Rare Rides: This Chevrolet Beauville Is a Quigley 4×4 From 1989

Corey Lewis
by Corey Lewis

In The Current Year, new car lots are filled with family-friendly adventure vehicles. They’ve got lots of seats, lots of cladding, and some sort of system to drive all four wheels (even if it’s a lousy system like on the CR-V). But our Rare Ride comes from a time when family 4×4 options were much fewer in number. 1989 was a very different time for the adventuresome family buyer.

Enter Quigley, and the Chevrolet Beauville.

First we’ll talk Quigley. The company started out as a car dealership in Massachusetts, Bill Quigley Auto Sales, in 1966. The dealership added campers and trailers to its lot and started customizing vans in the early Seventies. Motor homes were next on the menu. The dealer’s relationship with GM grew stronger, and the genesis for extra-capable vans came in 1974 when Quigley first added a 4×4 system to a Chevrolet Van.

Quigley is still around today, customizing and adding four-wheel drive systems to GM, Ford, and Nissan vans. Their most recent product addition is a 4×4 Ford Transit. Now, on to Beauville.

Chevrolet first used the Beauville name in 1954, adding it to the wagon variant of the popular Bel Air family sedan. The trend didn’t last long; the last Beauville 210 wagon rolled off the assembly line in 1957. The name didn’t resurface until 1971, when it served as a trim level for Chevrolet’s “Van.”

Of course, the Van Chevrolet sold in 1971 was nearly the same one the company sold in 1995. For a full 24 years, the third-generation Chevrolet Van rolled out of factories in Lordstown, Ohio, Flint, Michigan, and Scarborough, Ontario (which is a part of Downtown Canada).

The third-generation Van marked a departure for Chevrolet, as the first and second generations of 1964 and ’67, respectively, were of the mid-engine and forward control variety. Those were called Handi-Van and Handi-Bus by GMC, and Sportvan by Chevrolet. The more modern front-engine, rear-drive layout was based on the long-lived C/K truck platform. Trims had names like Bonaventure, Nomad, Bonanza, and of course Beauville.

Engines ranged from a thrifty-ish 4.1-liter inline-six through a thirsty 7.4-liter gasoline V8, with a couple of diesels in between. Transmissions were of three- or four-speed manual or automatic variety.

The buyer of today’s Rare Ride went with a luxurious Beauville trim for the basis of their van. With a Chevrolet 350 and four-speed automatic to shift all the tweed and curtains, extra capability was added via the Quigley 4×4 conversion — at a cost of $10,000. Original deep-dish wheels compliment the tidy blue and gray two-tone theme. With 78,000 miles on the clock, this go-anywhere family van asks $14,500.

[Images: seller]

Corey Lewis
Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

More by Corey Lewis

Comments
Join the conversation
10 of 32 comments
  • RHD RHD on May 16, 2019

    "Complement", not "compliment" (unless the wheels can speak). Great find on the van!

  • Formula m Formula m on May 17, 2019

    Don't think the author has any clue how the awd system in the current generation CRV works. Can send up to 70% of the power to the rear axel and allocate 100% the power to the left of right wheel. Very similar to the previous SH AWD system from Acura. I spent a summer cleaning brush for Hydro up in northern Ontario and spent time driving a GMC Vandura 4wd conversion van. It barely fit down the grown in bush roads, we put so many scratches on the exterior from tree branches and stumps. The winch cable snapped when we tried to winch out of a hole.

    • See 7 previous
    • Conundrum Conundrum on May 17, 2019

      @gtem I agree with you, gtem. When these companies can show me how the torque either side of a single inline locked-up clutch can possibly be different, it will be the day I'll believe in magic. All of these AWD "systems" with transverse engines have PERMANENT front wheel drive. There is no clutch to the front wheels and drive there is direct. Nobody can show me a single example that is not. Therefore, the rear can only receive as much torque as the front when that inline clutch to the rear is fully engaged. 70% torque to the rear is physically impossible with such a system. We've been "lied" to by manufacturers for decades. They have some theory that "overdriving" the rear wheels by gearing in the rear diff somehow means more torque will magically appear in the rear prop drive shaft than the front when the two shafts are locked together. It's not possible. Think about an engine and manual transmission with its clutch. When the clutch is engaged, the torque to the tranmission input shaft is the same as the engine produces. It's not more! Or the transmission would drive the engine and we'd have free energy. Downhill is the only scenario that comes to mind when one's foot tends to be off the gas somewhat. The same reasoning applied to the inline clutch to the rear wheels, means that because FWD is direct at all times, the rear end can only end up with the same torque as the front if the clutch is fully engaged and not slipping. So that would be half each, not more to the rear. If the rear wheels are geared to turn faster in such circumstances than the front, but the tires are NOT slipping, only the Creator can explain why the back of the vehicle doesn't overtake the front. Or one can examine reality and realize the inline clutch is not locked up completely and absorbs the difference in speed between front and rear driveshafts that results. The tires when they're not slipping ensure that torque front to rear remains the same bar a few percent of tread slip. Certainly not twenty. It's why the Subaru DCCD in the STI with five positions does bugger all in reality except when it is in the locked position. The other four positions are just messing around with three or four percent of the torque, and then only around curves, not in a straight line. The only AWD systems that can have real torque differences front to rear are the higher end Audi systems with a Torsen center differential, because a Torsen can actually deliver different torque to its two outputs - it has no clutch. And those big Audis DO NOT have fixed FWD like all the other minnows out there claiming miracles. But even then, the road wheels, if they're not slipping, equalize everything back to 50/50 front to rear anyway. Not even the designers seem to remember that the tires enforce equal torque front to rear, or even a bit less than the same to the rear as the front in the case of the single inline clutch, which is all that an RDX has. Or anything else that is actually roadworthy with a single inline clutch. They dupe themselves and then us with missing the point on several fronts. A pet peeve of mine for decades. They trained me as a mech eng and then tried to slide incorrect arguments past me. Don't even get me going on planetary diffs having different torques at their two outputs (unless one output becomes unloaded). Incompetence rules, and this last fairy tale dates from the Ferguson Formula Four AWD system from 1967, the first ever, which nobody has since bothered to correct; indeed, this mistruth has been promoted ever since. Some bright spark will up and say, well I believe Honda not you, internet freak, and all I can say is, balderdash. Believe what you want. I'm interested in the truth, not references from companies who haven't thought things through. I've only driven AWD vehicles since 1988,and my '94 Audi 90 with Torsen center diff was by far the best. Obviously so in snow and ice, you didn't have to sit back and consider the matter. Second best is the Legacy GT with their version of auto DCCD and an actual center diff, but not a Torsen. The inline clutch jobs have been band-aids -- better than nothing but not amazing. How could they be in anyone but a marketing hero's mind? No wonder some of them can't clamber up a minor grass bank from rest.

  • B-BodyBuick84 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport of course, a 7 seater, 2.4 turbo-diesel I4 BOF SUV with Super-Select 4WD, centre and rear locking diffs standard of course.
  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
  • Tassos Jong-iL Communist America Rises!
  • Merc190 A CB7 Accord with the 5 cylinder
  • MRF 95 T-Bird Daihatsu Copen- A fun Kei sized roadster. Equipped with a 660cc three, a five speed manual and a retractable roof it’s all you need. Subaru Levorg wagon-because not everyone needs a lifted Outback.
Next