My first car was a 1982 Cadillac Coupe deVille DIESEL. It was uncomfortably slow- holding up traffic always with a long line of cars behind me (and this was 1989 so everybody had slower cars and STILL the diesel couldn’t keep up) It rattled. It clattered… it belched black smoke on acceleration and I had many experiences of people waving desperately at me to tell me something was wrong with my car, and I’d shout back to them “it’s a diesel!!” And it wasn’t reliable. The glow plugs failed…. But… it was beautiful to look at, was comfortable as hell and it was mine. (RIP totaled by a drunk driver in 1992 with my whole family aboard. No injuries. It was a tank too, you see…)
My friend had one and when the diesel engine failed, he put a 455 cubic inch Oldsmobile "Rocket" V8. That old Caddy would spin the one back tire as long as you held your foot on the gas. It surprised a lot of folks as it still had the diesel emblem, the wire wheel hubcaps and it looked like a Granny car, but it was fun!
I had an '81 Fleetwood Brougham. It had the 8-6-4 motor. What a pig. BUT- something about cruising slow in that big, beautiful boat with the wood trim and wood knobs while listening to Paul's Boutique on the tape deck....magic.
@@skeeter197140 wow the infamous cylinder deactivation debacle. Did you leave it that way or did you unplug the system so that it was just the 8 cylinder? Even that engine was about 50hp stronger than the diesel…
I started timing the 0 - 60 in my '82 Chevette while carrying 3 passengers back in '83. I'm currently at 58 mph and I expect to reach 60 in early 2026.
76 Chevette with 4 speed manual was even worse. I never checked 0-60 time because I already knew it was pathetically slow. The Iron Duke engine was loud as all hell and slow as all hell. Oh, well what do you expect for $500? I kept me going for a year until I bought a 84 Cutlass Ciera with the god-awful LK9 V6 engine. At least the floor didn't rust out like the 76 Chevette. Still, the car had a lot of issues.
I had a '79 Eldorado diesel. Getting on the freeway entrance ramp, I would stomp on the accelerator and pray for the prevailing winds to carry the dark cloud of noxious fumes into traffic so cautious motorists would slow to avoid what was obviously an out of control brush fire and I could clatter into the new space in traffic. The car was gorgeous, and I looked very glamorous and successful waiting at the side of the road for the tow truck. Horrible car in every respect. Even interior panels were falling apart in the first year. I divorced GM and bought Lincolns, which were great.
Wow! I had a 76 Eldorado with the 500 V8 and it actually did pretty good, but watch out for the insane torque steer! I once floor it from a stoplight and ended up all the way in the lane to the right. Thank God no car was there.
My family bought an 81' Chevette when I was a kid. The 0-60 was not 21 seconds, it was closer to 21 years. Of course, the brakes would have failed and the floorboards rusted out long before then.
I had a 1980 Chevette it would do 95 downhill. My friends said I was confused and thought it was a corvette. I thrashed the shit out of that car. My dad had a 1980 T-Bird with a 302. He had the cats cut out. The digital speedometer stopped at 85 not to sure what the top speed was.
I owned an '83 Chevette, and it was bad, but not as bad as the diesel model that got 21 seconds to 60. If you had an automatic and ran the AC nonstop, it would still get there in under 20 seconds, but with the manual and no AC, it's a spritely 15 seconds to 60. And since my dad took an '81 Chevette to 250k, my fear was my Chevette would last forever, too. I wound up having an accident I walked away from that totalled the car.
Not covered in your video was the introduction of the catalytic converter in 1975. With leaded fuel still available at the pump!. This fuel cross contamination did a marvelous job of hopelessly plugging up the catalytic converter. This deserves a video all it's own.
What you did not explain was there were 3 grades of gasoline, and then unleaded. Unleaded cars had a different size filler restriction on their inlet tank hose connection, and the pump nozzle was a different size, 5/8" nozzle, federally mandated, as to the conventional 3.4" fuel dispensing nozzle. Morons that ripped open their filler necks to the larger sizes to use the cheaper gas, voided their warranty, and many dealers enforced this detail. As to the catalytic converters clogging, yes, but the problem was more of an oil contamination, rather than lead in the gasoline. Unleaded fuel, was a harsher chemical, and did not contail a lubricant for upper cylinder wear. Valve seals, valve seats, and faces wore due to the lack of lubrication from the lead in the gasoline. It wasn't as if the lead was in amounts that was visible, but it did not burn going thru the combustion process. Oil systematically entered the combustion chamber, was burnt during normal operation, and coated the internals of the cat as it went out the exhaust. Of course, this problem was confounded by a new technology car, bought by morons that were stuck in the past, and refused to change old habits. And they were the most outspoken when it came to complaining about the system.
@@the_Texas_BanditIt's fairly simple. The customer before you who filled up his older car left residual fuel in the pump lines. This residual fuel would end up in your tank and ruin your new unleaded only car's
@@GeorgeMcKenna-kz9qx No residual.fuel. Non-leaded gasoline was dispensed from a different pump with the aforementioned smaller nozzle. No opportunity for cross-contamination.
Newer drivers don't realize we're living in the time of cheap horsepower. 0-60 in 13-14 seconds was accepted as normal. Worse yet, 60-0 (Complete with lockup and ending at an odd angle) in 145 feet wasn't extreme.
@@christopherconard2831 My '65 Buick Wildcat had only the 401 'Nail head' engine. Went though cheap Gas Really Fast! 320 HP at 445 foot pounds of pure Muscle. I believe it's weight was 4200 hundred pounds, 600 more than my 'Vette. The weight of 3 people or 5 teeny boppers In constant reckless driving, the drum brakes were a complete joke! They heated up fast and shut down quick. DODGE AROUND Don't hit that! Around town, they were great and oh God! that AM Radio was fantastic! Get those gals in the mood with sweet '60s Songs.
@@christopherconard2831 DeLorean and Iacocca were the ones who designed family cars that could turn an acceptable quarter mile. They also did a lot of the muscle cars. Edit: Yea, I know, the 80's saw another side of both of them, and what they designed.
I had a 1986 Porsche 944 turbo with 220 Hp that went 0-60 in 5.9 seconds. It was a true rocket in its day, this video really shows the contrast compared to other cars of the era.
Yep its funny when people look back at the sports cars of the era and talk about how slow they are. I had a 1985 mustang gt back then, 0-60 mid 6's while pretty much all other family cars were lucky to hit that in 12 seconds, so you were driving a car that was at least twice as fast to 60 than most. 6 seconds difference 0-60 was so huge.
My family had a 1981 Oldsmobile station wagon with the diesel. I actually don't remember much about riding in it. I remember most about how it looked from outside. The reason for this is probably because the engine was replaced 3 times in less than a year, all under warranty. I do have many fond memories of the mercury wagon that came after it. The 1989 mercury colony park wagon is a gem that deserves to be remembered. I drove that car in high school, and it survived many scenarios that should only occur in movie action sequences. It wasn't quick, but it did have a lot of torque from the 5 liter v8. More than enough to cause excessive tire wear.
I test drove a Chevette Diesel in 1984. It sounded like a thousand empty soda cans under the hood. I did buy 3 Chevettes. All gas powered. The slowest car from the 80's that I had was a 1981 Ford Fairmont with the 3.3 inline 6.
I remember looking in the engine compartment of a Fairmont, it was so crammed with pollution controls that there was only one little place where you could see the engine block.
My brother bought the Chevette about the same time my Dad bought a Honda Civic in the late 70s. It was at that time I knew American car makers were in trouble and had better get their act together. No comparison between those two engines.
When I was just a young kid, we rented an 82 Fairmont sedan while our Chrysler was getting some body work done. It had the 2.3. I recall that because the guy from the rental place made a big deal that it would be great on gas. It was red on red and my mother was constantly telling my father that 'she thinks something is wrong with it, because it just won't go!'
Something not everybody knows about the GM 5.7L diesels is that 19 out of 20 were unreliable, undesirable, block-cracking self-hating toadstools, but the other 1 was a durable, efficient and reliable workhorse that commonly crossed the 200000 mile mark without any major mishaps. Slow, yes, but if you got lucky and your diesel was one of the rare ones that WORKED, you actually got a gem of an engine. The most gutless car my family ever owned was a 1983 4-dr Chevy Malibu with the 229 ci V6. It came off the blocks like a 3-legged water buffalo and struggled to make 60 under anybody's foot except my father's (and I think it was scared of him). It was this gutlessness that led me to my first accident. With my first driver's license barely a month old, I pulled onto the main drag and decided to see how long it took the car to go 0-35. It took exactly the distance from Dairy Queen's driveway to a Delta 88 waiting to turn left into Sonic's driveway. Braking distance was roughly 9 inches.
These car’s weren’t dangerously slow by any means. Back then the highway speed limit was 55 MPH. Most cars had about 100 HP. Sports cars had 200 HP and we thought that was smoking fast. Now people drive around in 250 HP family cars and sports cars approaching 1000 HP. Speed limits where I live is 75-80 MPH.
I tell my kids about and we laugh. We dont really need the HP we have now. I bought my son a 12 year old Lexus RX 350, it has 285 HP. He is too scared to drive it fast. Back in the day the 5.0 Mustang only had 220 HP.
A grown-up person. It completely doesn't matter how many seconds it takes to reach 60 mph (100 kmh) unless you are in a contest on how fast your car can reach that speed.
I see some people just commented without reading what I said. The speed limit was 55 miles an hour in back then. You didn’t have to get up to 80 miles an hour to get on the highway so it was perfectly fine. Driving was totally different back then.
I remember those years well, and it took much research to find a car with any acceleration. My first memory was actually a decade earlier when my dad took me to test drive the "new" 1971 Chevrolet Vega. He wanted me to get one with the 1bbl (70 hp) and 2 speed powerglide automatic. I swear, it not only didn't accelerate it felt like you had the car in reverse! Needless to say I went out and bought a v8 Mustang.
I forgot they put the powerslide in those. Yuck on those underpowered turds. My buddy had a 2 speed in his 66 Chevelle with a built motor. He can run it to 70 in first gear. It was a trip. He still has the car and now it's a 3 speed but I always liked the slush box and 70 mph shifts.
The quad 4 came out in the 80's. 4 cylinder that I used to tow a 19 foot bow rider. It eventually reached 190 hp very fast. Had it until someone ran into me and totaled it. People were all over that car because they wanted the engine out of it. The comps. the insurance company used were all over 120K miles.
I had a 87 300SDL on my car lot I had years ago. It was supposedly a former Ambassadors car for one of the Middle East Countires. Slow but solid...Nice car and still had glass fuses!. Guy who bought it raided restaurants for their cooking grease and converted it to run bio diesel. And yes...They were absolutely tanks that ran forever.
@@dddevildogg I think the 240D made a suitable racing partner for the Volkswagen Type II Bus - but tended to last for as long as someone was willing to put up with it - maybe 30 years or more
@@JunkerDriver999 if you had a 1990 S10 blazer with the 4.3 (at the time TBI), the power was completely adequate, it had decent torque. the later redesigned 4.3 was a quite a rocket for an SUV. the 2.8 that predated it was another story but it was also too small of an engine for the truck, realistically. i owned several of the older S10 blazer. 1984, 1986, and 1994
But you can drive your whole life in some parts of Europe without ever needing to get to 60MPH. In the US/Canada/Australia, it's wide-open land - you need to be able to get up to speed!
@@philojudaeusofalexandria9556 But if you are restricted to 70 mph thereafter for a long time, how much do the few seconds matter you lose to slow acceleration?
15-17 sec 0-60 cars are usable, nothing wrong with them. Got to manage momentum. A bunch of people do the opposite, that is hard braking and hard accelerating all the time. People are so aggressive 🤬 nowadays, it's crazy. 🤷♂ To make it blatantly clear and in clear terms: That is a *BAD* thing.
Spring break 1987 we took my friends Dad's 1985 prestine Oldsmobile Delta 88 Diesel. From Dallas to South Padre TX. 580 miles and drove it all week on South Padre Island with out fill up. We finally filled it up leaving back to Dallas. It was slow but it ran so smooth on the highway it put you to sleep with a soft ride. We are car guys and brought it back few coats of wax and spotless.
My friends Dad had a diesel in a Caprice wagon. Pretty sure that thing got in the mid 30s per gallon. We would drive all the way from Illinois to the UP of Michigan on about half a tank. It probably had a 26 gallon tank, but still... Pretty good for that huge wagon.
Growing up back then, I paid more attention to the big luxury cars with the big block V8's. I knew about the GM 350 diesels that were a disaster. I learned a lot today from your video. Thanks for doing this one. Cheers!
I had a Fairmont with the 2.3L 4cyl and a 4-speed. It was already named "The Slowmobile" when I got it. I can only imagine what the suckers who got it with an automatic went through; Yugo-slow indeed. The Maverick with a 170CI 6cyl and an auto trans wasn't fast either, but it was easy to drive: just floor it and take a nap. When you wake up you're at highway speed. The Chevette was called "The shove-it" because if you wanted to get there faster you had to get out and shove it. Another one was the short-lived "Pinto MPG" with a 1.6L four. And the 2.0L Rangers weren't much even with a 5-speed. Thing is that all these got good fuel mileage, and that's what a lot of people were looking for. Traffic moved slower back then so it wasn't that much of an issue but today you'd need earplugs for all the horns honking at you to get out of the way.
I had the Zephyr with the 4 cyl (Mercury version of Fairmont). It was pretty slow, but would beat my friends Dodge Volare with the 3.7L slant six. The worst part of the car was all the vacuum lines that rotted away and made the car idle rough, stall and backfire as it aged. It never stranded me though and it towed several of my friends' cooler cars home when they broke down. It was also easy on gas and big enough to bring friends along for the ride, so I can't really complain.
@@anthonyjackson280 When I was little, I recall my dad looked at a used 76 Maverick sedan, brown on tan. He wanted a used car for my mom that was good on gas because she delivered Avon products. Don't know which engine it had, but assume the 2.3, but maybe the small 6? again, I was just a little kid. What I most recall was when mom drove it, she said "Frank ( my father) I don't like it. It's way too slow". And we didn't buy it. The irony in that was she was also looking at her 1st new car in the summer of 88 when I was 13. She was looking at (gulp) an Aries sedan. Dad test drove the car and said "Linda ( my mom) this car is too slow". And they didn't buy it. What she did find was an 87 Dodge Lancer ES turbo, blk on red, that was fully loaded, that was on the same dealership's lot tucked all the way in the back. It had just 17 miles on it, and the sticker was marked down several times. They sold it to her for the price of the new Aries, which was a tick over 9k, and 5k less than the original sticker price.
Fairmont with the 2.3 and the stick was actually quick for the times. I remember a test showing 0-60 in the low 10’s. That made it almost a sports car in 1981.
Someone misread their speedometer... because if you know how 55-mph was highlighted in those days, and read it carefully, that diesel LUV hit 60 in under 18-sec.
From Leo: A common thing about all the slow cars. They were affordable, dependable, got you to & from work, school, shopping, visiting, vacations, and everything else you needed to do. No multi thousand dollar repair bills for turbochargers, cvt transmissions, cam phasers, Head gaskets, etc that seem to have become normal. You did not have to pull the engine for a water pump or take the cab off the truck to do maintenance. I am so frustrated with the high priced junk of today, a minty 1976 Granada would be an improvement. I have a Kawasaki Ninja if I want fast.
I had an 86 Tempo diesel. I think 0-60 time was closer to 8 minutes. Top speed was 72 mph going downhill with the wind at my back. It did roll coal like nothing else.
My dad bought one of those early 80's Chevette diesels....we took a road trip and drove it from Oklahoma to Arizona and back - at one point, we figured we hit 60 mpg. Highways were 55 so, speed wasn't a need at the time. Never had a single issue with that car...
I had a diesel chevette. Absolutely reliable car. It also got 55 mpg. It was slow though. Like the young fool i was i sold it because of how slow it was.
I drove a B210 station wagon in the day, it belonged to a friend. It had a 1.4L 4-cylinder. When I saw this video I thought to myself that was the slowest car I had ever driven. We had a 1971 GMC half-ton with a 250 six/3-speed column shift and it was faster than the Datsun.
I bought a new 1977 B-210 Hatchback with the Borg Warner 5Sp. at age 19 and it provided 8+ years of reliable service and cared less how gutless it was with 55mph limit. Much more important was it started every time I turned the key.
I rented a datsun 210 with the 5 speed and 1.4 engine in 1978 for a month or two. with the manual gearbox, it was not bad. I'll tell you what was really slow was I had a friend with the 1971 Datsun 1200 with the automatic. that thing would upshift to 2nd by 5 mph and 3rd by 10 mph and would never downshift on its own, even floored. the tiny engine had absolutely no low end touque, and accelleration was literally slower than in a loaded semi. WE are talking 10-30 times of 20 seconds. I had owned a 28 hp Renault 4 overseas that was much faster than that!
Yep, the slowest car I've ever owned was a 79 B210 with the 65hp 1.2, but it had the 5 speed, so around town it wasn't too awful. But on the hwy I had to keep it in 4th gear if I wanted to run the a/c. In OD with the a/c on, it couldn't stay at 65mph. Whomever ordered that car ( we found the window sticker in the glove box) was an odd ball. Factory pop up sunroof, factory am/fm cassette, electric rear window defrost, a/c, electric clock, white wall tires, full sized spare, dual outside mirrors, factory undercoating but no p/s and no tach. That car weighed next to nothing and mileage was unreal. I drove it many yrs until the clutch exploded and broke the bellhousing. Off to the crusher. I shoulda fixed it because it was rust free and everything worked.
This is great for perspective when people talk about how slow a modern car is with 'only' 180 hp or whatever. My first car (in 1998) was a 1989 Ford Mustang hatchback with the 2.3L and 5 speed manual. I didn't have any sense of how slow it was at the time. My friends and I used to call it the Rally Stang because the exhaust was rusted out and I would rip it sideways around corners in the winter. When I was really young my parents had a Chevette. I still have vague memories of that and all the subsequent used Buicks they owned throughout the 80s which were probably also painfully slow.
My first car 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. 305ci Crossfire engine with 169hp and a 3 speed automatic. It was slow. I don't remember the 0-60, but it would red-line at 102mph.
I know this isn’t a car but I used to drive a 1990s GMC topkick box truck with a Caterpillar 3126 engine and a 6spd manual. I timed it once and it took over 1 minute to hit 60 😂
One of my friends parents in the 80s had an Oldsmobile 350 diesel full size wagon. If you pressed the accelerator, two things would happen, a black smoke screen would form in the rear view mirror, and the engine made a lot of noise. Nothing else happened. It would have needed a calendar to time a zero to sixty.
In 1978, the Chevrolet Corvette was selected as the Indy 500 pace car. The reason for this was simple: The pace car needed to reach a speed of 100 miles per hour, and Corvette was the only production automobile which could do this at the time.
You mean it was the only AMERICAN BUILT production vehicle that could do 100mph at the time! My Triumph Dolomite Sprint was built in 1978. 2.0 litre SOHC 16v inline 4, 4 speed manual trans with optional overdrive, 127bhp, 0-60 in 8.2 secs and top speed 118mph from a British 4 door, 4 seat, mid size (by our standards) sedan! And you are telling me that my humble cooking sedan could have blown the doors off the quickest car in America that year? Well DAMN boy, that's made my day!
My first car in 95 was an 80 Chevy Monza Spyder with the Buick 3.8 / TH350 auto. With the steep rear gear, it was soooo slow, but I loved that car. Also owned an 87 Chevette 4 door with power steering AND power brakes! Then I got a mint 83 Celebrity off an old lady. Only had to change the rusted out gas tank. The 2.8 sucked, especially once I figured out that 2nd gear was gone. But it was comfy and quiet.
I believe Matt Happle from Sloppy Mechanics tested the Fairmont with a 3.3L I6 and the 2.3L I4 and he got little better power on the dyno from the 2.3L, he was so impressed he messed around with Holley Sniper EFI and a turbo on the Lima to see what it would do.
Pontiac T-1000 is a Chevette, the Pontiac is just a rebadged Chevette. I'd think you'd have noticed the rear lights because they didn't even try to change anything, they were the same.
I drove a company car, 1982 Oldsmobile diesel. It was a slow dog of a car. Quite comfortable, as we carpooled in it. I did not have to feed it, so I can't say what the fuel mileage was. We only drove it for about a year.
My wife fell in love with the color & bought a used '85 Buick Century with a 4 cylinder 2.5. The absolute slowest most dangerous car to try to merge on a freeway vehicle we ever owned. We had the car for a year & finally sold it. Another slug was an '83 Eldorado with the 4100 HT V8 that I owned for 4 weeks. It was absolutely gorgeous, the same color combo as in the movie Casino, triple silver but it was very slow. Reminded me of some high school dates when I was a teenager, nice to look at & that's about it. Couldn't wait to get rid of the Caddy. Yet one of the quickest cars I owned was an '85 Riv T-type with the Grand National 3.8 Turbo. What a sleeper.
@@adamtrombino106 Yeah, it struggled to even get on a highway! iI couldn't deal with it for long and ended up pulling it for a 5.7tpi out of a IROC! lol
One of the slowest accelerating vehicles I can remember riding in was a 6.2 liter diesel powered 1980s Chevrolet 3500 extended cab dually, with a 3 speed automatic. And it wasn't like the truck was worn out or old at the time, it was barely 3 years old. I was still a kid, and yet I was stunned at how slow it was. That family friend later bought a brand new 3500 crew cab dually with the turbo 6.5 liter diesel and a 5 speed manual transmission in the mid 1990s. He was much happier with that truck, to the point 15 years later, he was still driving the truck till a few days before his death.
I've driven a number of the cars listed. Thankfully, none of the Diesels. The Gas engine ones were bad enough. The very least one can say for any of them is: At least they made a lot of noise. That way, when waiting for the no horsepower engines to get up to speed, you had some audio entertainment. Nothing quite as pleasant as hearing an engine strain to get up a 1% grade. I really appreciate this channel.
I own a low mileage 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass with the 5.7 diesel. The official zero to 60 time is 17.1 seconds, but in reality it seems better. The real let down is trying to pass on a two lane highway, the 45 to 70 time is painfully slow due to the rear axle ratio of 2.29 :1. I also have driven the diesel Chevette, as well as my mom having a gas Chevette. Ah, growing up in the 80's.
The slowest vehicle I ever owned was a brand new 1984 Dodge Ram pickup with the 225 slant six. Top speed on flat ground was about 70mph. To accelerate you just floored it in every gear, then waited for it to slowly pick up speed. Great gas mileage but no power, maybe about 80hp.
I had a mid-80s Suburban with the 350 diesel I bought used to tow a travel trailer. Not even a full throttle downshift at 40 mph would make much difference in acceleration. It WAS a dangerous vehicle on anything but a downhill freeway entrance ramp.
Could You Imagine Chevette Diesel Automatic.... My Mom had a 1984 Ford Escort w/Mazda 2.0L Diesel 5-Speed.... WHOA....The Ranger Diesel was a Mazda-Perkins 2.2L!
By the way: most CVTs are fine. They just need to be maintained. A traditional automatic can go 100-150k miles with no maintenance before dying on you (which is more miles than a typical new-car buyer will put on their vehicle). A CVT needs fluid changes @ 50k miles and every 35k after that. Otherwise they WILL die between 70-100k miles (right after the powertrain warranty expires, lol).
Yes, I've been told that about the Ford FreeStyle/Taurus X station wagons with the cvt's. You HAVE TO FOLLOW the Owners Manual Maintenance Schedule to the Letter!!
Ha! Happy to say I’ve been the proud owner of both a Granada wagon AND a Chevy LUV! The top of the first made an excellent viewing deck for festival concerts. The second lived in my town for 35+ years and you could start it without the key. It was free for all the neighbors to use (usually without asking) and it always showed up eventually with a full tank of gas!
I like the looks on a lot of these cars if I were to own any of them especially the ones that weigh 2500-4000 Ibs id be putting an engine with at least 240+hrsp and 300+pft
Great vid Hawk! Never heard anyone call a LUV a "L.U.V." before! Had a 79 LUV I bought for 500 bucks to haul trash. It was slow, but like you alluded to, most regular rides back then were too. Some slow cars were fun though. Drove around a aircooled VW Vanagon for awhile and still managed to love it LOL. One of the slowest drag races in history had to be me in a 79 Toyota pickup vs my friend with a 4 cylinder automatic Chevy Celebrity wagon. I think I won by a bumper length.
I've driven alot on this list. But, I'm going to add one my neighbor bought & an honorable mention that was built for one year in the 1970s. The car my neighbor bought... 1984 Mercury Marquis Brougham ( Fox body ) with the 2.3 Lima 4 fueled by propane. All the added weight for the propane tanks surely made this one a " Road Toad ". My honorable mention.... 1976 Buick LeSabre V6. It's not even in the brochure! " Picture it " ( in my best Sophia Petrillo from " The Golden Girls" ) 105hp to pull almost 4700 pounds of car! And the one I drove had air conditioning. I had to push the gas pedal to the floor to get it to move from a stop light. No idea on the 0-60, but it felt slower than a 1984 Chevrolet Chevette Diesel I drove latter that same year!
I drove a '79 Chrysler Newport in the mid '80s. It had the 318. The Chrysler 318 was an excellent engine and the car was actually kind of sporty I later had an '81 Lebaron with that little engine. I called it the Blue Pig and was thrilled to get rid of it.
A little known fact is that when you turned on the a/c on it a Chevette it would stall the car 😂😂 I had 12 of them over the years and never one with a:c nor a diesel. The only time I ever saw one was one of my many trips to Florida. As a long time mechanic I would notice stuff like that. Also I really like how you don't mention the car instead you use numbers. I only noticed that because I had to pause it for a minute. Very good idea because it stops people( including myself " from just scrolling through and seeing what type of car's are on the list and only clicking it on when I see a car that I'm interested in. I don't know if you planned it like that or not but it's definitely a smart idea 👍🇨🇦🔧
A group of friends and I packed into my friend's father's 80s Chevette and drove from RI to NH one Saturday to buy some fireworks. With four of us in the car, I don't think it ever made it past 50mph on the highway the entire road trip.
I actually had a 1982 Pontiac T1000 , I had to use premium fuel to avoid pre ignition ( engine knock ) It was slow but reliable . As for the 80's , best decade ever !
81 Olds Cutlass Diesel was gutless as well, I swear it went 0-60 in 3 days or more! Lord have mercy if you had 4 people in it! Eventually dropped a chevy 350 out of a 74 Camaro in it, and it was at least able to keep up with traffic. Had to do a lot of modifying to get the power brakes to work since the original power steering pump wouldn't bolt to the engine.
Hehe, my first car, a very cheap Kadett B really struggled to reach 100 kmh in under 30 seconds. But that was normal. US tried to adapt diesel when we Europeans for decades had used oil burning saloons without any power, often as city cabs. Like Merc 190/200D. Very slow, but cheap to run and extremely reliable. Add all the common, small cars that just reached 110, maybe 120 kmh on a good day. So we were used to not going fast in small cars and in diesels. But you Americans wanted both power and economy in gigantic barges (kind of impossible), and fitted auto boxes, pollution kits and even AC on cars like the Chevette. The original, very basic Opel Kadett C was not fast on open roads, but peppy up to 60-70 kmh. A light, good handling, nimble and practical car for towns and on narrow, winding country roads. The model sold in vast numbers. Still, GM in the US managed to turn this sensible, well made car into a lemon.
Interesting video!!! But I think you need to take into consideration of the American laws that were introduced in the 80's which restricted the the engine size & emission laws etc.
Great video! I knew this one would be full of diesels and you didn’t disappoint! What’s so amazing is the slowest of all was the Pontiac 1000…30sec!?!! I never remember seeing them on the interstate when they were new and that’s probably why!
Growing up in the 80s, I got to experience the misfortune of driving an 87 Ford Tempo and an 88 Dodge Dakota. The Tempo felt like it had a ton of weight on the roof and the Dakota bogged down going uphill.
I had an '81 Chevette with the gas engine and a 4-spd. It was a...let's say leisurely performer on a good day, but it had parts failing and rust succeeding on every other day. And I also have (to this day) an '82 T-Bird Town Landau with the 4.2 V-8, which I inherited from my mother. It's extremely comfortable, which is a good thing considering how long it takes it to do anything.
In my humble experience of driving > 30 years, everything under 12 seconds is totally fine for every day driving. The further above you go, the more you need to plan ahead to minimize the inconvenience - but it's quite feasible.
Such an interesting video. I don’t know how you find the time to do the research, gather the clips, work on the format and narration. Fairdos bro! 👌🏻 I quite like the look of the Newport and the other cars shared on that Chevy platform. I can’t stand diesel engines though, they used to be quite big over here and in Europe. I always found it funny people cruising around in diesel convertibles, trying to pose with a tractor engine.
As of lately it’s been my full time job while in college! You should like next weeks video a little bit more as there will be lots of euro wagons featured
@@GreenHawkDrive A lot to learn for making videos. I don't make them But I do watch lots. I just watched the one you did on Land yachts( a month ago.) Keep up the good work.
@@GreenHawkDrive I cant believe YT went right ahead and seems to have deleted my very first comment to you Hawk. Here is again unedited. "You are not a large channel yet but I am impressed with your work and Subscribed. This reminds me of 'Barts' videos (most about old motorcycle history) and you sound like him too. These should generate lots of comments. Good luck in the future." What's wrong with that!
My father had an Olds 98 with 350 diesel. He went through seven engines due to reliability issues. I once drag raced a Chevette and won...barely. GM really dropped the ball on this engine.
The absolute biggest gutless wonder I ever had the privilege of being miserable in was a 1984 dodge caravan with a chrysler 4cyl and a 4spd trans. 60 mph was a pipe dream going down hill with a 100 mph tail wind. I swear a yugo had more move in it.
You should have upgraded to the '89 Turbovan Automatic. BIG DIFFERENCE. I think it was only two litre but with the back seats out, it Flew. Scorched the tires when the Turbo came on. Fun Fun Fun! Very low 0-60. Faster than my '73 Vette and Super Duper in so many ways !
I had a family member who worked for the California Highway Patrol in the 1970's-1990's. The 1980's CHP Dodge St Regis patrol car was so weak, it couldn't even get to 80mph going up the Grapevine (Interstate-5 north of Los Angeles.) 😂 Many cars would just walk-away from the St Regis going up the hill. The 1979 CHP Camaro was the first modern "pursuit" patrol car for California, as the bulk of the fleet was so slow due to emissions equipment.
The only time I've ever been legitimately afraid on the highway was riding in my aunts '81 Pontiac Acadian. That thing was so slow that farm equipment could blow by it on a country road, and being on the highway was an exercise in pure terror because it could barely wheeze its way up too 100 k/ph which made it a literal rolling chicane.
My dad bought a 68 El Camino off a friend, 1 year later, while coming home from work the rear end collapsed, the tires couldn't turn. We drug it home, a mile, I had a 69 Pontiac Bonneville with a 400 engine with a Quadra jet carb. and cherrybomb muffler. I loved that car.
I had an 81 Fairmont with the 4 banger. SLOOOOOOOW. You could literally watch the fuel gauge go down with an uphill climb. Dad had an 84 olds regency brougham. A whale. 17ft. 3 inches long. Personal limo. Loved that car.
We had an '82 Chevy Impala with the converted V8 350 cid diesel and it was slooooooooow. And loud. Anytime you started off you almost or fully had to floor it to get it going. I remember one time we went skiing in it up in Lake Arrowhead and when we were done I went to warm up the car, and it produced this enormous cloud of thick blue smoke that just hung over the entire parking lot embarrassingly (this was back before we knew about global climate change). It finally died somewhere around 30-40,000 miles and we had a gas engine put in. But one thing I really miss about that car was it was big. No need for a ski rack on top of the car, the skis simply fit in the cargo area. It was great to be able to put ten of us in it and go to parties together. You could seat four across. The back seat also folded flat and it made into a big bed for other purposes. I wish they still made big cars like that today! If you want to put ten people in the same car today, you're going to need to buy a van. Also, at 4:21, that is indeed a Mercedes 500 SEC. I'm very familiar with those.
Slowest car I've ever driven was an 80s Mercedes 190D. "Majestic" at best. Seriously, anything under 10 seconds is plenty fast enough in 2024. No-one needs an idiot in a 3t Cybertruck hitting 100kmh in 1 second. 'Performance' has got out of hand imho. Cheers from an icy Canberra AU!
I have a 1982 Cadillac deville with the 5.7 diesel. It can be uncomfortably slow at times but once it gets up to speed it’s a comfortable and smooth ride with astonishingly good fuel economy.
Another good vid _fresh and original topic 👌_ (If I'm giving constructive criticism, watch the spoilers at the beginning of the vids ... topic is interesting enough for you to just jump right into it without giving some of the 0-60 times(ish) or saying what type of cars are on the list ect.. but I guarantee I'm the only one who thinks this cause I'm crazy sometimes lol. So just know I support you 💯 Hawk !)
One thing that happened in magazine articles for Porsche, Nissan Zs, RX7s, etc, they would publish a 0 to 50 time. It happened all throughout the 80s in magazine ads. That way the Porsche 911 would post a 5 5 second 0 to 50 to make it sound faster than it was. The 0 to 60 was more like 7.5 or sometimes slower. These were very dark times for performance, lol.
Yes, it was the lowest of lows for acceleration, even the Chevrolet Corvette was slow, especially when comparing them to the Corvettes of today. BTW that Audi Sport quattro at 1:13 was very fast, the 0-100kms time was 4.9 seconds back in 1985 had 302hp with a 5 speed manual. The Ur quattro acceleration time was 0-100kms at around 7.1. seconds.
Don't forget Nixon's Revenge: The 55 mph speed limit. Imagine crawling along I-10 from Beaumont to El Paso, a distance of around 900 miles at that speed. So performance was much less important.
@@stevespatola763 It was done by the Feds. I got my license in Oct. 73, just in time for the 50mph max speed limit in Wa. It was raised to 55 when the national 55 limit took effect Jan. 74. This happened because of the OPEC oil embargo that came out of the Sept.- Oct 73 Yan Kippur War when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. Long gas lines at the stations with gas available were long. It was my family duty in grade 11 to fill up my dad's car at 5am when the local gas station opened.
My dad had a 1978 Jeep Cherokee with a 6 cylinder and 4 wheel drive. Max speed was 75 MPH downhill. I could drive it floored on the highway and never get over 70 MPH. If the AC was on, 65 was max speed. He knew I couldn’t get in any real trouble with it. 0-60 had to be around 20 seconds.
