Never said it wasn’t. But NOT in the capacity that @TheWondeful90s was talking about. And since you are a software engineer you know that META Data is used mainly for finding patterns. Not for spying on any specific individual.
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I respectfully disagree. Here is an example.
A person calls cancer clinic, duration: 5 minutes. Then calls mom, duration: 30 minutes. Don’t tell me some hellcare insurance outfit wouldn’t use that METADATA to deny insurance.
So the seat belt load limiter situation won’t surprise you then!
Please don’t start this garbage again. Or is this going to get flagged too.
Ok, I have to “try” to defend the Chevette!
My parents bought one new, a 1980 silver model. Manual tranny. They put over 100,000 miles on it. At that point my beloved (but worn out) Datsun 510 needed replacing. My Dad sold it to me for a grand (it had cost them ~$5000 new).
I managed to drive it for another 3 years with basically oil changes. It was small and noisey but pretty reliable. Now, 1980 is just before the companies started using galvanized steel. My folks lived in Upstate NY where they use a lot of salt.
By late 1987 my “Vette” was getting pretty rusty, in fact one of the shock towers broke and the top of that shock hit the inside of the hood! Me, being Mr Handy, got some angle steel at the HW store and cobbled it together! I kept up with this until I sold it for $100. I was working for a commuter airline and the buyer was a poor new hire. Yes, I told/showed him the problems. I said: It starts and runs, anything is worth $100! (I had just bought my 1st new car, a Olds Ceira 2 dr. Had it 21 years, 125,000 miles)
Some things I liked about my “Vette” was: 1) Rear wheel drive! Yup, longitudinal 4 cyl, overhead cam engine up front. It was not a junk engine like the Vega had, pretty robust. 2) The seatbelts were actually mounted to the door! When you stepped in, sat down and closed the door the belts were already in place, no clicking! 3) pretty good gas mileage for the time (27ish). Remember cars, still had carbs then.
The Chevette was probably not a terrible car reliability-wise, especially for the price point it was sold at, but man was that thing a death trap! My father had one, a 1981 model, and we were involved in an accident in that car in 1991. Even though we all had our seat belts on, everyone except for me received some injuries, and my father suffered broken ribs and other serious injuries, and had to miss an entire year of work to recover.
Only the shoulder strap was on the door you still had to manually put on the lap belt.
My Corolla has the shoulder belt on the door. I get a small rate cut on my car insurance b/c they consider that configuration to be “automatic seatbelts”.
Well, it was a car of those times. Any other small car probably was just as bad. Back then many people loved driving huge “boats” because they were perceived as “safer”.
Of course this was before airbags, crumple zones and the like. I wouldn’t say the Chevette was any worse than any other small car of the late 70’s through the 80’s.
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Nope, not on my Chevette. Both lap and shoulder belts were on the door. I opened the door, sat and closed the door and the belt system was in place. This was known as "passive restraint’ system. Airbags are a form of passive restraint, you don’t have to do anything for it to be ready.
Maybe other manufacturers did the seat belt thing different from Chevy did. But if a car had just the shoulder belt on the door, but you still had to click the lap belt, it wouldn’t be passive restraint. Remember the motorized belts that buzzed into position after you closed the door? This was all before airbags, which really increased car safety a lot.
Yup, and many of them failed to operate after a few years. I worked for my state’s child protective agency from 2004-2008, and many of the cars in the motor pool were so old that they had the motorized–but non-functioning–seatbelts. Luckily, there were enough newer cars in the motor pool so that the case workers were usually able to avoid driving those old deathtraps.
I think you are confusing your Chevette with your Oldsmobile, passive restraints were first required in 1988.
The Chevette did not have door frames strong enough to mount a seat belt, the shoulder belt was mounted on the B pillar.
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Sorry guys. I remember this very well. This was an optional thing on the 1980 Chevette. This was not a Federal requirement, just something Chevy was trying to promote safety in 1980. On my 1988 Olds Ceira it had standard belts that you clicked yourself. And no airbags.
Finally on my next car (99 Monte Carlo) it had a driver and pass airbag. I felt really safe then! My 2017 Volt? Jees, it’s got airbags on top of airbags!
I thought the problem with those was the door would open in a crash. Never hated one of those cars though.
The Chevelle seems to be appreciated in the classic car community , but not so much for the Chevette. Why the difference?
Why the difference ? Are you serious ?
Please tell me you’re just trying to see if we’re awake
Well, we ARE awake
And we’re flabbergasted 
The Chevette was just a “point A to point B” car
Nothing more
Don’t know the difference between the two cars. Is there a reason you’d think I’d know?
It sounds like they were as simple and reliable as a lawn tractor and this article seems to indicate it wasn’t a terrible car for its purpose and time but outlived its need and became horridly dated rather quickly. Chevrolet Chevette: Awful Car or Unappreciated Revolutionary?
I remember my dad having to bring one home from work because his car had a dead battery or flat tire. He wasn’t supposed to bring a work vehicle home but had to this once out of necessity because I seem to remember some other factors like him being the last one at work. Anyway, it seemed like a pretty terrible car to me even as a kid. I think there was some type of fuel mixture problem and it wasn’t running properly. I only rode in a 'Vette like this once and I wasn’t impressed. Of course it was a fleet car and started out cheap to start so probably didn’t get the best treatment.
I have owned several Geo Metros which was the replacement as mentioned. I would argue that this was a much better car and better suited to the task of being an economy car with exceptional mileage exceeding 50mpg in most cases with a manual transmission. The automatic was crap if you ask me with pretty lousy mileage and performance, being a 3 speed, but was reliable. Like the Chevette, it was a death trap if you were to get hit. There are lots of stories of people getting 500,000 miles out of them before any major engine work has to be done. RUST is another issue on these. The thin light metal didn’t get good anti-corrosion treatment so would rust out if you bought a shaker of table salt and drove it home from the store in the car. Rust was one major killer of these.
Like many cheap cars, people treated them as disposables. They wouldn’t change the oil and the engine has pretty tight tolerances. Rings would stick and oil burning started. Lifters would plug with sludge or overly thickened oil and not allow for proper valve closure, resulting in burned valves. These are extremely simple and reliable engines if cared for. They are also super easy to work on and I would argue they are the closest thing to a VW bug that we have had in modern times but with more modern technology and refinement, if you can call a Metro refined.
I needed something that didn’t need some minor work every week so moved up to the Mirage which many consider to be basically the “modern” Metro. Like the Metro it gets great mileage. It has also been reliable so I don’t know how hard it is to work on but it seems like a pretty simple car as they come these days. Like any cheap car, you read about people treating them as disposables. People never change the oil and when the timing chain jumps at 60K, they wonder why their engine died. It is the same crap you would hear about with the Metro. At least that was belt driven so an easy replacement and all but the DOHC Suzuki Swifts were non-interference. I once changed a timing belt on the side of the road in under an hour on the standard SOHC 3 cylinder and it never skipped a beat.
Again, a simple cheap car can be decently reliable with good maintenance but will have problems like any other car if you neglect it.
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What is going on here ? Are telling us you don’t have a story about both of those vehicles ?
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