Happy Friday, Autopians! It has been one hell of a week here at Shitbox Showdown International Headquarters, and I’m happy the weekend is finally upon us. I’m less happy about the one to eight inches of snow we’re supposed to get, but we’ll deal with that as it comes. To finish off our week of reader suggestions, we’re looking at a pair of Chevys from opposite sides of the country, both available for the same price.
Sometimes when I pit two cars against each other, I have no idea which one is going to win. Other times, I have a pretty good idea, and I’m not often wrong. But the degree to which one car gets beaten sometimes comes as a shock, and such is the case with yesterday’s fake Lamborghini. I knew that little sheep-in-ill-fitting-wolf’s-clothing was going to lose. But by twenty to one? Damn.
I have no choice, therefore, but to offer my salute to the 34 brave souls who did choose the rebodied Fiero. A second-rate ripoff of an ’80s icon deserves a second-rate ripoff of an ’80s hair band, so please enjoy the musical stylings of Roxy Blue. (Hey, that’s what you get.) On a happier musical note, there were some excellent playlist suggestions for the Rolls, by the way. Bravo.
Today’s cars come with their own playlist, whether you want them or not. They’ve been driven to the levee. Night moves have been practiced in them. They’ve been traded in for a Cadillac (ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac). They’ve been customized. They’ve been raced. You get the idea. Chevrolet is America’s car brand – love ’em or hate ’em or don’t think much about ’em at all, you can’t escape ’em. So here is a pair of them, from different times in the company’s history, at opposite ends of the country, for five grand each. Let’s take a look.
1973 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu – $5,000
Engine/drivetrain: 307 cubic inch overhead valve V8, three-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Monroe, NY
Odometer reading: 87,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives, but that’s all we know
The Chevy Malibu we know today is a bland rental-car special, sort of like a Camry with what little personality it has sucked out. It’s the official car of “that’ll do, I guess.” But it wasn’t always that way; once upon a time the Malibu was cool. Introduced in 1964 as the fancy version of Chevy’s new intermediate A-body Chevelle and named after a fancy part of the California coast, the Malibu lasted four generations as a rear-drive, mostly-V8-powered car of the people.
This third-generation Malibu still bore the Chevelle name; later it was dropped like the “Cougar” in John Mellencamp. This generation of GM’s A-body is sometimes known as the “Colonnade” style, but really, that only applies to the coupes, which lost their wide-open hardtop architecture to proposed rollover standards. The coupes overshadowed sedans like this, and the wagons (which you almost never see anymore), but I think this is a handsome car. It’s a fairly plain-Jane car, with a ho-hum 307 cubic inch version of Chevy’s small-block V8 and dog-dish hubcaps, which it wears well, I think.
1973 was the first year for five mile per hour bumper mandates, but only in the front. That’s why the ’73 Chevelles have this square-jawed look, with that huge front bumper. It’s probably the car’s least attractive feature, but this particular one is impressive; I don’t think I’ve seen one of these without rusted-out bumpers in about twenty years. The whole car is impressively rust-free, actually. This was almost certianly someone’s parents’ or grandparents’ car, garaged and hardly used.
The odometer, below that magnificent wide speedometer, shows only 87,000 miles, and I can’t imagine it has rolled over. The rest of the car looks too nice. There is a rip in the driver’s seat and some wear here and there, but overall it’s a very well preserved car. We don’t get much information about its mechanical condition, except that it does run and drive, but this is a simple car. Whatever it needs, some basic simple mechanical know-how can provide.
1994 Chevrolet Lumina Z34 – $4,999
Engine/drivetrain: 3.4 liter dual overhead cam V6, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Odometer reading: 106,000 miles
Operational status: “Drive good”
The rear-wheel-drive A-body Malibu was replaced by the front-wheel-drive A-body Celebrity, which in turn was replaced by this car, the W-body Lumina. But this is not your grandma’s Lumina; this is the high-performance Z34 coupe, equipped with a special 3.4 liter “Twin Dual Cam” 24 valve V6. This was Chevy’s answer to the Ford Taurus SHO, along with a four-door version called the Lumina Euro 3.4. A Getrag five-speed manual was available, but this car makes do with a 4T60E four-speed automatic – and ten fewer horsepower.
The 3.4 DOHC V6 doesn’t have a great reputation; it’s high-maintenance, leak-prone, and jammed in there so tight that it’s hard to work on. This one doesn’t have many miles on it, and the seller says it runs well, but it’s for sale at a dealership, so there probably isn’t a lot of service history available. At the very least, you should probably change the timing belt – which, by the way, is a weird design. There’s a chain-driven intermediate shaft in the center valley where the camshaft goes in the pushrod versions of this engine, and that shaft drives a belt that drives all four camshafts.
The rest of the car is in decent condition, but I do see a few worrying signs. I don’t like seeing seat or dash covers; I can’t help wondering what’s under them. The covers may be protecting those surfaces, or hiding their condition. More troubling than that, there is tape residue on the roof around the sunroof, indicating that someone had taped something over the sunroof to prevent a leak. This makes me wonder where the water went when it was leaking, and what damage it did there.
It’s nice and shiny anyway, and there are no signs of damage. I like the styling of all the W-body coupes, with the door handle up in the B-pillar. It’s a good-looking car. Too bad it’s red, though.
So, thank you all for the suggestions this week! Keep ’em coming, and I’ll keep using them here and there. I’m always happy to have help looking for cars. For now, you’ve got a choice to make between two Chevys. What’ll it be?
(Image credits: Malibu – Facebook Marketplace seller; Lumina – Craigslist seller)
Pass on both. I’ll walk. The Malibu had a sweet roofline for a sedan in the colonnade line . The window seals sucked and leaked. My Aunt bought a 77 classic like this. The one with the gawd awful ugly stacked headlights. The weatherstripping and door seals disappeared within a year. “Soft knit upholstery” lasted 15 months. The Lumina? Ugliest dashboard shape known to mankind. These are the cars that made people lovers of the import brands. This is like our upcoming election. Do you vote for Satan, Or the Devil? Both are deemed to hell choices. Either way, you will taste some hell.
Malibu – no appeal to me
Lumina all the way! The gen 1 Lumina was one of the sharpest looking things to come out of Detroit at the time, and it’s still insanely gorgeous. At the very least, the outside is in beautiful condition. If I have to permanently seal off the sunroof and clean up some interior funk, so be it. Overall it still looks good. Yeah the 3.4 DOHC is a clusterfuck of an engine, but from talking with people at shows, plenty of people love it. I’d pluck it and sell it while it still works, and drop in the super reliable, simple to work on, 3.1 MPFI.
A girl I was madly in love with in college drove a Malibu, so that takes care of this decision. (That and I never liked any Lumina.)
I’ll take the Lumina but only if it has an old IMSAI 8080 computer in the trunk. It is from Sunnyvale CA after all.
Oh please, I don’t care how much sporting crap is tacked on any Lumina, the only real choice is the ’73. And that’s the best year (to me) of the generation with the wonderful one-year-only double round tails that screamed Chevy instead of the generic rounded squares that followed. My college roommate had the wagon as a 1975 in the same color scheme and it was every bit as posh and comfortable as the full-size cars.
I’m not passing up the chance to own a Holy Grail, give me the Z34.
You can have it!
Thank goodness the Malibu has a bench seat. When one drives a Malibu, one does not need their baby way over in a bucket seat.
I’m going Z34. My high school parking lot was full of similar cars. So I’d buy it to remind me of high school. And when it inevitably blew up, it would remind me of how much high school sucked.
I do like the way these Lumina coupes look, but the Malibu is the one I’d like to own.
A Z34 without the sport seats? Fuck no. My buddy had one with the sport buckets and they were so damned comfortable yet didn’t compromise in lateral support.
It was definitely a bit of a dog of an engine, too. Sure, it had a lot of power for its day, but it did *not* rev quickly, so you never actually felt like there was much on tap. It just never struggled. Ideal cruisin’ car, then, with those sport seats.
Malibu all the way even though its a 4 door. Its a clean emissions exempt car which is getting hard to find in states that have adopted CA emissions. A blank canvas without a lot of body rot. I’d try to get it for $3k then do something about the wheels and anemic engine.
For the time period, the GM A-bodies drove very well. Handling is dramatically improved with bigger sway bars.
Just don’t expect to find reproduction body or interior parts.
Even though the Lumina is a better driving car, it’s a shitty design with an engine that is shitty from a design, maintenance and reliability point of view.
So I would take the 1970s Malibu and use it as a basis for modifying it so it’s more interesting.
I forgot the Malibu was once this large of a car. I guess everything was.
Not mechanically related to this one (I’m pretty sure) but I was given a less than one year old early 80’s Malibu as a company car. That is still burned into my mind as the worst piece of shit car I have ever driven. Whatever component was attached to the car was by default failing just for being on that car. If I didn’t show up back at the office in time, they would call the dealership to see if I was there and send someone to get me. I recall the asset manager apologizing when he assigned it to me. When they refreshed the fleet, I was given the first new vehicle out of pity. It was a then new to the market Ford Taurus. That was like moving from a cardboard box to a luxury apartment.
I know it was a long time ago and a lot has changed but I still have GMPTSD.
The Lumina has more character, but it sounds tired. The Malibu is a boat of a car, but comfy enough for highway cruising. Then again, for a $5k land yacht, I’d prefer the all-black Cadillac from the showdown a few months back versus the Lincoln. Were the Chevelle a wagon or coupe, it’d be a keeper.
this is a really difficult choice. The smart money is the Malibu, its bone simple, reliable and obviously been well taken care of. However, its among the least collectible version of a boring car. It has a dog of an engine, a pillared sedan not a colonnade coupe, its low options and not a particularly interesting color. I wish I could see more info to see if it is an A/C car or if I could decode it to see if it has h/d suspension or a trailer package because that would be a tipping point as at least it could be made into a good tow rig but overall its not something to get the blood boiling.
As far as the Lumina, its the best of what’s around (forgive the DMB reference). Except for the auto (which is IMO better since its a good tranny and the 5 speed in these actually make the engine less reliable and feels like working a stick in a bowl of marbles) this is the best spec Lumina you could buy in 1994. I remember being at a dealership picking up my dad in 94 and seeing one of these and trying to convince my dad to trade in his 89 Corsica for the Lumina (he was a Chevy guy to the core) since it was so much cooler. These can be made pretty reliable with proper maintenence, and have good power and good looks.
I couldn’t choose yesterday’s Fiero or the dead AMC Concord but I will jump into the unpopular choice and go for the Lumina today.
Malibrew for sure, even if the price seems a little high. My very first car was a rusty ’77 Malibu I paid $100 for. Probably only drove it a total of 20 miles before pulling the engine to swap into my actual first vehicle, a ’53 Chevy pickup. That never happened, but I did end up selling the motor for $135 to a guy who put it in his “Bucket T”, netting me a cool $35 for the work of pulling an engine. It was just the beginning of me not getting rich through automotive work.
This one needs a weekend spent with the big old magic wool buffing pad slinging some 600-grit equivalent compound followed by a sponge pad with some swirl remover. Shiny paint and a good detailing along with some needle-and-thread work applied to the driver’s seat would make this a terrific daily.
I owned a 1994 Grand Prix GTP with this engine, and while it sounded great and had some power for the era, it was insanely unreliable and hard to work on. Timing belt on an interference engine? Check. Oil pump gasket with a 100% chance of leaking that requires removal of the rear cylinder head to access? Check. Alternators prone to fail, while being stuck at the bottom of the engine near the firewall, requiring a partial subframe drop to access? Check. Mine also had a sunroof. That leaked.
It was a cool car that got a ton of compliments, and actually became reliable later in life after it was full of new parts. I only wish it had been 5 speed equipped and didn’t have the 4T60E, which also failed.
The Malibu has sentimental value…parents had one when I was a kid, and I still wish that car was still in the family. As soon as a scrolled enough to see the extra two doors I was a bit let down. The coupe is what we had, and it looks sooo much better. So in a fit of disappointment, I picked lumina. Ugh.
Malibu wins this. Its been for sale now for 5 months, so i bet theyll go lower too. But lower it on some nascar slots, and stick in a 5.3. Perfect cruiser. Leave the bench and column shift- its in NY, and NY has the most drive in theaters of any state. Why screw up a great date night seating situation?
A bunch of junk at high.prices. I voted Chevelle because dad had the SS Coupe version. But I would prefer the truck for sale in Ohio that was in the pop up advertising
With the malibu you could shove in just about any small block from chevrolet’s history without breaking a sweat. Transmissions, suspension stuff, its like a blank campus! With the lumina, you can have a lumina! I’ll take the malibu.
I don’t want to worry ’bout a thing(Stevie Wonder), so going with the Malibu as the Z34 sounds like a lot to worry about.
Gimme the malibu for the good memories. A college girlfriend had one with the bench seat, use your imagination.
Her and her dog huddled up in the front, you in the back seat eating popcorn? LOL
I had a 73 Malibu in the eighties. It had a 350 under the hood, and I paid $800 for it. Decent enough car, but not for 5k.
Neither of these are worth $5K. $3.5K-$4K tops for the Malibu since it seems to be a genuine survivor, just not nearly as desirable as the coupe version. Could make a decent resto-mod though.
The Lumina? With all the question marks and a notoriously unreliable engine with an afterthought conversion to OHC, maybe $2K to take it to a couple of Radwoods (are those even still a thing?) before some nagging warning light pops up and proves more effort than its worth to fix.
As an 80s kid, I thought that any mainstream car with body-kits, vents, and a spoiler meant it was fast and I wanted it (e.g. Z34). As a full grown adult with the ability to make risk-informed judgements (likely poor in this case), I want the Z34.