Vauxhall Chevette HS - The Baby Muscle Car (1978 HS Road Test)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- One of the earliest contenders in the hot hatchback scene, the Vauxhall Chevette HS is somewhat forgotten today. Aaron McKay explains why it deserves its time in the spotlight as the loveable baby muscle car it is...
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Look at all the suspension travel, I bet it’s a glorious little thing to blast down back lanes.
How 80’s escort turbos with their CVH command higher prices than these is just nuts.
I had a 1975 silver 1256 cc version in my youth, made it look like an HS, , complete with 4 big cibie spot lamps, the tail spoiler and a Blydenstein sun visor. The only parts I didnt have were the wheels or the engine! Even with the paltry engine on a suitable damp roundabout you could have the tail out! Great little car, until I discovered I couldnt easily put the wings back on due to rust, and due to me flogging the poor thing up and down the motorway at high speed between Harlow and Brighton a least 3-4 times a week the engine started spewing oil quicker than I could refill! Eventually only firing on 1-2 cylinders on part ex! I did see it for a few years after seemingly fixed!! A car stuck in my memory!🙂🙂🙂
I had 3 Chevettes in my youth and still hanker after an HS or an HSR version but as you say they are very few and far between. Still I can dream on, its what keeps us going! Thank you very much for the video, far too little of this vehicle on TH-cam.
We struggled to give this one back!
had a drive in vx2.3 gls in the 80s and it could go ,so i can only imagine how quick this chevette is and yes it was very thirsty!!
I have a mk1 Cavalier, a sleeper. The Chevette and the cavalier really don’t get the recognition they deserve. Great cars, awesome tribute, all the best 💪👍
Couldn't agree more!
Brilliant. Great review of a Vauxhall icon.
The Chevette we were offered in North America is a complete 180 degree in desirability to this HS model... such an interesting car!
I love so much about this car and other Vauxhalls of the time. Retro decals (really retro, like beyond retro), louder tartan seats that the Golf's, rwd, 2300, hatchback, Avon safety wheels, the fact it's a Vauxhall, Gerry Marshall DTV silver paint. It's such a punky hooligan.
They weren’t Avon safety wheels: they were GKN Vega wheels, which looked similar, but had a slightly more slender rim without the deep well.
Great car and a great memory for me. I had one of these for a few weeks in about 1983 loved it but as a twenty year old I couldn't really afford to insure it back in the days when you had to buy a years insurance up front. Ran it for two months on cover notes and then had to sell it. Replaced it with a magnum 2300 droopsnoot which had pretty much the same interior but a totally different car but at least I could insure it.
I love how it hugs the road around corners its planted to the pavement
Fantastic my first car was a silver 1976 chevette GL hatch back I did it up to look like a HS spoiler etc the amount of cavaliers up my arse unreal
The first car i owned was a Chevette "V" reg it was a 1.3 and was an estate car, it was like a greenhouse. I was 17 years old and my dad got me it my then girlfriend wasn't impressed.
Great little film about a great little car! I had a Vauxhall Chevette Silhouette from 85 to 89 =- black with orange go-fast strips. Loved it. Did over 110,00 miles in it. I also test-drove a 2300HS near Bath in 1986. It was flame-red (honest!) with the number plate of MAD77. That was inspiring and I was very keen to get it. But the running costs were just too high for me at that time. It could really shift. We took it out onto the A4 dual-carriageway section between Bath and Bristol and an XR3 came up and the owner told me to just floor it and see what happened... we left the XR3 for dead!
I remember those as a teenager. Performance is a match for many a modern hatch back but not sure about the "Bay City Rollers" interior though.
Couldnt afford one back in the day but had a 1256 chevette that i turned into a HS look a like done everything apart from swapping the engine. So it had the same exterior and interior as a HS but with the small engine
I have a video of my dad rallying his Vauxhall Chevette with a 2.3 slant 4 engine😃👍🏻
had a pinto in mine way back
What a tremendous car 😀
For goodness sake don't mention the Lotus head! We got disqualified when the scrutineers realised that we were running that, instead of the homologated Vauxhall head (possibly faulty memory is that Peugeot put in the protest). Anyway, the Vauxhall head is in many ways better engineered, although the combustion chamber design isn't quite so good. It didn't take long to get the Vauxhall head up to Lotus power levels.
Such a cool car! 👍😎
Fantastic
We loved it!
I remember that tartan interior, I had it in a vx490 though not a shoveit.
Dover One Foxtrot very nice - I’m very fond of the VX series - VX490 and 2300 GLS are my favourite Vauxhalls.........
These cars need to be made available today, but still make the same sound, and also bring back the Firenza droop snoot 👍
This is a nice watch.... Full of nostalgia. This was a fast car in its day. From a time when quite a few smaller cars were RWD.
The "cooking" Chevettes really were dreadful cars, built to fill a gap between filling other gaps. Dreadful as a hatch, worse as a saloon, although somehow practical and bearable as a small estate.
The HS was the funky one. Rare, fast, somehow pointless, but lovely in a way that only a glorified parts-bin gorilla can be.
The HSR is the one everyone pretends to remember... But those who say they did never got closer to one than I did. And I don't think I was even on the same county as one. This is the real thing.
Best thing to do is put Dellorto carbs on an HS and you'll be really cooking. Many do actually
No better or worse than most of the stuff on offer in the day.
The chevette hs wasn't a parts bin mash up, it was a homologation special, the cylinder head was designed for the HS/HSR alone, hence why they are so rare.
Lindo demais, esse carro e fantástico!! 🇧🇷🇧🇷
had a pinto powered chevette back in the 80s , wish i could get it back
I owned a Chevette HS back in the late 80's after selling my Dolomite Sprint (with a 'lightened and balanced' engine on 45's). What I really, really wanted was a Sunbeam Lotus - but the Chevette HS was a more affordable option. My Chevette HS was a complete disappointment and it felt slow, unrefined and agricultural compared to my Sprint. I sold the HS after only a couple of months and bought back my old Dolly. Horses for courses, I suppose?
The chevette would have been just as good as the sunbeam and loads better than the dolly if you fitted the dealer optional Weber carburetors.
The crappy stromberg carbs Vauxhall had to fit to all new cars due to contractual obligations hence why the webers had to be fitted by the dealership so not many customers paid for them, but many have been retrofitted in recent years because of the vast improvement.
The HS stands for 'Holy $h!t' 🤣
My friend had a 2.3 magnum estate he Surprised quite a few cars when he left them behind at the traffic lights it just looked like a normal viva estate
I had one of these back in 93 wish I still had it .gave £4500 for it ..I guy I knew at the time used to race a HSR he would come down in his Bedford race van and service it for me .i remember him tuning my 48s with a tube in his ear ........wonder if he’s still around .?
He sounds like a cracking guy!
13mm wheels? Stated in a voiceover? Maybe go back and edit that bit? Because apart from that, great review. Plenty of footage of these incredible cars on the channel VHS Rallies, if anyone wants to see them in action against the competition.
Scalextric!
Did the rally version of this have a Blydenstine engine block?
I liked that the chevette had only 2 engines...a 1.3 and 2.3
I had HMS109S, a pukks HS.
I had YWU 999S ....It was the dealers demonstrator . I got it when it was 6 months old . Very fast car for the time....
The good old Dolomite Sprint would get to 60 in 8.4 too, that was only 2 litres, only had a single cam and 2 SU carburetters.
We do love a Dolly Sprint!
@Biffa Chevette HS was 16 valve also, but with twin cams
@@CaptainScarlet67 fit the dealer optional Weber carbs and have it set up by someone who knew what they were doing an otherwise standard hs would have over 150bhp.
The only reason the hs had stromberg carbs was to fulfill Vauxhalls contractual obligations.
@@theant9821 Hello again ANT. Mine had dcoe webers, exhaust manifold & comp oil pump from "Uncle Bill" Blydenstien and breakerless ignition, allowing a mad 7000 rpm. A semi tame Lotus mechanic to fettle it for me. I never got round to having the head skimmed, it was thirsty enough and a real handful in the wet.
Jimmy Mcrae used to rally in these if I remember right?
He did. Then moved onto the Manta 400.
He and the late Russell Brookes,always scrapping it out.Legends....
The first hottish car I ever went it that wasn't an American muscle car.
The black hsr DEB508V Personal car of rally driver Penttii Arrikkala is still in the uk .. but you would need deep pockets to get it .
I've sat in that car, can't remember where, but it was at a car show there were several hs 2 or 3 hsr and a few hpf firenza on the droop snoot group stand.
The best looking one was the black magic.
As an opel person I'd take a kadett c over a chevette and would love a gte.
It was acctually the Ascona who was most popullar in rally, yeah, any kind of motorsports!
My first car was a ‘87 chevette. It wasn’t cool enough for me at the time so I bought a ‘80 mercury zephyr! I thought it was so cool with mag wheels and scorpion on the hood!!!😎 but it was the biggest pile of shit!!!😡 in retrospect I should’ve kept my nice little dependable
“Vette” ☹️
Damn! How is it you folks ‘across the pond’ get all of the cool cars?!! Sadly, the best we folks here in the USA could muster were Chevettes with only 78 hp max…☹️
But you did get the Chevy Vega, need I say more?
I’ve owned two Lotus Sunbeam a Mk1 and Mk2, I’ve driven a couple of these Chevette’s and they are no way as good as your saying. A Mk1 & 2 Sunbeam rips the arse off those, they look good but there shit, the Frenza was ten times the car that Chevette ever was.
Sunbeam was lighter with 15bhp more I believe and being a Lotus engineered car probably handled a bit better too.
Oh yes.I can see Penti sideways right now.....
Try the 2.3 HSR.
they handle better than a mk2 escort rally car
Are you a time traveller ? you look like someone from the 80s so appropriate your in that car, also on a more serious note 8.4 to 60mph for an 80s car is very fast, most little Fiestas or Corsas wont hit that performance today unless they have a modern 2 litre engine so well done to Vauxhall
Still a rapid thing today!
@@ClassicsWorldUK Yeah it is , apparently faster 0-60mph than a Mazda MX-5 🙀
13 mil wheels 🙂
the Vauxhall 2.3 slant four twin cam engine was developed by blydenstein engineering...…... NOT lotus
The idea was Lotus's. They asked Vauxhall if they could use their block to base it on, to put in the Lotus 62, which was a development of the 47, which a lot of people mistake for the Europa, which was almost identical, but not quite. This is all googleable. I almost bought a 47 to race 40 odd years ago, and had one of the original (out of 9 built by Bill Blydenstein as far as I remember) 2.5 fuel-injected versions, with Dyno sheets for 267 bhp. Sold it to a father and son who intended to put in a road going HS! Also had 5 HS road versions, and hillclimbed HSR No 1 briefly, before having to part with it. It's nice to see them recognised, but reviews, and magazine articles, written by guys who weren't born when these cars were current are always full of inaccuracies. One article I read suggested putting HS wheels on a Droop Snoot Firenza (had one of them too) as they were a little wider - Firenza wheels' PCD is imperial, HS ones metric, so you see what I mean. I've often thought I should write for the classic car magazines, as I've had a lot of the cars they feature. And no, I'm not loaded - might be if it didn't all go on cars!
the rally car used a lotus head
@@raycroal it used a Lotus head only briefly until it was protested as not being a Vauxhall part, so Vauxhall had to develop their own version. The main visual difference being the angle of the cam covers, from memory.
@@allannicolson8221 i see these innaccuracies all the time aswell, on another note have you seen these car adverts on ebay and the like with so many people saying "this car is very 'sort' after" i wouldn't mind if it was just now and then but i am seeing it all the time,what is happening to people i bet they are the people who raise their voice at the end of a statement too. rant over
Hi Ray. I know what you mean! To be fair, predictive text is the main problem there, with the phone/computer second guessing you all the time and picking the wrong words.. There was a case mentioned on a radio program ( American spelling unless I correct it) where a husband texted his wife, who was at work, that he was just about to roast the baby! I can't figure out what he really meant, but she was home in record time. Along with the 2.5 TJ injected engine, I had a works spec HSR shell, with some ex Pentti bits (dash and one or two bits), it also had the full 35 degree installation kit. Bill B had figured out that lifting the engine 10 degrees from the normal 45 allowed a slower bend on the exhaust manifold, and a better torque curve from memory. Big job - everything has to come back 10 degrees to level. Inlets, gear lever (different g/b bellhousing) ex/man, head modded to let the oil drain properly. Don't think privateers found out about the works advantage till after they'd moved on to the Ascona. Talked to Bill quite a few times. Discovered he passed our house in Beauly (Scottish Highlands) every year on his way to their cottage on Orkney. Lovely approachable genius. Oh, and the project was never completed (money, as ever), the shell going way up north, the engine south. Would have made a great hillclimb car. Oh well... Had the pleasure of reassuring a Vauxhall dealer that the HS he'd bought was a genuine one at a car show a few years ago (a lot aren't -the giveaway often being bonnet pins, since most reshells don't have the removable bonnet landing panel refitted. I saw one with a crude chassis plate under the bonnet - told him he'd better have a good lawyer, since that gave the car two different chassis numbers - he didn't know where the original number was, and just copied the HS V5. Showed him the shell's one, which would mean removing the windscreen to change it, so it's probably still the same. Had the same problem with MoT testers under 100 years old failing one for lack of chassis number! Bored you long enough now. Cheers!
‘Hales into insignificance’?🧐 2.09
Isnt there an american one of these.. . Shelby.....same sorta deal like the dodge omni/ plymouth horizon / talbot sunbeam?
You mean a Chrysler/Talbot sunbeam, the sunbeam lotus was only sold under the Talbot name as Chrysler had sold the company (what used to be Hillman), to Peugeot who reestablished the company under the Talbot name.
There's a Chevrolet Chevette but no fast one.
I had one, loved it until I smashed it up.
@Cameron XP doing something stupid, driving too fast, hit the car in front at 60mph, crushed the front and shunted the engine in with me. I was lucky minor injuries cuts and bruises and concussion.
huh, does that have a reverse gearbox? otherwise he pulled off in 2nd gear, haha! ah is that what a dogleg box is?
Yes
I learned to drive in this car. It was an absolute pig to stop. A pain in the snow and frankly, I hated it.
Horses for second courses I guess. 😳
Learn to drive in a hs?
Not forgotten, rotten to not'in
A cool car, for sure. However, the test car does have a rubbish sound; no real induction or exhaust noises to speak of.
Drop the camera operator when inside, use POV camera, short video should focus on the cars not presenter
Looks bloody uncomfortable
Dogleg gearbox.