This one’s for the 1980s kids. If you’re an older millennial or a younger Gen Xer, if your first video game console was an Atari 2600 and your favorite show was The Real Ghostbusters, then you no doubt saw the back seat in your fair share of Chevy Celebrities. Whether it belonged to your parents, extended family, or friends’ parents, Chevrolet sold more than 400,000 of these cars in 1986 alone. While they were never the most exciting vehicles on the road, they were serviceable, affordable, and roomy enough for a small family. They were nobody’s dream car, but they’d get you from point A to point B. Lots of people had one of these, but they were nobody’s first choice.
If you asked us to imagine what a really cool Chevrolet Celebrity would look like, we’d probably draw a blank. Then we’d take a look at the Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport Cabriolet, and we’d still draw a blank. At the time, Chevy produced exciting models such as the Camaro and the Corvette, and the idea of turning the Celebrity into anything but a no-frills daily driver seemed like the automaker was missing the point. But that’s exactly what a Canadian car customizing company did, building 33 of these droptop models. Here’s what you might find interesting about the rarest Chevy Celebrity ever built.
No, It’s Not An Official Chevy
We’re willing to bet you’ve never seen one of these before. The Chevrolet Celebrity was officially available in sedan, coupe, and wagon body styles. A convertible was never on the menu, at least not at any licensed General Motors dealership.
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These Cars Were Custom-Built In Canada
On some of these models, you’ll find a sticker on the door denoting that these cabriolet models were sold by the Car Craft Company, a Canadian customizer about which we found no information. One of these Canadian models, highlighted by auto blog The Truth About Cars, was a 1986 Eurosport VR, a trim that the automaker never offered at this time. The Eurosport was introduced in 1984, but the Eurosport VR, which included special decals, ground effects, aluminum wheels, and a unique grille, wasn’t introduced until 1987. So this is a custom Celebrity, twice removed from any mass-produced version of the car.
The Car Craft Company Wasn’t The Only Business Building Celebrity Convertibles
Hess & Eisenhardt is a customizer best known for building bulletproof Cadillacs, Lincolns, and limos for American presidents and the Secret Service. The company also produced plenty of customs for civilians, including convertible Chevy Celebrities, one of which was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in 1997’s Bean, starring the world-famous McLaren-crasher and legendary comedian Rowan Atkinson. Google might tell you these cars never existed, but there one is in the background of a comedy classic. Thanks are owed to the Internet Movie Car Database for this find.
Customized topless cars are typically referred to as “coach convertibles,” because coachbuilders construct these special drop-tops. Customizers are given a lot of leeway when it comes to body and visual design. The companies can do just about whatever they like with your coupe or sedan, as long as the modifications don’t cross any lines in terms of visibility, safety, or common sense.
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The Eurosport Was As Close As A Chevy Celebrity Came To Being Fun To Drive
If you’re going to try to make the Celebrity cool, the Eurosport is really the best place to start.
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1984 Chevrolet Celebrity HO V6 Eurosport Performance Specs |
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Engine |
2.8-Liter Naturally Aspirated 6-Cylinder |
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Power |
130 hp |
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Torque |
145 lb-ft |
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Transmission |
5-Speed Manual |
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Drivetrain |
Front-Wheel Drive |
The engine under the hood of a Eurosport was a V6 borrowed directly from a Chevy Citation, another mostly unremarkable daily driver. The Eurosport was available with a Getrag 5-speed manual transmission and featured heavy-duty suspension and 14-inch Sport Rallye wheels. The model featured a host of cosmetic upgrades, as well, including black window trim, red emblems, and a black steering wheel.
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The Eurosport Was Neither European Nor Sporty
“Eurosport” might have been a bit of a lofty name for the trim, bringing to mind driver-oriented BMW and Mercedes-Benz models of the era, or at least some of the more nimble Volvo and Volkswagen offerings, such as the Golf. In terms of both performance and appearance, nobody was mistaking a Celebrity Eurosport for a fine piece of German engineering. On a good day, the Eurosport could hit 60 mph in about eleven seconds, and it still looked like your school principal’s sedan, no matter how you dressed it up.
It may sound like we’re ragging on this thing, but the truth is the Chevy Celebrity was never a lousy car. It just didn’t make a lot of sense to market a sporty, stylish version of a humdrum daily driver, and it made even less sense to convert it into a cabriolet.
Not That You’d Want To Buy One, But Here’s What A Chevy Celebrity Will Cost You Today
We searched high and low, and we only turned up a single, relatively recent listing for a used Chevrolet Celebrity. It was a 1986 wagon with a 2.8-liter V6 engine, sold in 2022 for $6,101 with just 63,000 miles on the odometer. The sale price for this one was justified more by its condition than by the make and model. If you’re nostalgic for the woody wagons that defined your childhood road trips, this car was in near-mint condition with the original owner’s manual and everything, and you’d have to go over the pictures with a magnifying glass to find a scratch on it.
Outside of the auction sites, AutoTempest doesn’t even let you run a search for this car. J.D. Power estimates an average retail value of $1,150 for a 1986 Chevy Celebrity in good condition, and Kelley Blue Book doesn’t even have enough data available to give us a fair purchase price.
Rare Doesn’t Always Mean Sought-After, But The Celebrity Had A Certain Mundane Charm
The topless Chevrolet Celebrity was listed for $5,500 in 2020, and we have no way of knowing whether the seller was able to claim that price. We doubt it, but people have paid more for worse cars, so we could be wrong. The CHevy Celebrity was never the most remarkable car on the market. Still, it was a functional, efficient daily driver, with the V6 averaging around 20 miles to the gallon combined, according to the EPA.
For a certain generation, a car like this is worth remembering not so much because it was anything special, but because it was so common. If you’re between the ages of 35 and 50, chances are you’ve ridden in at least one Chevy Celebrity, whether it was the car you bought second-hand to get to your first job, or you remember trips to the beach riding in the back of a wagon, or climbing over the front seats of your dad’s two-door model.
And now that we’ve taken a fun little trip down memory lane, we can admit that we’ve got no interest in ever driving or riding in one of these things ever again, whether we’re talking Eurosport, wagon, sedan, or convertible. No matter how you style it, it’s still a Chevrolet Celebrity.
Sources: IMCDB, Coachbuilt, FuelEconomy.gov, Bring a Trailer.
