Pity the poor Cavalier. Never a car purchased for love, most of them have had uncaring owners from new, resulting in their rarity these days, despite impressive production numbers from inaugural 1982 to the end in 2005. Seeing any Cavalier or examples of its J-body brethren in fair to nice condition is rare, but especially rare are the wagons.
Now, those of you in warmer climes might be thinking “rustbucket.” But for a Northeast Illinois automobile, this aqua Cav longroof is pretty solid. And Junqueboi will be happy to hear it also is equipped with the 3.1L V6, not the four-cylinder. Despite the rust, I would not be surprised if the original owner is still driving it, as other than the rust, there was no dents, dings, crash damage, aftermarket gingerbread tacked on, and all four original wheel covers were present. And seeing that color took me back to circa 1992-93! Remember the brief aqua fad in the early Nineties? I do!
It’s not perfect, but it’s still patiently serving its owner. And isn’t that what CC is all about?
The CC Effect strikes again. I saw a white Cavalier RS wagon last night; alas, it was dark while it awaited its owner.
Years ago, I drove a fleet version Cavalier wagon with the F41 (going from memory here) suspension. A nice little tag on the dash even told you what it was. If you overlook acceleration, it was an eye opener to drive. It may be the only Cavalier I have ever driven.
I had two J body wagons; a Cavalier and Sunbird. Both very versatile and useful with the wagon area and folding seat. I took them everywhere! Unfortunately, both did not last past 100,000 miles. Both succumbing to mechanical failure at about 95,000 miles.
I rented a cheap heap used car for our last few days in Tassie it turned out to be a JD Camira wagon automatic with TBI 2.0L mill though well worn it drove reasonably well for what it was but it was falling apart during our use the tailgate latch disintegrated and I had to ockystrap it closed didn’t really care all it had to do was get us and our bags to Hobart airport it did that, I dropped the keys in the drop slot and promptly forgot about it.
Very very few J Camiras left alive in NZ some Toyota and Chevy Cavaliers still survive but they aren’t popular,
Even less in rainy Britain!They used to be a common sight towing a trailer with ladders on the roof rack and full of tradesman’s tools.The ones that didn’t rust were run into the ground
The Cavalier tailgates were sourced from Oz. Don’t have much trouble with rust here so Holden didn’t bother rustproofing them…oops.
I haven’t seen a Camira for a loooooooong time.
I passed a slowly-driven Camira on the highway last week. Can’t think how long it was since I saw one before that.
Nope, none in Queensland …
Saw a base spec JE Camira sedan in town last week – first Camira I’ve seen in several months, and first base spec JE I think I’ve ever seen.
“The Rapidly Disappearing Cavalier Wagon”
Bye, don’t let the screen door hit you… and please take the other “Js” with you.
Agreed.
Always hated the J bodies and always will.
I actually just saw a dark blue Cavalier wagon like this on my way to the airport in Orlando on Friday! It was very faded from the Florida sun, with different body panels faded to different degrees. They are very scarce these days, but probably due to their high production numbers, I do see J-body wagons from time to time in Massachusetts. There’s even a beige Skyhawk wagon I’ve seen around town several times.
I actually miss the aqua fad of the 90s. A really cheery and attractive color on many vehicles. Several people I knew had Chrysler minivans in a similar hue. I believe it was called “Island Teal”.
Just today I saw a 1993-97 Intrepid in that color in traffic. I have seen Concordes and LeBaron convertibles in that color too.
Yeah the Concordes in that color were probably the most odd. The color seemed to clash with all the Concorde’s chrome trim and upscale image in general.
The late Cavalier wagon always takes me back to a low point in my childhood memory bank. Just before Junior high, the local compost site worker Lady had a red VL model. We lived on a lot with lots of leaf and grass debris if you kept up on it, and would be at the site once a week to dispose of the yard work of the day. Mom had an 85 type 10 coupe we would show up in every now and then, so she would be friendly and make small talk with me and my parents about how she loved hers for her job. She had the horrible mishap of getting her shirt sleeve caught into a wood chipper one day, and nearly died if it weren’t for the fact someone was at the site disposing their debris when it happened. A hard memory to forget in a relatively small community at that age..
Wow. I take it she lost her arm.
She did, unfortunately. After a long days thought, I remember her to be Carol. Wherever she may be, she was a wonderful soul whom I miss from my past.
I painted a PA Velox that colour or close to it with white top and fins it looked good. Still folded up when I Tboned a Mini though
I like this color on cars from the 50s and 60s, but not so much on anything 30 years newer than that.
I hear these wagons were so popular that dealerships were befuddled when the bodystyle was dropped for the 1995 model year. I see a few of these Cavalier wagons in the Portland area and even saw an 88-94 version this past Wednesday, but it had an actual grill cover as opposed to a piece of plastic. General Motors in the 1990s must have had a rebellious streak because so many of their vehicles have the front license plate holder on the passenger side of the bumper instead of the more traditional center or driver side mounting.
This vintage of Cavaliers were handsome enough. My Mom had a ’95 coupe that was an attractive car, but not all that great reliability-wise with cylinder head and gasket problems, other small problems and rattles galore.
These just don’t seem to stay on the road that long; they’re fading fast here even in the rust-free Bay Area. After seeing a Junkyard Outtake with a rather late Cav already being parted out, I started looking for the remaining Cavaliers in my area. While there are a smattering of Cavaliers out here, I began to be surprised by how many 1st and 2nd generation Saturn S series cars are still running. I doubt the Saturns at this point get any more love than a Cavalier, so was the Saturn that much better? Maybe so. To me, it’s too bad GM didn’t put more effort into the Cavalier instead of wasting so much energy on the whole Saturn affair.
From what I have read on Curbside Classic and seen in real life Detroit vehicles became very unpopular on the West Coast starting in the 1970s resulting in a lot of foreign vehicles plying the roads. However, Saturn was an attempt by General Motors to pull itself out of its slump and a number of people did not realize Saturns were a product of the General. So, I can see why people in the Bay Area bought a number of Saturns, but I too am surprised they are still around considering y’all have CARB. I grew up in Central New York where according to state law vehicles built before 1996 do not have to pass emissions tests so early Saturns with their chronic oil burning issues can freely spew clouds of blue smoke. Since most vehicles on New York’s roads are from the late 1990s-2014 the sight of obvious polluters has died down severely in the past 10 plus years.
Now that you mention it, I had a neighbor some 15 years ago with 2 Saturns. One was great, and the second (bought because the first was so good) was an oil burner that he soon rid himself of.
The Saturns I see today haven’t been accompanied by any sort of smoke screen; it’s just that I’m a little surprised to see so many of them from both generations still running since they’re not exactly new. I wish GM had lavished that kind of love on the Cavalier.
General Motors products may be somewhat to rather crappy, but the engine and tranny go for a while if you get the right pair and put up with their increasing amount of short coming. It helps that California is not too tough on vehicles.
That’s why they say “You can always count on a GM to run poorly for years”
GM would have never lavished much love on the Cavalier/Sunbird as they were nothing but basic entry level cheap transportation in which GM was not making much profit on anyway. These were just cars to get folks in the door. They were meant to compete with the Ford and Chrysler offerings and not the Honda or Toyota offerings(those looking at Civics or Corollas were not going to bother with looking at a Cavalier)
The Saturn and Geo entities were there to fight the imports and were created differently to achieve the same goal of stealing sales from the imports. With Geo, they were offering Japanese quality with good prices (the Prizm was a rebadged Corolla and thus was reliable to a T)
The saturn was created to be as the ads said “a different kind of car” and was designed to be a “new car company” in order to court buyers that considered GM’s offerings to be unreliable crap and could not fathom having a Chevy or other GM product in their driveway. This new company would not have the taint of unreliability to it as its sister divisions.
The first generation Saturn was a pretty car(and good condition ones still look fresh even today). It had good fit and finish and looked more expensive then it was. The S Series sedan from 91-95 looks a lot like the 1990-1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme(which also was an attractive car(and in my mind the most attractive of the W Body cars of that time) sedan from the side profile.
GM at that time pined its hopes on stealing sales from the imports with Saturn. It knew that nobody was going to be stolen away from Toyota or Honda with the J Car no matter how gussied up they made it.
Well, I know one person’s experience doesn’t mean much, but I had both a Cavalier and a Saturn S-series and thought the Saturn was a remarkably better car in every way.
I had an SL2 a few years back. I agree, it was a great car. Very reliable and even kind of fun to drive with the 5 speed and twin cam engine. My mother used to have a ’99 Cavalier for a few years before it was totaled in an accident. She bought it new and used it for long commutes to work. It mostly ran okay but seemed to go south pretty quickly. I remember being surprised by how two similar vintage cars from the same parent company could be so vastly different in terms of durability and refinement.
My father-in-law has a very early 80’s Cavalier wagon, GM beige over brown, as his daily driver. (His driveway is excellent material for CC: an ’85 Dodge van, an ’82 Ford Escort coupe, and a ’66 Chrysler Imperial. The ’74 Maverick was finally hauled off last fall.) It sounds like a sewing machine, drives like a stack of lumber perched on a shopping cart, and looks like a cockroach. There is no headliner, all the bumper cladding has disintegrated, and the plastics inside have that sheen of white chalk that comes from 30 years of solid UV exposure. But it still runs and drives. You may draw your own conclusions…
Wow… These certainly weren’t the best cars – they were pretty lousy even for GM – but such a well-preserved example warrants a trip to Maaco to fix the rust.
Cavalier was, if memory serves, assembled at Lordstown, OH. As was Vega, as was Cobalt. I am sure there are some very fine people there, but LORD SAVE US….they certainly assembled some junk there!
Cavaliers, depending upon which period of time you’re thinking of, were assembled in several different plants. This one, most likely was from Lordstown. I have a Lansing-built 1997 model.
However, I will say this in defense of the workers at Lordstown (or most other assembly plants), they don’t get to choose what they get to assemble. Nor do they get to choose the method of assembly. They just get to assemble the cars.
They’ve also built Impalas (back in the 60’s) and more recently Chevy vans at the Lordstown Assembly plant. I think they now build the Chevy Cruze there. My uncle who works for GM took me on a tour there when I was a kid.
Lordstown opened in 1966 and has produced a huge range of cars, but for most of it’s existence it’s been the smaller cars (H & J bodies, now the Delta body). Here’s a good reference from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lordstown_Assembly
After looking this up to be sure of my facts, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since the van plant closed!
You have to invoke the Lord to slam the Lordstown workers?
It seems the early ’90s Cavalier wagons always had the 3.1 V6. As it was meant to be compared with the likes of Ford’s Vulcan engine or Honda’s 2.2 liter F-block, I can say that it’s a very good engine.
So, despite being a sloppily executed machine with horrible seats, a flimsy structure and indifferent handling, one can’t deny its appeal. It’s a cheap, small car with a big engine and lots of space for junk. And despite the lack of sex appeal, the squared off styling avoids being ugly. I quite like these cars.
There’s a blue one just like the picture not far from me. Saw it this morning on the way to meeting. I liked them.
A coupe in that color served as my first crapcan oval racer. The car was a blast and easy to get that lift off oversteer needed on a tight oval to get to the inside line without loosing too much momentum. I decided to spend my last cashflow to head to a far away track. After a bunch of test and tune laps I let my brother take a few laps after his cars ecu crapped out. He didn’t even get off pit lane and the oil pump packed it in. Four hours away from home and not being able to race really sucked.
A few years later I got back to that track and had a blast until I lost oil pressure just after the halfway point. I have never been back.
A woman down the street from me has had her red wagon for the fourteen years I’ve lived in Philadelphia
I really like these and find them to be sharp little wagons. I’d like to find one of these with the 3.1 and a 5-speed! An automatic would work though. Maybe the planets will align and this purple 3.1 wagon I occasionally see around will come up for sale.
Chevy built a few VL sedans with the 3.1V6 although they are harder to find than the wagons. I’d scoop one of those babies up too…although the wagon bodystyle is better looking and much more versatile to me.
Not only do I remember the brief aqua fad, but I also remember the GM teal green fad too…that sure brings me back to the early – mid 90s.
What about the burgundy 92 LeSabre in the background?
My main memory of this vintage Cavalier was that it was the first rental car I ever drove. A white coupe with the 2.0 litre and the RS package, woooo hooo.
It’s funny how subtle some of the differences between the VL and RS were. Besides the RS having body-color bumpers, The sedan’s taillight assembly contained one extra bulb so the taillights appeared a little “longer” (when illuminated).
When taking dashes out of these things, I noticed that some part of the dash (I forget which…maybe one of the twisty-pod things that turns on the wipers?) were/was backlit while the VL models just had holes where the sockets would go.
GM finally made a much-needed temperature gauge standard equipment in 1991. The RS standard cluster got that plus an oil pressure gauge which I thought was odd. There were a few other minute “additions” on the RS that few people would probably ever notice.
The biggest difference was probably the fact that one could load up the RS with options unlike the VL model which had a very small option list. But those little weird things like the extra lighting & gauge left me scratching my head.
Oh Carmine, those are SO common around here, so I didn’t even bother. If I took a picture of every 1992-99 LeSabre I saw for one week, I’d probably have a couple hundred pics!
Those LeSabres and the 1989-96 Cieras and Centurys are all over the Quad Cities, despite our harsh winters.
You know, in that colour and at that rear 3/4 angle, at first quick glance I thought I was looking at a KE Ford Laser wagon, albeit slightly squashed…
I’m holding out for a Volare wagon.
Stay tuned…
This was a very good looking wagon, but not a very good car. Lots of rust problems and the quality was rather iffy.
I had a ’01 Saturn SW2 for many years and it was an excellent car. It cost a couple thousand more than the Cavalier, but definitely worth it in the long run. Still looked new when I traded it in back in September 2012. No Cavalier wagon could have done that.
When my wife and I got our first new car in 2000, her cousin got a 2000 Cavalier in a similar color. The Cavalier didn’t make it three years.
So, I guess I’m not surprised that this handsome wagon is rare today.
Very good looking wagon, but GMs of this era all had overlarge wheel openings. I’m not generally a fan of the low-rider look, but this car would look great if it were dropped a couple inches and had some nice wheels put on it.
A co-worker of mine had one of these when I moved to Pittsburgh. It was a bright red 1992, garaged and didn’t have the body cancer that these get in Western Pa. Anytime salt was on it, it was immediately washed off. Unfortunately, he was involved in a minor fender-bender (where the head-lamps, central “grille” and hood were damaged. Even though there were less than 45,000 the insurance company totaled it. It was a shame, but who ever picked it up from the junkyard got a steal I’m sure.
It seems like the wheel/tire combo on this generation of Cavalier was quite large. I know it’s a random little thing, but that always struck me when comparing these to the Civic and its Japanese compatriots.
I had an ’85 Sunbird wagon, two tone with wire hubcaps and all the other options. I believe it was either Saturn Mist or Jade Mist. It had the 1.8 four, and an automatic. The rack and pinion steering would bind, and you could hardly turn the wheel at times.
After complaining about the early failure, I got that fixed, but the Pontiac dealership didn’t get a radiator hose clamp on tight lost all its coolant and overheated on my wife.
I bought a low mileage turbo engine out of a coupe from a salvage yard, and had them put the the harness and ECM into the wagon. It was awesome to drive, but the torque steer from the new engine was almost worse than the bad rack and pinion.
I would think the 3.1 would have been even worse, unless they de-tuned it.
Two of my friends drove a Cavalier wagon all over the mountains of Appalachia camping and guiding raft trips. They loved the car. It was fuel efficient and cheap to maintain.
I have a 1992 wagon and it has come to the point where I need to rebuild the engine and do a little TLC. I have leads on all the engine rebuild parts I need and I have a great machine shop to help bring the old girl back to life but I’m having a hell of a time finding interior parts if anybody has any leads please let me know.