1985 Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport - A Fun to Drive, 1980's Chevrolet Sedan?

 

It's not every day you see a Chevrolet Celebrity these days, let alone one that's for sale and wearing the sporty "Eurosport" package. This one for sale down in Akron has just 51,000 clicks on its ticker and is "loaded" with front buckets, a floor shifter and the updated-for-1985, port-fuel injected, 2.8-liter, 130-hp V-6. If you're familiar with '80s GM sedans, this was about as good as it got, especially at the lower end of the market.

The asking price is $4,000 which, given its apparent condition, sounds like a bargain. Well, for the right buyer.

Chevrolet came out with the Celebrity for 1982, and the Eurosport debuted for 1984 as Chevrolet's answer to the very well-received Pontiac 6000 STE, which had arrived a year earlier.

The Eurosport wasn't really a top-of-the-line Celebrity so much as a performance-and-appearance package. Base Eurosports were pretty spartan, but buyers did get the F41 handling suspension, along with unique trim pieces and blackout treatment. All the "good stuff"—bigger wheels and tires, the fuel injected V-6, air conditioning, power equipment and the like—was optional. Chevrolet essentially let you build your own sporty Celebrity one option at a time.

And that's where things got interesting.

You still couldn't get four-wheel disc brakes like the 6000 STE had, nor its electronically controlled self-leveling rear suspension, tachometer and fancy digital instrument panel.

The base Celebrity stickered for about $7,900 in 1984, while a bare-bones Eurosport came in at about $8,200. But a buyer willing to weave his way through Chevrolet's notoriously complicated order forms could build a thoroughly equipped Eurosport for about $12,000. A comparable 6000 STE was roughly $14,400—about $2,400 more.

Scoff at two grand as you may, forty-some years ago that was a substantial amount of money, especially in this market segment.

Thus, a Celebrity Eurosport was essentially a budget-priced alternative to the Pontiac 6000 STE, which always seemed odd to me. How many people knew how good a 6000 STE really was at the time? I'd venture to guess not many who weren't car-magazine-inhaling goobers like me. 

Drive one of these today and you'd probably think, "This is horrible. What an underpowered, noisy dog."

And, yeah, by today's standards, a 130-horsepower family sedan that needs around eleven seconds to reach 60 mph isn't exactly a rocket.

But that's also missing the point.

We wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for cars like the Celebrity Eurosport and Pontiac 6000 STE. Granted, they weren't up to par build quality wise with Asian imports at the time. 

Domestically, though, they were among the cars that proved a mundane front-wheel-drive family sedan could be made to handle, feel and—dare I say it—actually be fun to drive. 

1967 Pontiac Grand Prix - Nameplates Were Forever

This big old boat of a Pontiac Grand Prix has been stuck in my drafts folder for weeks now. The challenge for me is finding something—anything—to say about it. Aside from the fact that I still find it interesting that from 1962 to 1968, a "Pontiac Grand Prix" was a full-size car. 

Big Pontiacs from this time period aren't my cup of antifreeze. So, in the interest of recognizing that I can't always blog about cars I like, I feel obliged to put fingers to keyboard. 

Growing up in the 1970s and coming of age in the '80s, for most of its time above terra firma, a Grand Prix was a midsize car. Although from 1969 to 1977, what General Motors called a midsize car would today be considered epically enormous.

It's for sale down in Valley Grove, West Virginia, a good two-hour drive southeast of the Triple Wide. The seller claims it's a great restoration project. The asking price is $8,000.

It will need the brakes and fuel system "gone through," which tells me it's not running. Even if it were, it probably wouldn't be able to stop. Sheesh. For eight large, you'd think they'd have taken care of that.

These O.G. Grand Prixs were part of General Motors' three-pronged salvo at Ford's phenomenally successful four-passenger Thunderbird. Oldsmobile got there first with its Starfire in 1961, followed by Buick's Wildcat and Pontiac's Grand Prix in 1962.

The GM trio featured luxurious interiors and, in general, more powerful engines than the cars they were based on. The Wildcat, for example, was initially based on Buick's Invicta, while the Starfire was based on the full-size Oldsmobile 88. The Grand Prix itself was essentially a more sporting, upscale version of the full-size Catalina coupe.

Buick upped the ante in 1963 with its game-changing Riviera, a corporate-designed car with a unique body that looked like nothing else in Buick's lineup at the time.

When GM redesigned its full-size B- and C-bodies for 1965, the Grand Prix got a reimagined body as well. Swoopier and seemingly larger than before, the interiors remained quite sumptuous for a Pontiac.

These cars could also be ordered with Pontiac's famous 8-lug wheels, which incorporated aluminum brake drums with integral hubs. The idea was to take advantage of aluminum's superior heat-dissipation properties to reduce brake fade. The system was clever, unusual and, these days, a little intimidating to anyone who has never worked on one.

And wouldn't you know it? Our Marketplace find here has those 8-lug rims. They're hard to find today, and the specialized brake components aren't exactly something you want to discover are missing when you're halfway through a restoration.

So, when the seller says the brakes need "going through," I hope whoever buys this knows what they could be getting themselves into.

For the asking price, the buyer does get what appears to be a pretty clean body. She's missing her fender skirts, which I don't miss at all.

The interior is almost worth the price of admission. And she's a four-speed car, too.

The 1965–67 Grand Prix' also featured handsome, hideaway headlights, operated by a fussy vacuum-actuated system. Finding replacement components—and someone who knows how to work on them—could make this another area where it pays to be handy.

Back in the day, General Motors had a habit of recycling nameplates onto entirely different types of cars, and the Grand Prix was just one of them.

Pontiac also used its famed Ventura nameplate on an X-body compact that shared its basic architecture with the Chevrolet Nova. And in 1974, Pontiac committed what some might consider automotive blasphemy by putting the GTO name on a Ventura-based compact.

Then, in the '80s, Pontiac did it again: The Bonneville, once one of the division's biggest and most prestigious cars, became a midsize car.

Nameplates, apparently, were forever. What they were attached to was another matter entirely.

1988 Zimmer Quicksilver - If You Know, You Know

Back in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, neo-classic cars like the Stutz Blackhawk and Bearcat were somewhat of a rage. For better or worse, they were cars that evoked the automobiles of the Great Gatsby era far more convincingly than a Chevrolet Monte Carlo or Pontiac Grand Prix ever could. While most of them were based on existing automobiles of the day, arguably none was more unusual than the Zimmer Quicksilver, built by Zimmer Motorcars from 1985 through 1988. This one recently popped up on Marketplace for sale about an hour or so south of The Triple Wide is a 1988.

IYKYK: If this looks like a stretched Pontiac Fiero, you'd be right.

Underneath its swoopy fiberglass body—which makes a third-generation Corvette look like something from East Germany in the 1970s—it's essentially all Fiero, except for power steering. Pontiac Fiero's did not have power steering; Zimmer added it to the Quicksilver.

That also means it's powered by General Motors' corporate 2.8-liter, 60-degree, port-fuel-injected V-6. Making all of 140 horsepower and 170 lb-ft of torque, even with a curb weight of roughly 2,900 pounds, Quicksilvers were no speedsters, even by the relaxed performance standards of the day. All were fitted with a three-speed automatic transmission.

To give the Quicksilver its distinctive long hood, Zimmer stretched the Fiero's structure by roughly 29 inches overall, including 16 inches ahead of the cabin and another section behind the rear wheels. That gave the Quicksilver a total length of roughly 194 inches—about the same length as a then-current fourth-generation, or C4, Corvette.

Still, compared with some of the other monolithic neo-classics of the era, the Quicksilver was downright diminutive. These pictures make it look considerably larger than it actually is.

To substantiate its $52,000-plus asking price when new—an eye-stabbing ton of money in the 1980s not that it isn't now for a car—the Quicksilver came lavishly appointed with leather and genuine wood. And yet, unlike some of its more elaborate neo-classic contemporaries, again, if you know, you know: It's hard not to see its humble Fiero origins once you're inside. 

If the Quicksilver had one thing really going for it, it was build quality. Contemporary and later assessments have noted the unusually good fit, finish and quality of the materials for such a low-volume car. That's saying something for an American automobile from an era when build quality was not something anyone took for granted. We're still not quite at Toyota and Honda levels of obsessive manufacturing consistency, but an American car today is hardly the thrown-together boondoggle some of them were decades ago.

One of the many issues facing the Quicksilver was that, despite Zimmer having a dealer network at its peak, this was still an extraordinarily low-volume specialty car. Zimmer reportedly had as many as 48 dealers in 28 states during its heyday, but finding someone who knew the Quicksilver—and was willing to work on its Fiero-based mechanicals and Zimmer-specific modifications—was another matter entirely.

And then there was the competition.

The Quicksilver entered a neo-classic market that was already crowded with established names such as Excalibur, Stutz and Clénet, along with smaller players including Panther and Tiffany. Excalibur was probably the 800-pound gorilla of the bunch. Its cars had been around since the 1960s, had a substantial dealer network and, unlike the Quicksilver, were purpose-built neo-classics rather than heavily restyled versions of mass-produced automobiles. Excalibur was still building its big, chrome-laden cars when the Quicksilver arrived, although it filed for bankruptcy in 1986 and was subsequently reorganized.

Clénet was another formidable name, producing flamboyant, hand-built cars with 1930s-inspired styling, while Stutz had considerable name recognition and celebrity cachet. These cars were aimed at buyers who wanted something more conspicuous than a Mercedes-Benz or Cadillac and weren't particularly concerned about subtlety—or value.

The Quicksilver was different. It wasn't a giant V-8-powered rolling monument like an Excalibur or Stutz. It was a mid-engine, two-seat personal luxury car with the mechanical heart of a Pontiac Fiero and styling that looked as though somebody had stretched a Lincoln Mark-series coupe through a taffy machine. At roughly 170 examples built, it was also considerably rarer than most of its competitors.

Of course, rarity didn't save Zimmer.

The original Zimmer Motor Cars operation was caught up in the financial problems of its parent company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1988. The company was subsequently restructured, and the original Zimmer operation eventually disappeared. The Zimmer name was later revived by an unrelated owner in the 1990s, leading to another generation of neo-classic Zimmers.

So, is the Quicksilver a great car?

Well, that's debatable.

Is it a great Fiero?

Absolutely not.

Is it a great neo-classic?

That's debatable, too.

But is it one of the most gloriously weird automobiles to emerge from the excesses of the 1980s?

Oh, hell yes.

And considering only about 170 were built, seeing one sitting on Facebook Marketplace a few miles south of The Triple Wide makes in blog worthy. 

Asking price on this one, that has a scant 18,000-miles on it, is a cool $19,500. 

 

That Time I Broke Down on I-80, 70-miles from Home

A bang followed by a muffled under-hood scream and a temperature gauge that suddenly spiked told me everything I needed to know: get off the Ohio Turnpike. Now.

I was just a half-mile east of Exit 209, around mile marker 210.1, and with the temperature gauge pinned in the red, running the engine for even another minute could make a bad problem much, much worse. I pulled onto the very narrow shoulder on the right side of the road, which happened to be part of a bridge, and shut it off. I reached for my Triple-A card as the bridge see-sawed up and down and my car was buffeted back and forth by passing traffic.

"Are you in a safe place?" the dispatcher asked.

"Ummm, no. Not really. Actually, it's quite dangerous," I said.

"Oh, sorry to hear that," she said. "Year, make and model of your vehicle?"

Somewhat put off by her apparent indifference to my precarious situation—but realizing it was probably just part of her script, and there wasn't much she could do about my location anyway—I responded:

"2009 Toyota RAV4. Green."

A couple of minutes of the worst on-hold music of all time later, she came back on.

"Okay. You're all set, Mr. Connolly. Thank you for being a Triple-A member for 45 years. A tow truck will be there to assist you by 7:40 p.m."

It was only just past 6:00 p.m.

Good grief.

It was then that one of those ODOT—Ohio Department of Transportation—vehicles with the big flashing arrow on top appeared in my rearview mirror.

"Yes!" I thought to myself. "The traffic gods are converging! I'm saved! They'll not only get me to safety, they'll fix my car for me, too, in the blink of an eye."

If only that were true.

The person in the truck raised the big arrow, alerting passing motorists to the hazard that was me and my ancient RAV and suggesting they move to the left.

Many did not.

You don't think much about the faceless, non-playable characters—NPCs—you see stranded on the side of the road with their hoods up. At best, you're like, "Geez, sucks to be them," as you whiz on by.

You look at it differently, of course, when it's your ass in the barrel going over the falls.

Part of me was thinking, "I can't believe no one is stopping just to check in and offer me a bottle of water."

The ODOT employee sat in the truck for nearly 15 minutes. Then I saw the door open and out she came, motioning for me to stay in my sweatbox of a car. She made her way over to the front passenger-side window, which I had already lowered.

Through the deafening roar of traffic, she asked what was going on. I told her I thought I'd lost my water-pump pulley, and she took my phone number and said someone from Johnny's Auto & Truck Towing would be calling.

When I told her I had already called Triple-A, she told me Triple-A doesn't service the Turnpike; the Turnpike's designated towing operators do. Sure enough, no sooner had she said that than Triple-A called me back and told me the same thing.

"Call pound-677," they said.

The ODOT lady, whom I later learned was named Loretta, said not to bother because she had already contacted the tow company. She then went back to her massive truck.

Probably a liability to have people in my position wandering around up there with them.

I decided to get out of my car and wait behind the guardrail. Better to get a late-afternoon sunburn than be pancaked by some yahoo who didn't see Loretta's arrow.

Once over the guardrail, I discovered there was literally nowhere to go. I had maybe a foot and a half of gravel before a sharp incline down to the nameless, lonely road the bridge passed over; actually, it was Ravenna-Warren Road. A tall metal fence blocked access to the road, presumably to prevent people from walking up to the roadway to play license-plate bingo.

Chris from the towing company showed up around 7:00, a good 40 minutes ahead of the time Triple-A had given me.

A short, gruff-looking guy who was maybe 45 years old, he didn't give me a chance to put the RAV in neutral before he dragged it up onto his flatbed, leaving tire skids on the road and on his bed.

"That won't give me flat spots on my tires, will it?"

He stared at me blankly, then motioned for me to get into his truck.

As a Triple-A Platinum member, I was eligible for a tow of the 70-plus miles back home. That also meant an hour-plus ride in a bouncy Ram 5500 with someone who, much like sitting next to someone you don't know on an airplane, you'd just as soon not speak to.

I knew I'd have to fight my instincts and impulses and not be chatty. He appeared to be someone who'd rather not make small talk.

I spent the first 10 minutes or so wafting in the cool, cigarette-smoke-drenched, air-conditioned air of his truck's cabin, texting my wife and checking email before realizing I was down to about 10 percent battery. He had his phone plugged into what I could tell was the only charging port on the dash.

Knowing I didn't want to come across like the Uber driver or passenger who insists on conversation, I started out by lobbing softballs.

"This thing gas or diesel?" I asked.

He stared straight ahead, his right hand at five o'clock on the steering wheel and his left hand clutching his phone.

He then muttered, in the rather unusual Midwest-meets-Deep-South kind of way some native Ohioans talk:

"Day-zul."

"Must be a Cummins turbo-diesel," I said excitedly, although doing my best not to sound like a car geek—a car geek with a dead Toyota RAV4 on the back of his massive rig.

"Wow, this thing is quiet. Not like the rattling knockers back when I was a kid."

Silence.

Mildly freaking out over possibly spending an hour or so with nothing to do but stare out the window—I don't do well with being idle—I felt compelled to pursue a conversation.

"How many of these do you do a day?" I inquired.

"Depends," he said.

And that was that.

Giving the convo one last shot, I said to him, "Bet you could tell some stories."

He looked over at me, nodded, and said:

"You have no idea."

For the rest of the ride home—which he took what seemed to me like the longest, dog-legged route possible—I got story after horrific story. He used I-80, I-71 and finally I-480 as a heart breaking visual aid, pointing out where this happened and where that happened.

There was the story about the family of five who stopped in the right lane of the Turnpike near Exit 261 after hitting a deer, only to be plowed into by a semi seconds later, killing everyone except the youngest child, who was sitting in the middle of the front seat.

There was the older couple zigzagging through traffic in their Volvo convertible when the driver lost control and somehow flipped the car, with its open top landing on the concrete divider between the eastbound and westbound lanes.

There were stories of wrecks people walked away from without a scratch, along with stories of people dying—sometimes multiple fatalities—in accidents that didn't initially appear all that severe.

DUI accidents. "Phone accidents." Crashes in bad weather. Huge semis in ditches that took days to pull out. Motorcycle accidents. Suicides. Murders. There were a couple of stories about times that people crashed into his truck when he was working, stories of co-workers hit by motorists and killed. 

At one point, I asked him if he was desensitized to what he sees.

He said he was, to a certain degree.

But he said he still has a hard time dealing with children who are killed or severely injured.

After 26 years on the job, most of those years working 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., six days a week, he said—in not so many words—that he'd learned how to compartmentalize what he sees.

We got back to the Triple Wide around 9:00 p.m.

Chris angled his ramp so I could drive the RAV4 down it and into the back of my driveway. It still runs, although noisily. I think it's the water pump. Who knows?

After we did the paperwork, Chris gave me a Hollywood-handsome grin I didn't think he had as I shook his hand, gave him a gentle chest bump and offered a sincerely heartfelt:

"Be safe out there."

Perhaps it was cathartic for Chris to tell me as much as he did. I know police officers and firefighters enjoy—probably a bad choice of words—telling stories about their ordeals. I have to imagine his wife has heard all the stories, too—stories that, after a while, probably run together until they're all but the same.

I doubt he'll be putting the story of me and my RAV4 into his storytelling power rotation.

2013 Mini Cooper S Coupe - Good News and Bad News

 

There's good news and bad news when it comes to MINI Coopers. The good news is, BMW bought the Rover Group in 1994, which included the Mini brand. More good news: although BMW spun off most of the Rover Group in 2000, one of the things it kept was Mini. But wait, there's even more good news! BMW came out with an all-new MINI in 2001, and the car was substantially redesigned for 2007 and again for 2014, with significant updates in between. The fourth-generation MINI arrived for 2025. The bad news is, BMW bought the Rover Group in 1994.

I ran into this 2013 MINI Cooper S Coupe for sale in the town just south of The Triple Wide out here on Cleveland, Ohio's far west side. This guy always has some car or truck for sale at the end of his driveway; I guess he has a dealer's license or whatever. Anyway, I'm almost glad the asking price wasn't closer to $5,000 because I might have talked myself into at least calling the number on its FOR SALE signs.

MINI introduced the two-passenger Coupe in 2011, with sales beginning for the 2012 model year. A Roadster followed in 2012 too. By 2013, the MINI lineup had grown into quite the little family: the two-door Hardtop, four-door Countryman crossover, Clubman, Convertible, Coupe, Roadster and the new-for-2013 Paceman. That's seven different models and all of them adorable, screaming high performers. 

Of all the "modern Coopers," though, these funky things are without question the most unique. That's being kind because I like them; many people think they're flat-out strange, and I get that.

Based on the second-generation MINI Hardtop, aside from its polarizing styling, there's really no practical benefit to this being a two-passenger automobile. If anything, the styling is a deterrent to driving since the chopped rear roofline compromises rearward visibility. The Coupe was also roughly a hundred pounds heavier than the regular Hardtop. 

Being a Cooper S, this car has a 1.6-liter turbocharged, double-overhead-cam, 16-valve four-cylinder engine making 181 horsepower and 177 lb-ft of torque. The naturally aspirated 1.6-liter in the regular Cooper made 121 horsepower. Combine the extra scoot of the S's turbo engine with its notchy six-speed manual and go-kart-like handling, and this is a very fun car to drive. For a little while.

The stiff ride can get old. Fast. Especially as a daily driver. Non-S models have a more compliant ride, but they don't have the zoom-zoom (sorry, wrong car brand). MINI itself promoted the brand's famous "go-kart feeling," and in this case, the marketing department wasn't exactly making that up.

So, back to the bad news. Anything made by BMW has never been known as a bastion of reliability or durability. High-performing and well-engineered? Without question. The problem is, as they get older, they tend to flake out and become problematic. And those problems are pricey to fix. Very pricey.

Back in Nashville, a buddy of mine bought a used Cooper, somewhat inexplicably, too, since he was a hard-core square-body Chevy pickup guy. He ditched it after a year because every time he turned around, he was throwing a couple of grand at it.

Another guy I know had an '80s BMW 5 Series he called his "two-thousand-dollar, one-thousand-dollar car." Meaning, he paid a thousand for it, but he, too, was frequently dropping two thousand dollars on it.

There are scores of YouTube, Facebook and Instagram videos out there extolling the performance virtues of MINIs while simultaneously lamenting how fragile and expensive to repair they can be.

No doubt this one will sell, although it looks like they've already dropped the asking price by $200. I think if they really want to move it, they should drop it by at least a grand. If not two.

At five grand, I might be caught between a rock and a hard place—that being between calling on it, knowing full well I shouldn't and perhaps regretting not calling. 

There's good news and bad news when it comes to MINI Coopers. The good news is, BMW bought the Rover Group in 1994, which included the Mini brand. More good news: although BMW spun off most of the Rover Group in 2000, one of the things it kept was Mini. But wait, there's even more good news! BMW came out with an all-new MINI in 2001, and the car was substantially redesigned for 2007 and again for 2014, with significant updates in between. The fourth-generation MINI arrived for 2025. The bad news is, BMW bought the Rover Group in 1994.

BMW itself says that when it sold off the Rover Group in 2000, it retained the MINI brand, along with several of the facilities that would support production of the new MINI. The first modern MINI rolled off the Oxford assembly line in April 2001.

I ran into this 2013 MINI Cooper S Coupe for sale in the town just south of The Triple Wide out here on Cleveland, Ohio's far west side. This guy always has some car or truck for sale at the end of his driveway; I guess he has a dealer's license or whatever. Anyway, I'm almost glad the asking price wasn't closer to $5,000 because I might have talked myself into at least calling the number on its FOR SALE signs.

MINI introduced the two-passenger Coupe in 2011, with sales beginning for the 2012 model year. A Roadster followed in 2012 too. By 2013, the MINI lineup had grown into quite the family: the two-door Hardtop, four-door Countryman crossover, Clubman, Convertible, Coupe, Roadster and the new-for-2013 Paceman. That's seven different models and all of them adorable, screaming high performers. 

Of all the "modern Coopers," though, these funky things are without question the most unique. That's being kind because I like them; many people think they're flat-out strange, and I get that.

Based on the second-generation MINI Hardtop, aside from its polarizing styling, there's really no practical benefit to this being a two-passenger automobile. If anything, the styling is a deterrent to driving since the chopped rear roofline compromises rearward visibility. The Coupe was also a bit heavier than the regular Hardtop, although the difference wasn't quite as dramatic as you might think.

Being a Cooper S, this car has a 1.6-liter turbocharged, double-overhead-cam, 16-valve four-cylinder engine making 181 horsepower and 177 lb-ft of torque. The naturally aspirated 1.6-liter in the regular Cooper made 121 horsepower. Combine the extra scoot of the S's turbo engine with its notchy six-speed manual and go-kart-like handling, and this is a very fun car to drive. For a little while.

The stiff ride can get old. Fast. Especially as a daily driver. Non-S models have a more compliant ride, but they don't have the zoom-zoom (sorry, wrong car brand). MINI itself promoted the brand's famous "go-kart feeling," and in this case, the marketing department wasn't exactly making that up.

So, back to the bad news. Anything made by BMW has never been known as a bastion of reliability or durability. High-performing and well-engineered? Without question. The problem is, as they get older, they tend to flake out and become problematic. And those problems are pricey to fix. Very pricey.

Back in Nashville, a buddy of mine bought a used Cooper, somewhat inexplicably, too, since he was a hard-core square-body Chevy pickup guy. He ditched it after a year because every time he turned around, he was throwing a couple of grand at it.

Another guy I know had an '80s BMW 5 Series he called his "two-thousand-dollar, one-thousand-dollar car." Meaning, he paid a thousand for it, but he, too, was frequently dropping two thousand dollars on it.

There are scores of YouTube, Facebook and Instagram videos out there extolling the performance virtues of MINIs while simultaneously lamenting how fragile and expensive to repair they can be.

No doubt this one will sell, although it looks like they've already dropped the asking price by $200. I think if they really want to move it, they should drop it by at least a grand. If not two.

At five grand, I might be caught between a rock and a hard place—that being between calling on it, knowing full well I shouldn't and perhaps regretting not calling.