Big Resto: Chevette

Meet the father and son team whose lifelong obsession with Vauxhall Chevettes has culminated in the restoration of this HSR

Epic father-son Chevette HSR rebuild with a sting in its tail.

You can’t go unnoticed in a car like this. I’m riding shotgun with Chevette aficionado, Gary Needs – the owner of this pristine Vauxhall Chevette HSR – when a truck pulls alongside at a junction and the driver calls down. ‘Go on mate, givvit some welly!’

Gary’s right foot hits the carpet and we’re launched down the road, the 2.3-litre 16v slant-four bellowing through the cabin. The revs soar again as we speed towards the next bend, then another. Gary backs off and we both come up for air, hooting with laughter. No wonder these have been called the fastest tarmac rally cars of their generation. It is a hell of a machine, and Gary certainly knows how to drive it. not his first rodeo

That’s no surprise, given his lifelong history with Chevettes. Gary waxes lyrical about his first HS over the generous plates of sausage sandwiches that fuelled our afternoon’s play. ‘I was young when I had my son, and he used to come everywhere with me when I was out with my mates, strapped into the back of the HS. He became one of the lads. We’re both called Gary so everyone called him ‘little Gary’, but you wouldn’t believe it now looking at the flippin’ size of him!’

Father and son had always tinkered with bikes, karts and virtually anything with an engine, until one day in 2007 when little Gary (by now married and moved out) rang up to ask dad if he’d like to restore an Escort. The answer was a firm no. But a Chevette HS, maybe… ‘So he found us a project on ebay, I put in the bid, and once again became the owner of an HS. Every Sunday we’d beaver away in the garage all day.’ Four years later they’d built the rigorously modified, 200bhp, award-winning silver machine you see above. It’s little Gary’s car, with a four-link, rose-jointed rear suspension setup, four-pot callipers, fuel injection, Lotus cams, welded roll cage – the works. The mods are quite discrete, but it goes like stink. Work on dad’s black HSR began a few years later, after another prod

from little Gary, who knew of a project car in Ireland. This time, rigorous attention to originality would be the aim of the game, because for those in the know, an HSR is a seriously exotic machine.

Built for Group 4 homologation by Dealer Team Vauxhall, using the 135bhp HS as a starting point, only 34 of the HSRS were ever made, making them the holy grail of Chevettes. The HSR received wider, glassfibre bodywork (not all to exactly the same design), revised five-link rear axle, twin-plate clutch and an extra 15bhp. All were silver, apart from six that were painted black – this being one of them. They make Ford’s Avo-built cars seem mass-produced in comparison, and the price reflected it too; an HSR in 1979 was over double that of an RS2000.

In deep

‘We didn’t realise how bad the shell was,’ admits Gary, as he pulls back the cover on his now-gleaming HSR. Their starting point would have actually been a fairly decent HSR… if it hadn’t been so rusty. Only 50k miles were on the clock and the spotless interior we’re seeing today is almost completely original.

After stripping the panels piece by piece and sending the whole car to be shotblasted in Maldon, the blaster phoned with their verdict: it was bad, but not unsalvageable. ‘We brought it back and built a spit so we could get the shell off the garage floor.’ Gary’s folder of photos shows the full extent of the horror. Shotblasting had revealed a huge amount of perforation, and large areas where the metal had simply disappeared. This must have been a highly intensive restoration, but the way Gary and Gary talk about it, you’d imagine it was easy. Simple perseverance, and a love of what they do, seem to be their keys to success. ‘We can TIG, MIG, arc – my son can weld a bit of tin foil together.’

‘It’s the part that I enjoy,’ says little Garry. ‘Once it’s painted I kind of lose interest to be honest. But I keep at it.’ It’s remarkable the lengths that the pair went to, working together in the garage every weekend.