Exciting seventies Vauxhalls are few and far between. However, in anyone’s book, the HS Chevette definitely has to be one of them. Dealer Team Vauxhall built the first HS Chevettes in 1976 for use in the RAC rally, but It would be another two years before productions cars were available. There were built in order to homologate the rally car for high level competition. This meant they were available to be offered to an interested section of the public. Although quite crude in many ways these HS Chevettes based on the innocuous three door Chevette hatch, made exciting road machines. They were powered by a 135 bhp, twin cam versions of Vauxhall’s 2300 cc slant four engine. The 240 bhp rally cars had used a Lotus cylinder head and a ZF gearbox but for the road car a Vauxhall designed 16 valve head and a Getrag box were fitted.All of the HSs were painted silver and had front and rear spoilers.
They also came with very chunky alloys. Despite this, the HS Chevettes managed to look an awful lot less vulgar than many of their hot hatch contemporaries. Quick and capable the 2300 HS was probably a it too exotic and expensive to appeal to your average body racer, it was $1000 more than an RS 2000 Escort, which was why it remained exclusive Only 400 of them were built.
