This Very Weird Light Bulb Test Reminded Me What Crap Early ’80s Chevy Cavaliers Were

Back in college, I had a girlfriend who drove a pair of gold-colored cars, each more garbage than the last. They were both hand-me-down cars that she didn’t have the luxury of choosing, so I can’t blame her poor judgement. She was actually pretty rational, and likely would never have picked either of these. The first one was a Plymouth Gold Duster, which had an imitation snakeskin vinyl half-roof and may be the worst-handling car I’ve ever driven. On the highway it felt like trying to guide a sofa with four bars of soap under its feet. It was garbage. I once had to tow it with my Beetle up a hill, off the road where it had died.

The Gold Duster was replaced with a similarly gold Chevy Cavalier, an ’82 or ’83, I think. Where the Duster at least had a bit of deadbeat charm about it, the Cavalier was aggressively boring and soulless, so it really had nothing to compensate for the fact that it was also just a genuinely shitty car.

I was thinking about this car because I happened to see this Instagram post showing a video clip from what I think was some Chevy promotional video, highlighting the Cavalier’s ground clearance via a row of lightbulbs:

 

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This is a deeply weird comparison to highlight, though the smashing lightbulbs do give the demonstration a nice bit of drama. But think about what they’re really showing off here – a half inch or so of extra ground clearance? On a car that was barely even meant to go on a gravel road?

That 1982 or 1983 Cavalier they’re comparing to the Honda Accord, Ford Escort, and Toyota Corolla really only had that half inch or so of space between car and ground to crow about. The Cavalier was in no other context as good as a Corolla, definitely not an Accord, and really not even the Escort.

I remember driving my girlfriend’s Cavalier. It had a 3-speed auto that was like a black hole for whatever power that 1.8-liter, too-heavy, rough-idling inline-four could fart out, and the thing felt like a slug. My Beetle could leave it in the dust at stoplights, with at about 30 hp less. Fewer? Maybe fewer.

These things were such steaming piles. This brochure has a sort of quasi-religious look to it, but I promise you, the Almighty had nothing to do with the creation of the Cavalier. When it says “Chevy makes good things happen to you” they must be referring to the day you get rid of the Cavalier and get, I don’t know, anything else.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. But think about the poor bastards trying to sell these, watching these dealer training videos and getting a sinking pit-of-stomach feeling when thinking about the fact that their potential buyers could just drive 10 minutes and test drive a new Accord.

Chevy did offer these in a nice variety of body styles, and the wagon was a tidy thing that did offer a lot of room, at least. And the fastback one was kind of slick, too.

I mean, look at that guy in his white Miami Vice suit and sunglasses, leaning up against that palm tree, ready to lure the local honeys into his Cavalier. “Check it out, baby, this radio gets FM, too“, he’ll point out, proudly. “Yeah, it’s supposed to sound like that, dollface – that’s what we Cavalier owners call the power rattle,” he coos to her, as she grips the armrest tighter, alarmed by all the vibration and noise as the car attempts to crest a hill.

They did update the Cavalier in 1984 to have quad headlamps, and the option of a better V6 engine was available. They still were saddled with a bunch of too-heavy components from GM’s larger X-body cars and interiors that felt like a DMV waiting room, but on the plus side they had this commercial that really made saying the word “hot” into a freaking event:

Hhhhhot!