![]() 10/21/2016 at 12:43 • Filed to: None | ![]() | ![]() |
The Chevrolet Trans Sport. Which was sold alongside the Chevrolet Alero in Europe. Apparently it was Sweden’s best selling minivan for a short while.
I don’t know either.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 12:45 |
|
When you see it...
(Hint: top image)
![]() 10/21/2016 at 12:45 |
|
And that U body was also sold as the Opel/Vauxhall Sintra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Sintra
![]() 10/21/2016 at 12:52 |
|
Yup, GM somehow managed to sell a handful Opel Sintra and Chevrolet Trans Sport vans. Chrysler was more successful with the first four generations of the Voyager, which of course was sold here with a turbodiesel and stick. There are three of them in my street, all stick and diesels.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:01 |
|
I see some tents and things in the background of the top image. Did it just escape from the circus?
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:02 |
|
I’m assuming that the Model X is now their best selling minivan.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:04 |
|
Also, do you know if all the TransSports a la alleged Chevy were sold with double sliding doors, or just some? It was an option on the Pontiacs in the US, but standard on the Olds.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:04 |
|
Creepy kid?
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:06 |
|
I’ve got no idea.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:11 |
|
I can’t imagine mini-vans being a hot item in Sweden. You could sell 3, and win that race.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:12 |
|
Bingo
10/21/2016 at 13:12 |
|
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Trans Sport with only one sliding door and the first 10 or so cars for sale on my local classifieds site I bothered to check all had double sliding doors as well.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:13 |
|
What’s weird is that unlike a lot of the vans around that time *when they had just started offering double sliding*, the Venture/TransSport/Silhouette of that generation were engineered from the ground up to have two sliding doors and just... didn’t ship with them on some. Understructure, to my understanding, is pretty much identical, glass is identical, etc. etc., just no left door and a blanked exterior skin if you were teh poorz.
It led to some fuckery like the TransSport a friend has, which has a captain’s chair middle row and only a right sliding door. U fokin wot, m8.
They could easily have made it standard equip and beat the trend, but no...
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:17 |
|
Enhance
Enhance
It is Honey Boo Boo!!
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:19 |
|
A friend of mine (here in the US, obviously) has a TransSport (Pontiac), which has been very abused during its life, and it shipped without the double sliding door option. Inexplicably, it has captain’s chairs in the middle row. The natural impulse when in a van with captain’s chairs is to look for a sliding door which simply isn’t there - and access to the third row is much more confused.
It doesn’t surprise me that a reverse-option for poverty sales (designing for double sliding, offering a version with everything blocked off) wouldn’t have found its way across the Atlantic.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 13:50 |
|
Also sold as the Buick GL8 in China
And the Opel/Vauxhall Sintra in Europe.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:04 |
|
I’m having flashbacks now. The only thing worse than driving these, was driving their dustbuster predecessors.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:07 |
|
I think the third-gen U-Body was the worst of the lot. What a wretched car.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:07 |
|
Tesla have less than 1% of the Swedish market. Top selling MPV is the Volkswagen Sharan, with 1200 sales so far this year (59th place). Model S has 620, Model X has 139 (174th place).
Interestingly, more Corvettes were sold than BRZs.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:10 |
|
Thankfully I never had to drive one of those, but I’d bet it would be better than the dustbusters. They had the most uncomfortable driving position known to mankind. It wasn’t just bad, it actively hated you for trying to drive it. I logged thousands of miles in 2nd gen U-bodies, and they were terrible, but far better than the dustbusters.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:23 |
|
I found myself with something of a culture shock when I went to Canada (New Brunswick, Monckton) And saw TONS of Pontiac G5's. At first I thought there were just Cobalts everywhere. Seriously though, why do Canadians LOVE the G5 so much?!?!?!? There are nowhere near as many Cobalts left where I’m from.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:25 |
|
Pontiac was basically our equivalent to Vauxhall or Holden for a while, the only difference being that other countries got Pontiac too. We just loved Pontiac, we were basically the only reason they stayed around for so long.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:30 |
|
An MPV isn’t really a minivan though. The Model X is
definitely
a minivan.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:32 |
|
We had a ‘98 Trans Sport with two sliding doors when I was a kid. It was a Pontiac, not a Swevrolet. Friends of ours had a Montana with both sliding doors. At work we had one Venture with two doors and still have another one with only one. The one with two doors also had power windows and locks (that didn’t work) but the one with one door has manual windows and locks (that are possibly power but don’t work but I’m pretty sure are manual.)
![]() 10/21/2016 at 14:52 |
|
Grandmother had a Trans Sport Montana that had the old cable driven power passenger sliding door, and no driver sliding door.
The replacement for that van, which by then was just Montana, had both driver and passenger sliding doors with power on both.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 15:30 |
|
I love how they just kept the Pontiac grille and slapped a Chevy emblem on there instead of just putting on the Chevy grille like we got.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 15:33 |
|
>single sliding door
>but with power
![]() 10/21/2016 at 15:35 |
|
They were even lazier with the Alero, on the front they just kept the Oldsmobile badges on.
![]() 10/21/2016 at 17:44 |
|
That was a GM thing where the shuttle under the rear window for the sliding door was permanently attached to a looping cable, that moved the shuttle back and forth on the track.
Somehow they forgot to put a clutch mechanism on the cable drive so the door was twice as hard to move as it should have been.
![]() 10/22/2016 at 09:22 |
|
There was also the 1994-1996 euro Pontiac Trans Sport, which was literally an Oldsmobile Silhouette with Pontiac badges and apparently also sold with the same 1.9L, 90hp XUD9T diesel engine our old Citroën Xantia had.
![]() 10/23/2016 at 00:26 |
|
![]() 10/23/2016 at 00:33 |
|
maybe