Vauxhall Cavalier
The Vauxhall Cavalier is a large family car that was sold primarily in the United Kingdom by Vauxhall from 1975 to 1995. It was based on a succession of Opel designs throughout its production life, during which it was built in three incarnations. The first generation of Cavalier, launched in 1975 and produced until 1981, was Vauxhall's version of the General Motors 'U-Car' — essentially an Opel Ascona B/ Opel Manta with a few minor visual differences.
The second generation of Cavalier, launched in 1981 and produced until 1988, was launched simultaneously with the identical new generation of Opel Ascona, which was sold across the world in various guises on the GM "J-Body platform". The third and final generation of Cavalier, launched in 1988 and produced until 1995, was a rebadged Opel Vectra A with the same production span. Cavaliers for the UK market were predominantly built at Vauxhall's Luton plant, but were also built alongside their Ascona/Vectra sister models at Opel plants in Continental Europe.
Mark I (1975–1981)
Launched with a 1,896 cc engine as a 1976 model in November 1975, the Cavalier was a restyled version of the Opel Ascona B which had debuted three months earlier in West Germany. The Ascona/Cavalier was built on what GM called the U-car platform — which was essentially a stretched version of the T-body used in the smaller Kadett C/Chevette. The Cavalier was originally intended to have its own bodywork and interior design. However, GM management stopped its development six months away from the car's intended release and decreed that it used the Opel Ascona body and interior almost unaltered, but with the longer hood and "droopsnoot" nose from the Manta B, albeit without the air slots between the headlamps, whilst the rear fascia would be altered with the license plate moved below the bumper and an applique panel between the rear lamps with "VAUXHALL" spelled out in large letters similar to existing models. In the end to keep costs down, the different nose, designed by Wayne Cherry, was the only obvious styling feature to set the Vauxhall apart., with the interior also having no differences from the Opel sister car except for badging and trim. The new models bore a strong visual resemblance to the 1973 OSV project which had been seen in West Germany two years before.Van, pick-up and estate versions were also on the drawing board, but the MK1 Cavalier was ultimately never produced in these bodystyles, though prototypes were constructed to the extent that a road legal Cavalier Van can be seen in an early episode of UK TV show Minder, the exact same car used in the production being pictured at. In the meantime, estate versions of the smaller Chevette and Astra, as well as the larger Carlton, would be launched to compensate for the lack of a Cavalier estate.
To begin with, the Mark I Cavalier was produced principally alongside the Ascona at the newly refurbished Opel plant in Antwerp, Belgium.
Shortly after its launch, the Cavalier was tested by What Car? magazine and received a much higher rating than the Ford Cortina Mk III and Morris Marina against which it was tested. However, the Cortina was less than a year away from replacement, and January 1976 saw the arrival of the Chrysler Alpine. In Britain, demand for the Cavalier initially outstripped supply, one of the factors in General Motors making a decision soon afterwards to add the Cavalier to its British as well as continental production lines in August 1977.
The first Vauxhall Cavalier to be assembled at Vauxhall's Luton plant was driven off the production line by Eric Fountain, Vauxhall's manufacturing director, on 26 August 1977, after which the 1256 cc version, assembled at Luton and using engine and transmission already familiar to Viva 1300 owners, broadened the range. At that stage the 1584 cc Cavalier and the 1979 cc which had joined it were still being imported from Belgium, but in due course these, too, started to emerge from the Luton production plant. The commencement of Cavalier production in the UK also helped ensure that supply for the car met demand, and consequently its sales figures increased so it was now a constant presence in the top 10 best selling cars in Britain.
The timing of the Cavalier's United Kingdom launch was well-judged. The United Kingdom tax system meant that sales to company car fleets comprised a larger proportion of the overall market – especially for middle-weight saloons — than elsewhere in Europe: the Ford Cortina Mk II had been replaced by the Ford Cortina Mk III in 1970, but in the eyes of the all-important company car fleet managers the newer Cortina never quite matched the earlier car for reliability, notably in respect of problems with its cable clutch and with camshaft wear in the 1.6 and 2.0 litre ohc units. The traditionally very conservative fleet market was therefore particularly receptive to Vauxhall's new Cortina challenger. At the time, British Leyland was facing criticism for the lacklustre design and doubts about build quality and reliability surrounding its cars, especially the Morris Marina and the smaller Austin Allegro. The Cavalier was launched around the same time as Chrysler's Alpine, which featured a more modern front-wheel drive hatchback layout and was voted European Car of the Year for 1976, but it would ultimately fail to meet sales expectations on the British market and was not reputedly a reliable or well-built car.
The original Cavaliers were available as two and four-door saloons, and with a two-door booted coupé body as used for the Opel Manta. The cars came with a choice of 1.6 and 1.9 L inline-four cylinder Opel CIH engines in the saloon: only the 1.9 L engine was available in the coupé. Vauxhall engineers built Cavalier prototypes using the 2.3 L Vauxhall Slant-4 engine, for use in a future high-performance variant, but the proposals did not get past GM Europe management, and as a result the larger-engined Cavaliers were exclusively powered by the Opel CIH engine.
It was revised in 1978, as the 1.9 L became a 2.0 L engine and the 1.3 L OHV engine from the Vauxhall Viva and Vauxhall Chevette was used to create the entry-level Cavalier 1.3 variant. At the same time, a three-door hatchback known as the Sports hatch was added to the range.
There were plans for a five-door hatchback version to be launched, but this bodystyle was never produced on the first generation Cavalier, although at this time hatchbacks still only accounted for a small percentage of sales on larger family cars. That would change during the 1980s, however.
All Cavalier saloons shared most of their bodywork with the Opel Ascona but had the slanted nose of the Manta to give them the distinct "droop snoot" front end. The coupé also had a front air dam.
Despite being the same car mechanically, the Opel Ascona was sold alongside the Cavalier in the United Kingdom until 24 July 1981, when GM decided to phase out duplicated models with the Opel brand in the United Kingdom and merge remaining dealerships with those of Vauxhall. The Opel Manta remained available, giving the Opel brand a "sports" position in Britain until the Manta was finally discontinued in 1988.
That the Manta was sold alongside the MK2 Cavalier in the 1980s gave rise to the curiosity that the previous generation Ascona/Cavalier was effectively being sold concurrently with its successor, since a coupé/sports hatch version of the Ascona C/Cavalier Mark 2 was never engineered. However, the early to mid 1980s saw the decline of coupé models on the British market, with British Leyland not replacing the MG B when it closed the famous MG factory at Abingdon in 1980, and even the Ford Capri had no immediate successor after the end of production in 1986, as Ford felt that there was not sufficient demand in Europe for a new sporting coupé to be launched. This was largely due to the rising popularity of "hot hatchbacks" and sports saloons including the Volkswagen Golf GTI.
Vauxhall, from 1978 until 1979, offered the Cavalier Coupé in a convertible format called the Centaur. Only 118 of these were made and fewer than 30 were believed to have survived by 2007. The cars were developed by Magraw Engineering and sold through Vauxhall dealerships on behalf of Crayford. The Centaur is basically a Cavalier GLS Coupé 2-litre with the hard roof replaced with a soft top leaving a T-bar for strength. The floor pan was also strengthened.
The Silver Aero, Wayne Cherry's design concept, is often considered the ultimate Cavalier Mark I. This was a one-off prototype built in 1980, based on the Cavalier Sportshatch. The car was displayed at the International Car Show at the NEC in October 1980. The plan was to offer existing Sportshatch owners and buyers to upgrade their car to the Silver Aero spec. The car has a 2.4-litre turbocharged engine which produces. Orders were taken, but not enough to warrant production, and the car remained a one-off.
The original Cavalier was a relatively strong seller in Britain, even though it never quite matched the runaway sales success of the Ford Cortina, or even the sales figures attained by British Leyland's Morris Marina but it at least managed to help Vauxhall regain lost ground in a market sector where it had declined during the first half of the 1970s as Victor sales slumped. It also helped repair Vauxhall's image, which had been hit hard in the early 1970s by build quality and reliability issues surrounding cars like the Victor. Nearly 250,000 were sold, though by December 2009 just 373 remained.
The Vauxhall Cavalier MK1 was also sold with left-hand drive in some European countries, including Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, alongside its Opel equivalent. The coupé was available with the 1.3 engine and in Scandinavia the car came with Manta-style headlight wipers. Vauxhalls were at one time sold alongside Opels in Europe but Vauxhall announced they were pulling out of the 11 other countries where they sold cars on 6 December 1979 and export sales stopped entirely in 1981, allowing General Motors to concentrate on the Opel brand in these markets.
In RHD markets such as Ireland, Cyprus and Malta, the Vauxhall brand was also dropped, with Opel becoming the main GM marque. Holden also looked at taking the U-Car but they declined as they found that the prototypes they had tested were not suitable for the roads in the outback without extensive modifications.
Trim levels:
- L
- LS
- GL
- GLS
- Command Performance
- Silver Special