Celebrity with 310k as a summer daily driver. One of the best parts of these cars is the throaty exhaust note of the 2.8/3.1 V6. Combine that with rowing a manual and it’s heaven. HP was respectable for the day, but what these engines had was low end torque. Could lay you back in the seat. It’s been said that these will outrun a Caddy 4.9 V8 up to 30 mph.
The 87 VR was so much better with the special interior package. I’ve only seen one in the wild. Other than that, I know a guy who hunts these down and collects them. I saw what he had for a collection almost 20 years ago. If anyone has any of those 2 manual VR wagons, it would be him. Haven’t talked to him in ages though. He lives a very private life and I don’t even know his full name.
Torch – How could you do such a great write up on the Eurosport VR and not mention the interior!!! For the first year, a significant portion of the option cost was for the new interior. The bucket seats were more aggressive in a gray cloth/black vinyl two-tone with red piping (mentioned). The same coverings were on the rear seats as well. The best part of the interior was the bright red carpet!!!
https://barnfinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/w3-630×354.jpg
For the next and final year, the interior was downgraded to just be the same as the regular Eurosport and that dropped the price of the option package significantly.
I figured I was the only one who knew that nugget of trivia (I mentioned it in my comment below), happy to see I’m wrong!
I’ve known about the Eurosport VR since the mid 90s. When i was looking for a newish used car for my broke-ass college self, I ended up test driving one at a local dealership. It was an 88 so it didn’t have the fancy interior, but it did have that goofy little LED tach. At the time, that particular car was pushing close to 100K miles on it and they wanted WAAAAY too much for it so I had to pass on it. But since then I have had a soft spot for the VR.
My first car was an ’86 Celebrity (base) and someone on my street briefly had a Eurosport VR wagon, so I’ve had a soft spot for them too.
My friend Sally had a Chevrolet Celebrity CL in high school and we always said we were going to pry those letters off the trunk and rearrange them into Chevy Beer Clit but we never got around to it, sadly.
Sometime I miss the 2-tone paint jobs of late 80’s/early 90’s GM. I wouldn’t mind that making a bit of a resurgence, if done well, to help get some more color into the choices for cars. But I’m not talking about just a different roof color, or painting some parts of the car black (1 gen Volt or current Toyota Crown for example).
A few months ago, I started noticing an 80’s Celebrity (looked to be right around 1986 because it had a poorly-integrated third brake light and it took automakers a few years to figure out how to mount them) in my town.
I hadn’t seen one in a very long time and I was surprised how entirely un-excited I was to see one again. I think I’d be more excited to see a K-car.
Even when I was a kid and any car was awesome, I knew these things were terrible. I never bothered learning the differences in the ‘eurosport version’ because it didn’t seem to matter. Like every other GM of the time, it was a rattling turd dragged along by either an anemic four cylinder or a barely less awful 2.8 v6 (later 3.1).
The only thing I don’t like about ‘rad’ shows is that they give people a reason to save things like this from the scrap pile.
My city has a four lane divided highway leaving town with businesses all along it. They closed all side roads to it for 4-5 miles for a classic car cruise. They had all kinds of Corvette and Camaro convertibles, and a Mustang, a Charger, and a hotrod. And a well-kept, early 80’s LeBaron, boxy convertible. It looked quite fresh and interesting after the usual classic car fare.
Taking up space in my brain is a tiny snippet of a commercial for this, with the singers singing “Eeeeeeeeurosport!” I wish we all came with a delete function.
My dad hated these. He grew up in Europe, so we grew up in a BMW/VW/Mercedes household, and these GM “Eurosports” were to my dad the antithesis of sporty or European. Hard to argue, honestly.
I absolutely loved the eurosport look on GM cars back then. There was pretty much no such thing as an American sport sedan, so at least these looked a little better.
Growing up, my first hand-me-down car was a 1985 Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport wagon. While it did indeed come with the V6… Those 2.8 litres of pure asphalt fury were well mitigated by a temperamental carb that I think GM pulled from the parts bin at a lawn mower manufacturer. Despite all that, the zero to sixty time was approximately maybe. Maybe if you were going downhill with the wind at your back you could hit sixty before flying cars become a thing. Worse yet, is that if you wanted to start this poor beast in the colder months… learn how to do a rain dance and make that bitch gag down a bottle of ether. I don’t miss that car one bit. It’s no wonder that I primarily only drive asian cars now.
A friend of mine had a 4-cyl Corsica of this vintage if you wanted to go even slower. . .
I had an 86 Celebrity with that horrific carb. Rebuilt it to no avail. Finally ended up wiring the choke about 25% open with a paper clip so it would always at least run. And the ECM fuse would blow whenever you tried to push it too hard so I replaced it with a circuit breaker. That car also had the morning sickness steering.
Thankfully the difference for 1987 was big. GM really seemed to get it right with the 2.8 MPFI.
My parents had the larger Lumina version Eurosport in a gorgeous black with red badging and bordello red velour interior. it was my favorite car as a kid. I had no concept of speed or “sporty”, but that car looked great to 11 year old me
https://shorturl.at/gvCG2
Torch, you can look back on this as a man who doesn’t appreciate the National Park System or Nutella – or who does – but 145 hp with a five speed manual was right on the sweet spot for the day. It matched the BMW 3 series and who is to say the Chevy Eurosport wasn’t as stylish as the Beemer.
Euro-ized styling was just as meh whether it came out of Detroit or Munich. I suppose the BMW rode and handled better, though I really couldn’t say. I did have opportunity to drive a Mercedes 190 in this time frame, which admittedly wasn’t ugly. It was bog slow, rode like it had tires made of concrete and its hard plastic seats didn’t help.
My car, by comparison, was better than both the Chevy or Euro entries. I had an ’84 Ford Thunderbird Turbo-Coupe with uniquely American styling that put both the Chevy and BMW to shame!
That T-Bird style was almost as awesome as Awesome Bill from Dawsonville’s Nascar ride! Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday, which actually worked in my case. ‘Murica !
By the way. The T-Bird also had 145hp and a smooth shifting manual five speed. The ride and handling were nice too.
Looking back, I can’t get too excited about the Chevy or its European competitors. But that T-Bird was sweet!
Your T-bird turbo coupe comes really close to being a holy grail in my book.
The proportions were spot-on (not as ungainly as the aerobird to follow), ’80s turbo jollies abounded (one big one for kick in the pants fun, not two of them for mimicking bigger engines like now), Mustang interchangeability on a lot of the go fast stuff, and manuals manuals maunals.
As the owner of one of the Big 3’s attempts to make “Euro touring sedans” (a 1985 Ford LTD LX), cars like these have always fascinated me, even if most are just lipstick on a pig, and if I had Jay Leno money I’d have a fleet of weird stuff like the Eurosport VR, Pontiac 6000 STE, Dodge 600 SE, etc.
At least the ’87 VRs got bespoke seats that looked sporty. In ’88 they got cheap and went to regular Celebrity seats.
I graduated high school in 90 and started working for the local Chevy dealer not long after. So I’m really familiar with the Celebrity. Besides manifold gaskets and ecu/idle air issues on the V6, they were very reliable cars. They drove nice enough were comfortable and were not that slow by the standards of the era. I remember a few of the eurosport ones. They are not a bad looking car.
I have a theory on this whole Eurosport thing. Back in the 80’s there were huge swaths of the country where Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Saab, & Volvo were quite rare or non-existent in person, but people were passingly familiar with them from advertising, TV and movies. Which means Chevy could get away with something that vaguely looked the part (if you squinted) but didn’t have to worry about anyone actually cross-shopping. It was aspirational as long as the thing it was aspiring against was unexamined.
Also worth noting; Salsa was exotic around this time…
Salsa became the top selling condiment in the US in 1992, and had been a close number 2 or number 3 for roughly a decade before that
I’m referring to Celebrity drivers..
Totally. This was a time largely before car leases, so you actually had to be fairly well-off to own most European cars. So not shocking at all that GM would try to capitalize on our fascination by riffing on the sleek lines, lack of chrome, and things like standard bucket seats. This was also the decade where Braun coffee makers appeared and everyone had a passing knowledge of the Rolex Presidential b/c Sonny Crockett wore one.
And to follow Black Peter, this is also the decade where sushi was considered the height of cool, with-it food, not something that’s available at many grocery stores and gas stations as it is now.