Chevrolet Astro Service Manuals

About The Chevrolet Astro

During the mid-1980s the Chevrolet Astro went on sale targeted primarily at the North American auto market.

It was also sold as the GMC Safari by the automaker’s parent company with some optional features as standard.

You could buy the Astro in various configurations such as a standard cargo-carrying van or with additional seating as a large minivan.

Due to its large size, you could have up to eight passengers in the Astro minivan with plenty of legroom and additional cargo space.

During its first generation, the Astro van was offered with the choice of 2 engines, a 2.5-liter 4-cylinder or a 4.3-liter V6.

This is the same 4.3-liter engine that you could also find in the 1980s Impala and the later S-10 pickup truck.

When the second generation was introduced in the 1990s the smaller option was removed and so was the shorter wheelbase version of the van.

The safety score for this second generation model was “Poor” according to the IIHS in 1996 due to the way that the chassis crumpled during an accident.

Chevrolet had added a new airbag for the front passenger with this new model to help update the model in terms of safety, although this was the only change from the old version.

Interestingly, the IIHS later said (in 2007) that the Astro had a very low rate of death for drivers when compared to other vehicles but put this down to the type of driver the van would attract.

Eventually, the Chevrolet Astro was replaced by the Express in the mid-1990s, which sat on the C/K pickup truck platform.

The Express was offered with a huge amount of customization and a list of available engines and transmissions for all situations.

This minivan and the GMC Safari version managed to achieve around 3.2 million sales during its 20~ year run and 2 generations of design.