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:
View this post on Instagram
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!
Real missed opportunity to sell it as the Cavalier Wilderness Edition.
Also, a proper grammatical construction would be “30 fewer horsepower”.
Oh man, wait until you find out about Pthursday and 1rd !
(is that pronounced “fird” or “oner’d”?)
That question has been breaking my brain every time they post about the Autopian Track Day.
Fird, Seconth, Thirst, Fourd, Fifst, and so on.
Lateral lisp. Or is that lipth.
Keeping the author in mind, I’m pretty sure it rhymes with turd.
When I was growing up, we replaced a ’77 Catalina with an ’86 Cavalier RS sedan with the 5-speed. It also had the digital dash that never actually worked, so the only functional instrument it had was the tach. The black and silver paint with the red interior and the spiky alloy wheels actually looked pretty decent. We drove that car from Denver to Michigan or Minnesota several times, and never got popped for speeding or ran out of gas, even with no speedo or gas gauge. Good times.
I rented and drove a Fiat Ducato van in Italy back in 1988 that ran out of fuel showing 1/8 of the tank left. A BMW Bavaria in the US pulled the same trick on me a couple of years earlier, with my in-laws in the back seat. Fortunaetly, the nearest station with a gas can youd could put a deposit on was only 500 feet away.
And climbing a steep hill in Tacoma, my Jetta TDI with the low fuel light on, gave up the ghost. I put Greta the Jetta in neutral, went back down hill and turned into a side street and then pushed and pointed her back down and she came back to life when I let out the clutch and then found the nearest place with diesel. It’s probably good to know where the fuel pickup is in the tank. And dear Lord, the annunciator that went off when the Jetta was running low of either fuel or windshield washer fluid was pretty startling. Really? The same sound for either fluid?
There must be some website that analyzes these things. How far can you go (on level ground) when the low fuel light comes on? Beyond the 0 range left indicator goes on and where in the tank is fuel pick up. After these experiences I seldom go below a 1/4 anymore.
There’s a reason why my high school buddy used to call these “Cadaverliers.” And a Cadillac Cimarron? “A Cadaverlier with power seats.”
Like cadaver? Kudos to him.
I am friends with a couple of ER docs and nurses that refer to us, who choose to ride, as “donorcyclists.” Sometimes, dark humor is what gets you through the stuff.
My sis worked at the Rapid City SD hospital ER, the largest medical facility nearby Sturgis; folks working there had plenty to say about the non-helmet wearing Harley Davidson ‘organ donors’.
Love the old style sales training video, where over 42 features are standard because they are required by federal regulations.
And they always highlighted shit that nobody cared about or noticed – “sport style” steering wheel, bodyside moldings, carpet
Yeah, but Grandpa had to pay extra for carpet in his Chevy II….
Not to mention the dual sport mirrors, full wheel covers, vinyl trimmed reclining cloth seats, and trunk light
Ha – Dual Mirrors and full wheel covers only came on Cavalier CL!
Not standard on base Cavalier.
And nobody got a trunk light – That was too fancy for real Muricans!
https://xr793.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/1982-Chevrolet-Cavalier.pdf
I just checked on google, even now the Federal regs do not mandate a passenger side door mirror, as long as the back view is not obstructed (meaning if the center, windshield mounted mirror view is blocked by a cab or truck body, then there must be a passenger side mirror). However many states do require both side mirrors. So the feds have mandated rear view cameras and screens, but still not a simple, basic passenger side mirror? Not surprised.
I know, its ridiculous, granted, there are a lot of modern vehicles where a camera is absolutely needed because the rear visibility is so terrible no matter how good of a mirror you have. In a perfect world, maybe they could have come up with some scheme where a camera was only mandated if the rear vision wasn’t up to a certain standard without it.
And Great-Grandpa had to pay extra for the heater in this 1930s Chevy
There are a bunch of Rockwell turbo-encabulator videos that follow the same meme.
I am pretty curious about the production houses around Detroit that put these things out. “Hey kid.” to a WDIV news photographer. “Can you shoot a single camera gig for us?”
I’m pretty sure there are stories out there.
My mom had an 85 Cav, the facelifted one. Off white with the requisite blood red interior that every 80s car had and came with NO radio (she bought one at Sears and had it installed there). Can confirm it was craptastic. Also the Rusty Jones sticker on the rear side window must have meant that it will rust extra fast because it had door edge rust by at least 1990. She tried to get an 89 Probe but couldn’t get financed, ended up keeping the Cav until 1992 when she got the first year Hyundai Elantra. I imagine the trade in Cav was pennies at that point.
Also I imagine that “Type 10” Cavalier CL up there is a package of nothing but pinstripes, alloy wheels, and raised white letter tires?
I actually had an ’84 Type-10 hatchback, with the 2.0L and a 5 speed manual…it wasn’t complete trash, and from what i was able to find out back then (mid 90’s), the Type-10 had the same F-22 suspension package from the Camaro’s of the day
I see the Type-10 eventually became the RS in later generations
We had an 86 Type 10 into the late 90’s. It was the best Cavalier I ever drove, but that bar is pretty low. Wife bought a new 95 Saturn SL and it was way, way better but I had to drive the Cav until it died at 130k. (the Saturn lasted 330k).
Alright, that History Trails page gets a thumbs up from me. The sarcasm is *chef’s kiss*.
Those lightbulbs represent all of the ideas GM could come up with to justify that steaming pile.
The smashing represents what competitors did to these ideas and GM’s sales figures.
This single ride-height modification is thought to have saved as many as 7 (seven) squirrels from concussions.
I know this site is (rightfully) anti-AI, but at the same time, it would be wonderful to have that hhhhhot commercial re-done with some modern cars
Every time I see a first-gen pre-facelift Cavalier I’m reminded of a str8 married guy I worked with who drove a white Cavalier wagon….
…and turned out to be a pedo.
The “ick” factor is major.
My sister had an 86 coupe (z24 so not horrible looking) in the 90’s. She wacked into a guard rail, bought another 800-dollar car (VW fox maybe) and left the cav in my parents’ driveway. My dad bought a fender and a bumper from a gas station with a pile of Cavaliers behind it (literally a pile). My 15 year old self pulled the radiator support and frame ends with a come-along to a tree. My dad drove it as his commuter for a year or so. And I drove it a few times when I got my license (such a piece of crap) it was quick but handled awful and the ride wasn’t great, but luckily another relative was ditching a 2nd gen pulsar and dad swapped to that. No idea what happened to the cav but I think it might have gotten donated or sold for scrap.
I think the most interesting part of this was how cheap 8-12 year old cars were back then. 800-1k is like 1700-2200 today. So you could buy a 10 year old car with 100-125k for under 2500(today) bucks. Really hard to do that now.
Amen to that. In 1988, my first car, a 1978 Camaro with 78k miles, was $1500. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $4250 in 2026 dollars.
In 2026, a comparable 2016 base Camaro starts at around 15 grand.
I get what you’re saying, but look at how much more the base 2016 has than the base 1978. Base model cars now (and in 2016) have more power, more safety, and more general features than most lux vehicles in the 70s and 80s.
True enough.
But comparing $4200 to $15,000, I am quite convinced that I could do without at least eight grand worth of those “improvements.”
That’s a bad comparison. 78k miles on a 1978 vehicle is equivalent to 180k miles on today’s car.
Cars tend to last so much longer now. Generally more reliable and they do not rust nearly as quickly as they used to.
An 8-12 year old car from the 1980s was a rusted out pile in much of the country. Even in arid climates, the drivetrain was probably close to the end of its life given the frail transmissions of the era.
Read Car and Driver’s 25,000 mile review of the 1982 Chevrolet Camaro to see how far we’ve come.
They were bought by attractive women with poor judgment.
First and second girlfriends had them.
Sounds like you need to wake-n-bake today, man.
The lightbulb clearance demonstration was the idea that won at the roundtable discussion that brought together the marketing and engineering geniuses. Imagine the rejects.
Do companies really allow input from engineering in their public marketing?
Only when they are desperate to illustrate any possible spec that could show their vehicle ‘winning’ a head-to-head comparison.
It’s probably not common since technical specs do not really sell cars, and they are wasting their own ad time showing a competitor’s product.
This light bulb test was probably an Engineer’s snarky response, po’d that he had to attend a mtg with bunch of marketing jackwads.
There are sales engineers / technical sales people, but they’re probably not working on teams selling direct to consumers.
I did that role for years, it’s mostly interpreting between engineers and b2b customers for components.
And yet…my Dad bought an ’82 Cavalier, and the interior fit and finish at the time was a revelation compared with the ’79 Nova it replaced. As for the comparison with the Escort…oof, that’s tough. In the same shopping cycle, Dad test drove an Escort, and I was along for the ride. It was truly awful. I just looked up the 0-60 times, and the Escort was theoretically a tick faster, but it felt so crude.
Years later, we bought an ’89 Cavalier for my wife. Favorite memories include the ECU dying and shutting down the car at 55 in the left lane, and how using the blinkers sometimes randomly activated the wipers.
Even the 90s Cavaliers were hot, abject garbage. Getting the 3.1L V6 somewhat wasn’t that big of an upgrade either.
The suspension was just as bad. Even taking a gentle on-ramp onto an interstate involved significant amounts of body roll and ass-cheek clenching.
And the interior… where do I start? There’s more hard plastic in the passenger cabin than a LEGO factory along with completely unbolstered seats with a paper thin fabric covering that was prone to stains, tears and general disintegration from looking at it wrong.
I drove one of the early 1990s Cavaliers… an RS with the V6 and slushbox. For its time, it was okay.
But the worst thing about it was what you couldn’t see… that the slushbox was underspec’d to handle the power of the V6. The buddy who owned that V6 Cavalier had the transmission die on him after 90,000km.
If you wanted a Cavalier that was decently durable, if you wanted the slushbox, then you had to stick with the 4 cyl. If you wanted the V6, then you should stick with the manual.
Also remember that these things were CHEAP. I recall seeing ads for these with a/c, automatic and other common options for CAD$9,999… which would be just over CAD$20,000 today… or around US$14,500 today.
It couldn’t handle the power of the V6? Isn’t that like a mighty 130hp?
What was the transmission made of, paperclips and old napkins?
That transmission (the GM Turbohydromatic 125C) was fine for the earlier 2.8L V6 and of course, the less powerful 4 cyl engines
But by the early 1990s, the 2.8L V6 turned into the 3.1L MPFI V6 good for 140hp… and more importantly, 185ft-lbs of torque. That second figure is the more important one as the TH125C was rated for up to 180ft-lbs.
So stock from the factory, if you had a 3.1L Cavalier and floored it, that transmission was being pushed to the limit.
If you drove gently and added a transmission cooler, it could be durable.
But if you did not add the cooler and drove it hard (like my friend), it most certainly won’t last.
Now having said that, the TH125C isn’t a bad transmission per se and it can be beefed up to handle way more power.
That commercial is….something
Hhhhot!
What you dont understand is that the Cavalier is a lifestyle, not just a car
I assure you, you are not being too harsh. I would argue you’re not being harsh enough. at 5 years old we had a donated one seal it’s own hood shut in my high school’s driver’s ed garage. IT knew how terrible it was, and even as the newest vehicle in that fleet of shitboxen it didn’t deserve to survive.
As with so many GM things the J bodies were taken out of the oven half-baked and gradually improved until halfway decent. Then kept around for way too long until the platform was not just a dead horse but beaten into a slurry.
Thanks, Jason. Now you’ve reminded me of that dream I had where I took a fastback Cavalier and put all sorts of legit go fast/handle great bits on it. The looks on people’s faces when I took it to a track day were amazing.
How do I know it was a dream? It was a Cavalier.
Nothing more satisfying than smashing the damn bulbs while some dudes are arguing how many are there.
Gul Madred: How many lights do you see there?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I see four lights.
Gul Madred: No. There are five.
Only if the Cardassians are driving Cavaliers. Put ’em in Corollas and there are NO lights.
It’s spelled ‘Kardashian.’
Nothing better sums up the gulf between 80s fantasy and 80s reality than the picture of a brown Cavalier with white-letter Goodyears in an obvious Miami Vice ripoff promotional photo.
It’s a Scarface ripoff.
Miami Vice didn’t hit the airwaves until 1984.
“Less” is for any kind of gradated change (this drink has less arsenic than that one) and “fewer” is for quantity (I saved 2 fewer MBs onto the sausage)… I think.
Shame that “more” works for both, but hey, English is a disaster.
Does it get fuzzy when it’s a gradated change but now referencing a specific number?
The beetle had 30 fewer horsepower – definately correct.
But if you were to just say the beetle had fewer/less HP without giving a number, less sounds less incorrect. Or is it fewer incorrect…..shit.