Junkyard Find: 1993 Chevrolet Lumina Euro
By the 1980s, Japanese carmakers had established themselves as making the most reliable vehicles in the minds of plenty of American car shoppers. Meanwhile, the Europeans had conquered much of the sporty/sophisticated market by that time. General Motors responded by stamping out millions of plastic badges with the magical letters “E-U-R-O” molded in (as well as by doing stuff like putting pushrod front-drive V8s in bodies flown over from Italy). You could get a Chevy Celebrity Eurosport, and— a few years later— a Chevy Lumina Euro. I’ve been overlooking these cars in junkyards for many years, but now I realize that they have a certain historical significance. Here’s one I spotted in Denver.
You’d think that the Lumina Euro would have come standard with big brakes, stiff suspension, manual transmission, maybe some cool-looking fog lights. Nope. This one has a 140-horse pushrod V6, column-shift automatic, and a not-quite-Audi-grade faux-velour-covered front split-bench seat.
If it’s a 20-year-old W-body, it’s rolling on at least one space-saver spare tire. That’s the law.
These weren’t particularly bad cars and several cubic miles of them were sold, but the EURO badging thing is just embarrassing. Instead, they should have offered the Lumina North America, with stereo optimized for Lynyrd Skynyrd and factory-installed Cherry Bomb mufflers.
There are two kinds of cars: the cars you love to drive… and the cars you need to drive.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I have a 93 red lumina euro 3.1 My daughter had just gotten her license and needed a car . I bought like a year ago for $675 and I have put about $1000 into it. It runs like a tank. A well fine tuned tank . I feel really comfortable and safe that she's driving this car and not a little plastic Honda . She named her Pheobe. Yes Phoebe from the show Friends. most of her friends parents are well-off , but she loves this car, it's her pride and joy . I'm really upset that I can't show it off with some pictures how do I post some pictures of it on here ? It won't even let me copy and paste them .
Is it me or does it seem like the rims for these Euro Luminas always end up being slapped on other early-mid 90's GM cars?