Chevette at an estate sale

[freshtiva]

My sister called me today she knew of an elderly couple who were having an estate sale. She said you need to get up here and look at this car. I got there and it was a 1986 Chevy Chevette with 38,000 on it. The owner was 96 year old retired mechanic. I still had the highest bid on the bid sheet at $1500 15 minutes ago. Its pretty clean ! I drove freshtiva up there, half a dozen people came up to me and shared festiva stories with me. Telling me how great festivas are and wished they still had one :lol:

[Tim]

Nice find!

That car looks like it's brand new.

I love estate sales. I was at one today, in fact. A 93 year old lady who had lived in the house since '23 and was a packrat passed away. The place was jammed with junk and it was like going back in time - nothing in that house was newer than 1970!

[packrat427]

WOW :shock:
That is a nice find , I worked at a Chevy dealership in service when those came out new .

That car does look new , It was too bad they never made on FI.

[25Horseplay]

That has to be the cleanest Chevette I have seen in 20 years!

[freshtiva]

The 67 C10 werent bad either, small block v8, real solid body with a rubber pad in the bed. I think it was at $2200. Pretty nice !

[neanderpaul]

Cool finds! My buddy works for his cousin and that guy is a low mileage magnet. He found a 73 chevy passenger van with 15,000 miles on it. The guy want $1100 for it it has $500 worth of new tires and runs like a top. I'm trying to pull that one off.

[elcamino1]

Yeah thats one clean Chevette.
I can remember replacing quite a few shock towers.

[roycehof]

Nice! Let me share this with you. Twice a year there is a "Junk Car Race" near Birdsboro, PA. The chevettes ALWAYS do well in the small car class. They are little tanks. The Hondas and Toyotas can't damage them. They are unbelievably strong. BTW, in 3 years, I have only seen one Festiva, and it only made it about half way through the race. I believe it got swamped in the "water hazard" (an area of water to the inside of the track) and couldn't get free.
Good Luck with it - What a GEM.

[25Horseplay]

Well did anyone win the auction for this car yet?

[freshtiva]

Oh yeah, I didn't get the car There was ten minutes left before the bid sheet deadline and I saw a older man come in and ask if there had been any bids on the car. Didn't catch it all but at one point they all looked at me sitting out in the drive. Then one of them came out and said so and so ( the older man) just out bid you, would you be willing to go a little higher? I figured I was being set up or the older man was a friend of the family and was helping them out ( I heard him say once "John really took good care of that car didn't he? "), so I said no. It wasn’t a festiva anyway. Later found out that the asking price for the car was $3500 prior to the auction. Figured they weren’t going to let it go for my top bid of $1500. It will probably show up on eBay , or a consignment sale.

[roycehof]

Oh Well - At least it didn't wind up at the "junk car race". Sorry you missed it. Remember though ifsomebody hits that car while you were leaving the insurance company would give fair market value for a chevette which would mean you could owe them - LOL!
$1500 for that car was a respectable bid. SOmetimes low mileage cars give you more problems than high mileage cars because of dried our rubber parts. Better luck next time

[freshtiva]

^ All true. $1500 was my limit. It might have been worth a little more, but who is to say the older man wouldn't have gone $2000. Ive nearly forgotten it now, no point second guessing it. It was a fun find anyway.

[gdawgs]

My first three cars were Chevettes. The ones from the late 70's had a fair amount of power, but by the mid 80's they had so much polution control crap on them that they were unbelievably gutless. Lousy gas mileage too. Maybe the stick would do better, but my automatics never got much better than 20mpg. When I got my first Festiva, I was in heaven. Festivas are a million times better than Chevettes. Maybe a blessing that you didn't get it. I have never missed any of mine. But I do miss my first Festiva, I have good memories of that thing.