CHEVY

Whatever happened to Chevy ?

When I was a teen/young man, you bought a CHEVY ! A CHEVY was the pride in many a suburban driveway. People waited outside the dealers to see the new year models.

The, it's like in the early 80's GM abandoned the badge. You could shop Chevelles, or Luminas or Cavaliers.... But the family-sized CHEVROLET was relegated to the back burner.

Go to your Chevy dealer... you may find a dusty, overpriced Chevrolet somewhere in back. Better yet,,, try to picture this model years Chevrolet....

Another marketing decision by GM.

Reply to
Anonymous
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The Caprice was around until the mid-90's. I never wanted one since my '76.

18 mpg highway doesn't cut it. Their market for them was taxis and law. The Celebrity 6-cyl was roomier and got better gas milage than the Accord or Camry of the time. I drove my '88 all over the country with 6 aboard and got 29 highway. Three of the kids were light weights. Put 190k basically trouble-free miles on it before it rotted. They killed the Celebrity, of course. Think it was their last car to ever hold the sales title. I would buy that car new right now if it was available. You want a big Chevy now, you can get an Impala. The bad marketing decisions that GM made was in not keeping and improving model lines. Ala Accord/Civic/Camry/Corolla. No tradition now. The Japs have that. My daily drivers are a '97 Lumina - dead model now, and a '90 Corsica - dead model now. That's the problem with GM - can't stick to a model and continue to improve it - and stand behind it. The only reason I can think of is their brains are pea-size. Since I buy used only, that's been good for me. Always get a decent car real cheap.

--Vic

Reply to
Vic Smith

What's it like to be an idiot 24/7? A Lumina was a family-sized car, and if that wasn't big enough for you, Chevy had the Caprice, and later the Impala. Grab a clue, and complain about something worthwhile.

Reply to
80 Knight

I once rented a Celebrity while my LeSabre was being repaired, and totally agree wit your assesment of it. Fine car.

Reply to
Alan

On Sun, 24 May 2009 00:25:13 -0400, "80 Knight"

MyGod.... what's it like to be dyslexic ? Do you read ? Do you COMPREHEND ?

The topic is CHEVROLET ! Do you know what a CHEVROLET is ? Biscayne, Caprice, Impala and BelAir were levels of trim on the ( family sized ) Chevy.

Next time, put brain in gear before engaging keyboard.

Reply to
Anonymous

You're still an idiot, and you didn't even talk about anything I said in my post. You said the family sized Chevy was relegated to the back burner, and I told you the truth, and that is that there has always been a full-size Chevy, such as the Caprice and Impala.

Reply to
80 Knight

In message , "" writes

Yes it's a Daewoo.

Reply to
Clive

Yeah, 2 of them.

Reply to
80 Knight

"Vic Smith" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

My Mom bought a brand new Celebrity (26 miles on the odometer) in 1986. At

8 months of ownership, and several trips to the dealer where they found nothing wrong, it needed new front tires. It would severely pull to the right when the brakes were applied, but the dealer said it was normal, no problem. When I found out about it I took it to a reputable repair shop where they found the right callipers were almost gone, due to dragging. And the front end was radically out of alignment. They repaired it, put new front tires on it and it drove great. I took the bills to the dealer who said since they didnt do the work, and since nothing was wrong with the car to begin with, tough luck. At two years of age, the silver paint started peeling off in sheets. Once again the dealer said it was out of warranty, tough luck. When I went up there and raised a stink, armed with all the information I could gather from the internet, the dealer finally agreed to repaint it, but my Mom had to pay half. At three years, sitting at a stop light, the head bolts broke (overtorqued at the factory) and left a 70 year old women stranded in a pool of antifreeze. The dealer repaired that for free, but Mom had to pay the towing bill, even tho it was towed by the dealer. And from day one, the Celebrity had a fuel guage that could only be accurately read from the middle of the back seat. It was located in the middle of the dash. At year four, it would shift into overdrive at 25 miles per hour, then buck and chug along untill you made it up shift by applying more gasoline, then it would shift into 2nd. It made driving in the city an unplesant experience, to say the least. Once again, the dealer said the only way to fix it was rebuild the transmission, but they did offer to disconnect some electrical connectors, and eliminate overdrive completely. Keep in mind this car was driven by a senior citizen, well taken care of, with regular maintenance. Chevrolet, its engineers and its dealers, have been their own worse enemies for quite some time now.
Reply to
Deke

You had access to the internet in 1988? Pretty cool!

What was your monthly bill, and how fast was your connection?

j/k

Reply to
Rick_LT1

In message , Rick_LT1 writes

What a stupid question, I've had Internet access since 82, though I'll admit the first half was through dial up.

Reply to
Clive

On Tue, 26 May 2009 16:37:52 -0500, Rick_LT1 wrote:

Everybody's allowed some memory slippage. I don't doubt the guy's tale. I've heard some outrageous claims about how bad the Celebrity was from American car bashers. One guy I worked with - he drove an early Altima that's long been in heaven with all its kin, and knew squat about cars - actually told me his father-in-law had the entire dashboard of his Celebrity fall into his lap. Yep, he actually thought this was true. Though I found my '88 by far the best car I ever had, it was silver too, and the paint was peeling off the roof by '96. This is a well known GM issue of certain era vehicles, and was not appropriately handled by GM. Since I bought my '88 in '91 with 31k miles and only paid @$6500 and it was near perfect in all other ways until 190k miles, I really didn't care about the peeling paint on the roof. I'm not cosmetics oriented, and the underlying primer stayed sound. But I sure can understand the anger of anybody paying for a new car and having the paint peel after a couple years. This gets back to what I said about GM model incompetence. Looks like the best-selling 85' Celebrity was markedly improved by '88, but GM dumped it by '89. Probably because its name was mud among too many customers GM screwed. So instead of digging in, doing right by the customers, and continuing to improve the Celebrity, they dropped it and replaced it with the Lumina. Which immediately garnered customer complaints about the real calipers. Lame. BTW, my main ride is a '97 Lumina, and the rear drums are fine, as is everything else. They continued to improve it I suppose. I got it for $2500 and have put about 40k miles on it with no problems except a window motor and the signal switch. My kid fixed those for about 120 bucks in parts. Except it's white, and the paint began peeling off in sheets a couple years ago. Rear quarter panels and hood. Lots of them with the same problem around here, but only the white ones. Oh, and the drivers seat cushion is collapsed on the left side. Went to the dealer to see if I could get a new one, but you can't. Suggested an upholstery shop to respring it. My kid looks for a good seat whenever he goes to the boneyard, but every one he sees is collapsed. That might be why they discontinued the Lumina. Too stupid to design a seat that wouldn't collapse, and white paint that didn't peel. Easier to just discontinue a well-selling model and move on to something else. Keep the suckers guessing. Maybe there's also some bonus play in there for management. Keep in mind, this was Chevy's family sedan answer to the Accord and Camry. WTF were the pinheads running GM thinking? Maybe they can get their act together, but it's no mystery how they let it all fall apart in the first place. They didn't have the attention span to put longevity and quality into their models, and thereby gain brand loyalty. Looks like the FWD Impala and Malibu have lasted longer than most Chevy models, and I expect the newer ones are pretty good. This bankruptcy thing might be good for GM. Keeps the boneheads running the company too busy to replace their successful models.

--Vic

Reply to
Vic Smith

And I'm sure the internet was full of Chevy Celebrity info back in the 80's, right Clive? Is it comfortable with your head all the way up your ass?

Reply to
80 Knight

If you think you had internet access at your home in 1982, then I doubt you know what the internet is.

I suppose you'll claim you were browsing graphical web pages via http on the www back then as well.

You might have dialed into a university to access usenet, ftp or similar technology, but that's not what is commonly referred to as the "internet" these days (and it's certainly not considered having internet access at one's personal residence.)

Were you running a prototype Pentium II at home back in 1982 as well?.

I was simply joking with the first guy since I could see someone's memory mixing up "doing research" with "getting info on the internet."

However, you either have no clue about what you're claiming, or you're being extremely disingenuous.

Then again, you may think you've got Internet III access right now via IPv12 on a 100THz, 256 core processor, and your connection speed is

120Tbps.

If the kid at the computer store told you that's what you have, it must be so. Enjoy your uber setup.

Reply to
Rick_LT1

Absolutely! I was just making a joke.

Yeah, it wasn't known as one of GM's greatest cars. My parents had an

84 with the 2.5L four, and it was a dog. I think they got about 105k miles out of it before they traded it, though. Rust was becoming an issue at that time also. No serious mechanical problems, though.

I doubt I could have kept from laughing at that.

Yeah, the paint issues that GM had in the mid 80's to the mid 90's really are inexcusable.

Now that you mention it, I do recognize that as a pattern for a few of GM's cars in the last couple of decades. Perhaps I've been lucky because I always buy the models in their later years, so perhaps the cars I've bought had most of all the bugs worked out of them by the time I took ownership.

Sounds very similar to their headliners that inevitably sag after a few good years that another poster mentioned recently.

Some of their issues really make you ask that, don't they?

I have to say, though, on the whole, I've been happy with my GM cars. I tend to buy 'em new and drive 'em til they drop, though.

The thing that I wonder about is how will the build quality be on their cars? If all your line workers feel they're getting screwed, that doesn't bode well for quality built cars.

Time will tell, I guess.

Reply to
Rick_LT1

Maybe we should cut Clive some slack. There very well could have been a few Chevy Celebrity haters running BBS's back in 82 that he thought were the "internet." :)

Reply to
Rick_LT1

In message , Rick_LT1 writes

When I first went online, it was for e-mail only, it was later I got into newsgroups, normally the ones with uk. at the start of the header. I'm quite happy to admit to being an idiot with a computer and whilst I've heard of "Twitter?" on the news, I've no idea what it is, how to access it, or any interest in it. Feel free to look down on me, I don't mind, at least I don't hide behind a mask like a lot of posters do.

Reply to
Clive

In message , Rick_LT1 writes

Wasn't the WWW, invented by Tim Lee or someone at CERN? I don't claim to have absolute knowledge, but I do know what the Internet is made of. If you think it's just a lot of fancy terminals then you've a lot of catching up to do just to get to my backward stage.

Reply to
Clive

In message , Rick_LT1 writes

I think you'll find a lot of the worlds car makers had trouble then because a reformulation of the standard paint to make it less toxic also made it less resistant to acids such as bird turds.

Reply to
Clive

Everyone knows the internet is simply a series of tubes.

Can we please end this silly p|ssing contest now so the group can get back to discussing GM issues?

Reply to
Rick_LT1

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