Strictly speaking, the American versions of the J-car (Chevrolet Cavalier, Pontiac J2000/Sunbird, Olds Firenza, Buick Skyhawk, Cadillac Cimarron) didn’t have a ‘Euro’ badged version, as that was reserved for the more worthy Celebrity and Lumina. But there was a genuine European version of the J-Car, as well as a Japanese, Australian, Korean and South American. The J-car was a true world car, and over 10 million were sold, making it one of the best selling platforms ever. I spotted this Opel Ascona in Innsbruck, and it reflects what the Ascona and Opel perhaps did best: provide reasonably competent basic transport without any great ambitions. That was once a formula for success; now, no longer.
The J-Car program was born in the 70s, as GM realized it was building five unique compact RWD cars all over the globe. The most glaring overlap/mistake was the Chevy Vega and Opel Ascona B/1900 (blue above), which were similar in size and concept, but the Opel was superior in every way. It took a slap in the face from the Vega’s many shortcomings to wake up the 14th floor to the fact that this was a colossal blunder not to be repeated.
Holden was building their Torana in Australia.
In the UK, it was the Vauxhall Victor.
And Isuzu was building its totally different Florian.
With the small car world inexorably moving towards FWD, GM knew it had to consolidate these cars under one universal design that would work globally, even if the details and engines were going to be different. The basic design stemmed from GM’s Detroit Design Center, but undoubtedly Opel, GM’s most important overseas division, was an active partner. The five door hatchback body style was important for the European market, and one was part of the brief. Oddly, Opel chose not to build the station wagon version of the J-car, despite the growing success of wagons like the VW Passat.
The two door sedan did make the cut. The Ascona C was introduced in Europe in the fall of 1981, some months after the American debut of the J-cars in the spring of 1981. The American Js were rushed into production early due to the huge impact on the market for more efficient cars in the wake of the second energy crisis.
The Ascona (and its virtual identical badge-engineered Vauxhall Cavalier twin) were available with a range of engines, from a 60hp 1.3 L to a 90 hp 1.6. Later, 1.8 and 2.0L variants expanded the range, with up to 130 hp. These were all part of the new “GM Family I/II” engines, a modern SOHC four that was turned down as the primary engine for American J cars because GM NA felt it could build a cheaper engine. That turned out to be a mistake, as the crude ohv cast-iron 1.8 L four was rough and feeble. The Opel-designed SOHC four was available in the Pontiac, Buick and Olds versions, optionally. A 1.6 and 1.7 L diesel version was also offered.
There were two updates to the Ascona C, the first coming in 1985 (C2), and the second in 1986 (C3). This one that I shot is a C3, from the final two years of production (MY 1987-1989). The Ascona was popular with working-class and conservative buyers, who still bought into the Opel image as it had been established in the many decades before, as a reliable, simple every-man’s car. This one certainly seems to be playing that role well.
The Ascona, and especially the Vauxhall Cavalier were popular as fleet and police cars. These cars always acquitted themselves reasonably well in reviews and comparison tests, but their image, along with its ambitions, was a bit modest, at best. There was simply no one category in which these cars really shone or impressed, but no real weaknesses either. Decent and serviceable transport. No more; no less.
And buyers lapped them up, and the Ascona and Vauxhall Cavalier were pretty consistently high in the sales stats. And they made GM some handsome profits. And never developed the iffy rep of the American Js.
The attention Opel paid to their final development, suspension tuning, and general execution resulted in cars superior to the American J cars, which targeted the Honda Accord and missed the mark, badly. They eventually improved some with time, but were never properly competitive with the competition, unlike their European J-Car kin. This was a case where modest ambitions properly executed trumped unrealistic ones that failed to deliver. One family, two somewhat different approaches and outcomes.
I remember the K car had at least four plymouths they were tough!
Total throwback. An Ascona C sedan like the red one in the brochure photo was the first car my family rode in after we landed in Bonn, (West) Germany in fall ’83. I remember thinking how much like a Chevy Cavalier it seemed, but so much cooler than one (being unfamiliar and European).
Joseph, being from Germany I see it the other way round. My parents used to rent out an apartment in our house to American servicemen and from 1988 – 1989 we had a young married couple in our house as tenants who drove a 1987 Cavalier Z 24 with the V6 engine. To me that car was much cooler than an Ascona C.
I can see why. If it had been a typical Chevy Cavalier with the OHV four, you might have felt a bit differently. 🙂
There is always the attitude of “why Yanks get the best car” even when two Australians see my base Plymouth Volare because it comes with AC/radio and interior so much nicer compared to Chrysler Valiant.
And because the Aussie Valiant had a 1971 body and interior, lightly updated.
And in the UK, Opels are considered to be much cooler than Vauxhalls. I suspect the reverse may be true in Europe…
I have never understood why there was never an Opel Ascona “CarAvan” or “Voyage” station wagon, as Vauxhall offered a Cavalier wagon.
I remember seeing the Ascona C for the first time at the 1981 IAA in Frankfurt, those were decent cars that held up much better than their follow up, the fist generation Opel Vectra, which used to rust prematurely.
I think Opel worried about it overlapping both the Kadett and Rekord wagons.
The Vauxhall Estate (wagon) was related to the Holden rather than the US version. From the side there’s a subtle difference in the C pillar and at the rear the bumper lifts with the tailgate. The Mk.2 ‘J’ Cavalier was the only one to offer an estate, neither the Mk.1 (based on the Ascona B) or the Mk.3 aero model had estates in the range, the latter because Holden used a different car (Toyota Camry) for that market segment after the ‘J’.
I’m almost certain that the Cavalier estate had less boot space with the seats folded than the Astra/Kadett estate, which was a good reason for the logical Gremans not to offer it as an Opel. The UK was always a bigger market proportionately for estate cars and Vauxhall had big ambitions to go head to head with Ford. Vauxhall did a couple of genius things that secured the Cav’s market position. Just before the Sierra was launched in 1982 they upped the specs of the Cavalier significantly – I remember two of my friend’s fathers choosing a Cavalier L company car as it was the only car in the class with standard radio/cassette (in those days it was rare to be allowed to add any options). Then Vauxhall introduced a 1.8 litre engine at the same time that was introduced as a tax band for company cars. Ford and Austin only had 1.6 and 2.0. The 1.8SRi version was the aspirational car of choice for sales reps and was a really attractive package – at least until BMW brought out the 318i and everyone traded spec for badge.
I’m with you there. In 1982-4, this car was the one ot have for that sort of driver, with good performance, equipment and well chosen engine sizes within the UK tax regime.
Compared with the Cortina, Austin Allegro, Morris Marina and Chrysler/Talbot Alpine and Solara, this car was a definite step change. The Sierra was a tougher nut but the Cavalier gave it a good run for its money for 10 years.
The wagons were developed by GMH in Australia and the panels exported to the UK, the same happened for the Reckford/Senator wagons they imported the body parts.
The Camry was unknown in Australia untill 88/89 theres no way GMH modeled ther J car against something that wasnt even available in 1980 when they developed the Camira.
He’s saying the Apollo (Camry) basically replaced the Camira, which it did.
The Vauxhall Cavalier estate car was a British initative, using panels imported from Australia – which only made sense given the particular circumstances of the UK fleet market. (then highly “hierarchy” obsessed)
In Britain there were many company car drivers whose status in the company entitled them to a Cavalier – and therefore would not be seen dead in the more humble Astra… and some of whom required a wagon.
Thus even though the Cavalier estate offered less interior room than the Astra estate – it made sense to offer it to satisfy these people. Nearly all were sold as company vehicles.
This situation applied far less in Germany and other continental markets… The next generation Vauxhall Cavalier/Opel Vectra introduced in 1989 did not include a wagon in any market…
But interestingly (when I was working at GM Europe in the nineties) an example of a (by then rather scruffy) first generation Vauxhall Cavalier estate was brought over to the Opel engineering centre at Russelsheim – to inform discussions about adding a wagon to the Vectra programme as launched in 1995 – The European Opel/Vauxhall Vectra range launched in 1995 (two generations after the J-car Ascona/Cavalier) did include a wagon.
Would a European J-car have been a worthy competitor to the Accord in North America?
Hard question to answer. Part of the problem is that the Accord was a rapidly moving target at the time, growing in size as well as refinement. The Accord morphed into a near Taurus-sized car, and its price was loftier too.
The Euro J cars had the somewhat more refined SOHC engine, which was also available on the Buick, Olds and Pontiac Js. And the Ascona’s handling/ride was probably a bit better sorted out. But I wouldn’t exactly say that they were very ambitious either, something the Accord clearly was at the time.
I think the Opel Ascona could have competed with a 1980s (2nd & 3rd gen) Accord but would have been left behind by the early 90s Accords.
I personally drove a newish Buick J-car in 1984 and thought it compared poorly with our 77 Accord. I think our 84 Accord was also a better car and my girlfriend’s 88 Cavalier was crap so GM did not improve much.
I think the 3rd generation Accord was already on another planet than the Ascona C, but the Ascona C was pretty tired by 1986. The Ascona was a big sales success, if not a triumph in establishing a reputation for Opel. The Ford Sierra turned off lots of traditional Cortina/Taunus buyers, and the 3-box Ascona C swooped them up.
It’s funny to look at the J-car’s different roles in the US and Europe. Their intended roles weren’t that different. They were supposed to compete with the best cars in their classes for critical and sales supremacy. The Ascona C and Vauxhall Cavalier were sold in different national markets. They never competed with each other. This meant that they could each be the best car that GM could offer based on the J-car platform. They cleaned up, with help from Ford as mentioned above. They also looked comfortable in their skin, since they didn’t need to be differentiated from other cars of the same specification.
In the US, the J-car had to be sold through five different dealer bodies that were all competing in the same national market. This meant that the cars had to look different from each other as much as they had to look good, which is no way to design an authentic feeling product.
There’s a whole book, Brock Yates: “The Rise and Fall of the US Auto Industry,” about all the bad decisions GM made in delivering a car that was inferior in every way to its target, which was obsolete itself shortly after the public reveal of the J-cars. The thing that gets me is that Europe’s good J-cars were replaced by completely new Vectras for the 1989 model year while the US’s faltering J-cars were being recycled through 2005. The Ascona begot three generations of Vectras begot the Insignia, while the Chevy Cavalier festered for more than two decades before being replaced by the Cobalt, which again failed to be class competitive on arrival. The current decedent of the Chevy Cavalier is a rebadged Daewoo Lacetti, while the Ascona lead directly to the car sold here as the Buick Regal. Which one came closer to being an appropriate competitor for the Accord?
During the late ’80-s as a youngster I thought that Opel will never replace the Ascona C series. The very early models even had vinyl roofs! Every year Opel had made minor changes like adding some factory made stickers, redesigned grilles, a thicker or wider rubber alike side door mouldings as finally the chrome alike door and window frames has disappeared and were replaced by black ones combined with the vast range of metallic body colours and front plastic spoilers were added as one of the latest refreshments. Or the shady taillights after the years of boring and simple red-white-amber ones. 1989 was a refreshment after all when the first Vectra / Calibra had arrived. Ascona C was manufactured for 8 years and enjoyed the respect of the customers.
The Vauxhall version was once commonplace,it’s one of those once common now rarely seen cars.
Thanks for reminding me of a trip my family took to Ireland in 1987. We rented a silver Ascona hatchback and my 3 year old self was mesmerized because it was the first car that I had ever been in with a rear windshield wiper.
“This was a case where modest ambitions properly executed trumped unrealistic ones that failed to deliver. ”
That may be true from an enthusiast’s point of view, but I wonder which approach did more for the bottom line.
Both my uncle and cousin in Germany owned Asconas! My uncle’s was a C sedan and my cousin’s a C2 5 door. They had them for quite a few years! I remember riding in them and having plenty of room for everyone and my family having no trouble keeping up with traffic!
When I was in Japan in the early 80s I saw a house near the main gate at the Joint Japan-U.S. base that I was temporarily stationed at with 2 Isuzu Florians in the driveway. One was a sedan like the one pictured, but a different color, while the other was a wagon….also a 4 door. I always figured the owner (s) were diehard Isuzu fans or had just gotten stuck with 2 very unpopular cars.
Ironically (?), the Isuzu “J” would be replaced by a badge-engineered Honda Accord…the last cars Isuzu would sell.
The Isuzu Aska was their J platform effort it was exported to NZ as the Camira a last ditch effort before NZ got the Vectra very rare cars now the car pictured on Wiki was harvested from our cohort page.
That Isuzu Florian shares a lot with the Chevy Luv truck.
Like everything forward of the B-pillars, just about!
The whole Isuzu component to this story is a little odd. Did the Florian lead directly to the J-car version in Europe? We never had the Florian (that I know of) in the USA, but Isuzu had a variant of the T-car over here as the I-Mark. I know we’ve had a couple of capsules/outtakes on that diesel I-Mark that is still clattering around Eugene. When the J-cars came on the scene here there was no Isuzu version, undoubtedly due to the market saturation of all five GM divisions having one. But the T-platform kept on trucking, and then at some point the I-Mark jumped onto a completely different architecture shared with the Chevy Spectrum. All very confusing compared to how it went down elsewhere, but then Isuzu and GM always had a…complicated relationship over here.
I do wonder how things would have gone if GM had thrown in on the 1st-gen Piazza/Impulse and done a Chevy-badged and styled version? The Geo Storm was surely a sales success, despite the platform twin 2nd-gen Impulse being somewhat less impressive than the original.
The Florian was a dead end, and had no lasting influence except on the Isuzu/Chevy LUV pickup, that shared its cab.
Isuzu needed a modern fwd car like everyone else; the J Car solved their need for the mid-size (Japanese market) car. Undoubtedly, GM’s deal with Isuzu prevented them from importing the Aska to the US; that could only have made the domestic Js look bad in compariosn.
The I=Mark was smaller, on the T Body, shared with the Chevette, etc. That was the class GM was willing to have Isuzu compete in the US.
The grey 2-door is a 1982 Ascona 1.6S. Among Opel enthusiasts the Ascona C is the forgotten Opel model. It seems that nobody loves it.
The RWD Ascona B is the one to love. Quality-wise it was a much better car too.
While I know that Ascona is mechanically related to our US Chevettes, stylistically it really reminds me of an E70 Corolla 2-door sedan. At least from that angle it does.
Wasn’t the Opel Kadett C related to the Chevette ?
The Ascona B, introduced in 1975, was a typical European midsizer (like a Ford Taunus or Peugeot 504), most of them were 4-door sedans.
Opel Ascona B 4-door sedan in full factory trim. A family car, obviously.
I had a 90 Camira cheap rental for a week before we emigrated from Tassie compared to the Amon Corona I had in NZ it was junk to drive poor handling and underpowered but by the time GMH stretched the life span of its effort that long Kiwis already had Vectras to buy. The later Toyota/Chevrolet Cavaliers are in NZ as ex JDM imports they have earned an awful reputation for poor roadholdibng and reliability, once bought they are next to impossible to sell, GM held on that tech far too long.
The Cabriolet of the Ascona (Opel) and Cavalier (Vauxhall) is very rare. Only few examples I have seen during the decades since the “C” series had been inaugurated in the early ’80-s. On the other hand the majority of the imported Pontiac Sunbirds are cabriolets. 🙂 We missed the (non existent) Ascona Caravan (Estate) on the continent.
I have searched a perios of time for a Vaux. Cavalier Estate on the British Isles but didn’t found. So I have diverted my automotive attention to the other direction…
The last Ascona daily drivers are living their final days. From time to time during my trips around Central- and South-Eastern Europe I still see them occassionally but most of them are overused and rusty. Their number is quickly declining day by day.
Still fairly common in places like Serbia or Macedonia, where cars that seem to have died out in western Europe 20 years ago are absolutely normal sights.
Few months ago during a trip around Hungary I saw few Asconas with Serbian reg.plates 🙂 One of them was a 2 door grey metallic same as seen in Paul’s article and with a 3-speed automatic transmission. This car had more rust than healthy sheet metal 🙂 The interior condition was also under every critics. But it was running. The other one was a gold metallic (original paint) 4 door saloon also automatic in excellent condition. I’m not quite sure but the Ascona C was manufactured or marketed back in the days by GM’s IDA car assembling plant located in the former Yugoslavia. Those had worn an IDA emblem on their grilles… Among others I also remember the Senator A-2 series badged as IDA OPEL KIKINDA (not Senator)…renamed by the hometown of that former GM car parts manufacturing and assy plant… They had also marketed the Kadett-D, E, Rekord-D, E, Commodore and Astra-F (equal to Vauxhall Astra Mk3)… I really liked that additional IDA emblem on the grilles of Yugoslavian made Opels… By the way…During my early carrier I had made a biz trip in that region some two decades ago and I had seen the former american plant manager’s ~1976 (?) Chevrolet Malibu parked in a small village next to a main road nearby the plant. I heard that info from a local car enthusiast then…Had seemed that the dusty Malibu was left to the weather elements alone…
Don’t forget the 1984 Buick-Opel Skyhawk Ascona CC 4-door hatchback! (Curbside Capsule here)
This state-of-the-art car can not be forgotten 🙂
as far as I know, this version was made only in Brazil; it was launched first, in April 1982, followed by the 4 door sedan about a year later; there was no 4 door hatch. The Chevrolet Monza started its life in Brazil as a very upscale and desired automobile. It enjoyed enormous popularity and had a very long run, being built alongside the Vectra until 1996. In the years 84, 85 and 86 Monza was the biggest seller in the (still protected from imports) Brazilian market.
The MONZA nameplate was attached on different Opel-Related models all around the world. This time I’m excluding the U.S. Chevrolet Monza. The German Monza was actually developed from Senator. It was actually a 2 door Coupé Senator. South-Africa used to rename our small Kadett-E as Opel Monza. You Brazilians called the subjected Ascona-C as Monza. The Ascona Coupé was never marketed in Europe neither in the U.K. as Cavalier Coupé. The car showed on your picture is very unique from our continental-european view. Like the Vauxhall Cavalier Estate as well as the Ascona (Brazilian) Coupé both of them were missing from the Ascona-C line. Actually I thought and still think that Monza of Brazil is exciting model…
Not a fan of that very typical for the era Opel front, but otherwise it looks a lot more appealing than the North American J-cars.