1995 Chevrolet Beretta - At Least It's Red

I can't tell you the last time I saw a Chevrolet Beretta in general to say nothing of one in this kind of shape. It's a bone-stripper base model from 1995 no doubt either bought by an older person who used it sparingly or was bought, sold and stored sometime over the last quarter century. Funny, say, twenty or thirty years ago, if a twenty-five year old car came to the surface in this kind of condition it was gobbled up pretty quickly and at a premium. Especially if it was a coupe or a convertible. These days there's a gaggle of disposable old cars out there that are nothing more than what they are - old cars. Sadly, this Beretta is one of those cars. What there is of "value" in this thing is that it has a reasonable asking price and it's a used car it what appears to be good shape. Aside from that it's worthless.

General Motors manufactured the Chevrolet Beretta and it's four-door platform-mate, the Corsica, from 1987 through 1996. Both replaced the Citation in the Chevrolet lineup and were collectively replaced by the four-door only Malibu in 1997. Somewhat strangely enough, no other GM division sold a car that was directly related to the Beretta\Corsica although there was significant sharing of their running gear and structural components across several GM platforms. 

At least with regards to their outward appearance, I've always kinda liked the looks of these things in all their various permutations. You know, all those GT's GTZ', GTU's, Z-26's and so on. I like 'em with lots of useless, tasteless, tacky body cladding too. Give me some fat neon stripping to complete the '90's awfulness\awesomeness. That said, while I like the looks of these cars I never thought for a half-second of owning one. In particular one like this in its most basic, banal, rental-grade flavor. At least it's red. 

It's no surprise that I liked the looks of these cars given they were baked up in the same GM skunk-works that whipped up the somewhat similar looking 1993 vintage Chevrolet Camaro. However, while I've had three Camaro's of that vintage and I'm always looking for a low-mileage Z28 or SS that someone is desperate to get rid of, I don't care how well equipped or in what kind of near-showroom condition a Beretta out there might be, my name on the title of one is never going to happen. 

So, what happened to these cars and why were they so, after a short while, derided as much as they were? Named after, technically, the Italian fire-arms manufacturer and not to be confused with the Camaro Berlinetta, plain and simple, they were cheap, disposable and, again, cheap. While America loves a good value, if all of said value is ultimately perceived as being "cheap" then the value proposition makes no sense. Value is what made Japanese cars so hard to beat years ago - not only were they were affordable they were exquisitely assembled transportation conveyances. 

They may not have looked, subjectively, as handsome as this car does, but for the thirty-six to sixty month short\long haul, they were better values. Even if they were somewhat more expensive, as was the case of a comparably equipped Honda Accord coupe. While the Honda Civic was priced far more in line with a Beretta, our Beretta here is sized far more like an Accord. Over time that extra money spent for a debately less attractive car was a wash since the Accord (or any import) stayed screwed together and even from the get-go was a vastly superior driving automobile. 

They also didn't have the boorish interior that even our '95 here has. And this was a marked improvement over the interiors of earlier Beretta's. As much as I tried to dissuade him from doing so my younger brother bought a '90 Beretta GT brand new years ago and it had an interior with all the charm of a Tupperware bowl. Wait - not even a Tupperware bowl but a cheap knockoff of a Tupperware bowl. 

His car at least had the optional 3.1 liter V-6 and when you got on it, cheap-o plastic interior and all, it went pretty good. To add to the rental-car misery of our redhead here, it's powered by the rugged but rubbery 2.2 liter in-line four. Shoot, it's not even a Quad4. 

This is for sale at a Chevrolet dealership in Oregon, Ohio with a not-unreasonable asking price of $4995. It's in great shape and has only 60,000 miles on it's twenty-five year old clicker. In Ohio that  means no "e-check"! Such-a-deal. It ain't for me but you could do a whole lot worse with five grand for a used car. You could do better too. Get it for a grand less or get out the door all-in for as close to the asking price as possible and you will have done very well. 

Oregon is a suburb of Toledo; Toledo is often times referred to as "Detroit's sister city" as it's a factory town about an hour south of Motown. Toledo a good 90 minute drive west of downtown Cleveland.