chevrolet cavalier

The Chevrolet Cavalier was Chevrolet's version of the compact GM J platform. The book American Automobile 1983-1993 notes that the Cavalier was aimed at quality imports such as the Honda Accord. more...

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It was one of the most popular cars in the United States and Canada from its introduction in early 1981 as a 1982 model. Even in the 2000s, it was GM's best selling car and trailed only the Ford Taurus, Toyota Camry, and Honda's Accord and Civic in total sales.

The Cavalier was a compact Chevrolet produced from 1982 to 2005. The Cavalier is widely cited as the most successful of Chevrolet's long line of cars aimed at combatting the influx of compact imported vehicles, starting with the Corvair, Vega, Monza and the Chevette, with the Cavalier leading up to current Cobalt. The Chevrolet Vega defined the subcompact class, before being replaced by both the Monza and the Chevette. After the exit of the Vega, the Monza and Chevette would do little to expand Chevrolet's share of small cars, but the arrival of the front-wheel-drive Cavalier would change this.

It was not the only J-car to use the Cavalier name; it was also used in the United Kingdom on the Vauxhall-badged version of the Opel Ascona C, and indeed the badge had been used by Vauxhall since 1976. The J-cars were offered by all five US divisions of General Motors, as well as GM in Britain, Germany and Australia.

Predecessors

The Cavalier replaced the Monza, which was available as a 2-door coupe, a 3-door hatchback and a 3-door wagon (using the same body as the discontinued Vega wagon, the model it replaced). The inexpensive Chevette was retained even as sales declined, and was formally replaced by even smaller captive imports. Both platforms had conventional rear-drive layouts which suffered in comparison with more efficient front wheel drive offerings such as the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. Ford and Chrysler also introduced new front drive compacts. The largely successful mission of capturing the bulk of domestic compact sales would fall on the Cavalier's 2-door coupe, 4-door sedan and 4-door station wagon, the relatively short-lived Accord-like 3-door hatchback (which replaced the stylish Monza 2+2 Sport 3-door hatchback) and, in later years, a 2-door convertible. The small Cavalier even helped fill in lagging sales of the mid-size Citation (a Nova replacement).

Criticisms

The Cavalier had a major restyling in 1988 (growing it to the size of the Ford Tempo) and was redesigned for 1995. Despite strong sales, the car was widely criticized by automotive journalists for its aging platform, interior design and quality control. The Cavalier would have poor crash test ratings, most notably the high risk of pelvic injury in the third generation model (according to the NHTSA). The 1995-2005 model received a rating of \"Poor\" from the IIHS. The Cavalier would retire as an affordable compact comparable to, but usually sold for less than, the Honda Civic, while the Accord evolved into a mid-size car.

Read more at Wikipedia.org