Junkyard Find: 1985 Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport Wagon

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The midsize Celebrity came between the rear-drive Malibu and the Lumina, went through only one generation, and has been largely forgotten by now. Most examples got crushed before the turn of the century, and the wagons have become especially rare. Here’s a Celebrity wagon with the not-very-European Eurosport option package, spotted at a San Francisco Bay Area self-serve yard.

The Eurosport Celebrity got black window trim, a black steering wheel, and an allegedly stiffer suspension.

The clattery, bone-shakingly miserable Iron Duke pushrod four-cylinder engine was standard equipment in the Celebrity for ’85, but this one has the optional fuel-injected 2.8 V6.

Remember when The General went in for kicky sans-serif typeface for gauges?

Yes, the Eurosport had rear drums with crude balance weights.

My mother bought an Iron Duke-powered ’85 Celebrity Eurosport sedan while I was off at college, and I recall borrowing the thing during a holiday visit and being stunned by the irredeemable terribleness of the car (my name for it was the “UrineSport”). Approximately 17 minutes out of warranty, the car developed multiple costly drivetrain problems, all the window regulators and door-lock mechanisms broke, the heater core burst, and so on. As a result, that Celebrity was the last Detroit car my parents ever bought.

Still, this one managed to survive for 27 years.






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • NoGoYo NoGoYo on Jan 15, 2014

    I still want a supercharged 3800 black Eurosport wagon. But then again, I have a "way too fast wagon" fetish. Another car on my list would be a 1968-69 Plymouth Satellite with a 6.4 Hemi swap. And maybe a LS3 80s Buick Estate too. Why not haul stuff and haul ass at the same time?

  • Laserwizard Laserwizard on Feb 18, 2016

    On a still day, you could hear these cars falling apart in your driveway. I had a neighbor that had one of these and it was a disaster. No wonder this company had to soak the taxpayers for the interest and tax free $30 billion that $49.5 billion bailout ended up costing us - and increasing each year with interest paid to China for the deficit spending used to cover this.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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