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.
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