How about a GM FWD car of a very different sort? As best as I can remember, this is the first Opel Kadett D posted at the Cohort, by Yahai Rodin. It deserves a full-on CC, as the Kadett D is the progenitor of a long line of cars, as well as engines. It was GM’s first mass-produced FWD small car, replacing the RWD Kadett A, B, and C, which included the Chevette.
Needless to say, the Kadett (once again) was not used as the basis for a technologically advance FWD small car for the US. It arrived in Europe in 1979, and was of course also built in the UK as the Vauxhall Astra. But the old RWD Chevette was kept in production in the US all the way through 1987, when the Corolla-based Nova finally replaced it.
image: Wikipedia
The Kadett/Astra D were quite adequate in every parameter, and competed quite well against the VW Golf and Ford Escort. The Kadett D was able to maintain its number two sales spot in Germany, and undoubtedly, the Astra did well in the UK too. But it’s one of those cars that started to slide into the classic GM generic small-car mobile category, and clearly doesn’t have the cult following its RWD predecessors do.
The Kadett D’s new OHC “Family II” engine spawned an almost endless family tree of which some variants are still being built today, in Brazil and possibly elsewhere. It found its way into the Pontiac, Olds and Buick J-cars, as an optional engine, and eventually grew to 2.4 liters as well as a DOHC head.
The Kadett D’s successor, the “E”, became a serious world car, produced in a number of countries and names. The Daewoo version did find its way to the US, under the Pontiac LeMans name, no less. My experience with one of them is here.
A college buddy with a lot of family Pontiac history bought the LeMans version. It was a two door hatch in an electric blue that I sort of begrudgingly liked. He rented from me in my first house for about a year, and his Pontiac shared the garage with my ’72 Pontiac GrandVille – polar opposites indeed.
He was in a period of fast moving trades on his primary car, and his Aunt’s old ’70 Chevelle Malibu sedan was stuffed beside the garage as well, his winter car. The LeMans didn’t see much service before being traded on a ritzy for the times loaded up S-10 king cab.
Probably just as well.
Was this shot taken in Israel? The collection of Rodin’s snapshots leads me to think so; Mazdas are well-represented, rust is absent, and stone walls are in evidence (and NOW I see Hebrew script in the background. Must be a CC-spotters paradise). And you’re right, the Kadett D hasn’t been well-represented. Given that the Kadett E has mainly been represented by the LeMans, I’d say it hasn’t gotten a fair shake either. Something must be done about this after exams–yay, a distraction :/ .
Don’t forget about the gold 89-96 Buick Century hiding behind the white car at the top.
The white one is a Fiat Uno. My dad had two of them in succession.
All that’s missing is a white Subaru sedan.
Yes it’s Israel. If it survived that long it may get lucky and be bought by some old car enthusiast – messing with old cars has in recent years become more popular than it used to be when I left (the late 80s)…
I think all of Rodin’s pics are from Israel. It has a perfect climate for keeping vintage iron alive, but it still isn’t very fertile territory for CC’s. (If I had to guess, I think he’s uploading years’ worth of stored photos.)
Israel was a poor-ish country for a long time, car import taxes were (still are!) extortionate, and fuel prices would make an American swoon. So the great American classics never had much of a chance… though I remember plenty of US gov’t cars floating around, like whales among the minnows. (It seems like Caprices and Luminas were often “shed” by the motor pool into the general population.)
There were lots of interesting European cars there once upon a time, but it simply never had the same sort of car culture as the US or even Europe. There weren’t a lot of divided highways, and the cities were always kind of crowded and short on parking spaces. So alas, a lot of the cool cars got scrapped. My uncle used to have a Citroen GS, another grand-uncle(?) had a Traction Avant, a grand-aunt would tote us kids around in her Peugeot 404…
Subaru was enormously popular for a long time: many Japanese brands declined to sell in Israel… I think they were afraid of retaliation from Arab countries. So Subaru was a great alternative for people looking for something with better-than-European reliability for a low price. And rust was never a problem, of course. I can’t even begin to count the Subarus my family had. But that’s all over now; today, the Prius is everywhere.
My grandfather became a Subaru man late in life. But before that… an Opel Kadett! It was a wagon (near-twin, by appearance, of the US Cavalier), though it had a trippy plaid interior and no rear seatbelts.
David,
I agree with you up to a point. US (and Canadian) made vehicles were reasonably popular in Israel (or the Mandate of Palestine, as it was known before 1948) all through to the late 50s, due to their robustness. I think when the state was formed you had about 40% North American cars, 40% British and the rest were European with Fiat and Renault leading. After independence the administration discovered the milch cow nature of car ownership, and taxes started to grow and grow. Couple that with European cars becoming more reliable and Israel orienting itself on EU, rather than US emission and crash-worthiness rules, and you can see why European (and then Japanese and Korean) became more popular. However, even as late as the 80s US made cars remained a part of the scene and indeed fulfilled the role nowadays taken by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and Jaguar. Of course, by that time reliability and build quality of US made cars has fallen to rock bottom – another reason why they were no longer held in the same esteem as previously.
Agree on car culture and that has to do with the statist approach of the administration, which from some point in the 50s started to forbid any modifications to stock specs. That is not to say there’s no car culture and I’m very much aware of illegal street racing and high hp muscle cars pounding the streets there (nothing is legal under the hood of course).
As for rust, it depends where the car spent its life – anywhere near the sea side and they rust as badly as in Florida.
The Subarus have almost all been bought or stolen by the Palestinians…
I think some of Yohai Rodin’s pics are a little older (although still from the 2000s) but the below was spotted today near Mikvei Israel (pic by Lee-or Yifrach)…
Sorry, I wasn’t clear about one thing: My theory was about the lack of “great” US cars really just applies to the top end: the muscle cars, the luxury cars, etc. The small, low-spec cars were perfectly well suited to Israel 60 years ago, as Turtle points out.
I didn’t realize that regulations forbade modifications…. what a shame. I guess they just have to channel their energy into technology, engineering, computer sciences, pharmaceuticals…
… another one, recent and unloved in Israel as in the US (pic: Philip Reznichenko).
Looks like someone tried to update or backdate it… Pic: Alon Weiss
Join https://www.facebook.com/groups/270391996395337/photos/ if you want to see more, you’ll be amazed what’s found on the streets and in garages over there…
Astra was the only Vauxhall model name to supplant the Opel equivalent name, though it took until the E model in 1991 (the letter codes continued the Kadett line). The previous Kadett C was sold as the Vauxhall Chevette and ran alongside the Astra until 1984 in the UK, the last model using the old Viva derived engine. As one was FWD and the other still RWD the Chevette was still a popular entry level vehicle.
Looks like that car used to be red, a colour that seems to fade to pink even in the UK’s far from blazing sun!
Sorry, F model in 1991.
“Needless to say, the Kadett (once again) was not used as the basis for a technologically advance FWD small car for the US. It arrived in Europe in 1979, and was of course also built in the UK as the Vauxhall Astra. But the old RWD Chevette was kept in production in the US all the way through 1987, when the Corolla-based Nova finally replaced it. ”
I dont see that as a bad thing as for once GM had a reliable compact car that did not need anything. Based upon the Corolla the car was reliable. Though I did have a friend that owned a Toyota….err…Chevy Nova and the only thing he had trouble with was the Delco radio(figures the only thing in the car that was from GM crapped out on him)
The only reason GM kept the hoary old Chevette as long as they did was cost: the cars were cheap, cheap,cheap and made money for the General. Nobody at GM gave a rodent’s rump about small cars anyway, they were just toss aways that they made little on. There was way more money in fake wire wheel covers.
In 1980 the Chevette was decrepit but by 1987 it should have been in a museum, not a showroom.
I do wonder who was still buying the Chevette by, oh, 1983 or so. Even the fact that it was still RWD, for people who like that sort of thing, shouldn’t have made up for the fact that it was positively ancient. Why, I wonder, was it not put out of its misery when the J-cars hit the market? Why, for that matter, was the NUMMI Nova brought onto the scene? (Not that it was a bad car, but it really seemed like redundant product in the same showroom as a Cavalier *and* a Spectrum *and* a Sprint….)
Because GM, I guess. And because the tooling had long been paid for, so profit on every one was gravy, but at some point you have to realize that it’s beneficial to your corporate image to kill stale product lines. Same thing as the M-body Fifth Avenue hanging around until 1989, though those were far better cars. I’m going to give Ford a pass on not killing off the Panther earlier than they did because a)police/taxi sales and b)the fact that the car still had ardent devotees. I don’t think you had Chevette Love in the mid 80’s like you have Panther Love today. Though I could easily be wrong, I was 7 years old at the time!
I will tell you exactly who….my grandmothers friend traded her 1977 yellow Sunbird in on a 1985 bright red Chevette CS 2 door, so I imagine that the market was 63 year old widowed, retired secretaries with brown yorkies.
The only Opel I ever really liked was the GT, almost a mini ‘Vette.
Needs some correcting here….
The Nummi Nova wasn’t a replacement for the Chevette, the Sprint and the lesser seen Spectrum were more the Chevette replacement, the Nummi Nova came out in 1985 and continued to be sold alongside the Chevette, as did the Suzuki based Sprint and the Isuzu I-Mark based Spectrum.
If the Nummi Nova could be a replacement for anything in the Chevrolet line up at the time, you could say it was sort of a replacement for the Citation, sort of.
The US was going to get a version of this FWD Kadett as a Chevette supposedly, it was scheduled to be the replacement for the Chevette for 1981-1982 or so, but that never happened.
The RWD Chevette was spawned from the Kadett/global T-car platform that was made all over the world, lingering on in Brazil until 1994 or so.
Yes, that’s a better take on the succession, although none of them were quite exact replacements for the prior models. I rushed this one….:(
Chevy did have a smorgasbord of small cars there around 1985-1988, the elderly Chevette, Sprint, Spectrum, Nova, and Cavalier, even stranger, we did eventually get a Kadett here in the US, via Korea, since the LeMans was sort of a replacement for the T1000.
Picture a Chevy showroom about 1987. You walk in and are presented with the following model choices, roughly in order from smallest to biggest:
-Sprint
-Spectrum
-Chevette
-Nova
-Cavalier
-Corvette
-Beretta
-Corsica
-Camaro
-Celebrity
-Monte Carlo
-El Camino
-Caprice
-S-10
-S-10 Blazer
-Astro
-K-5 Blazer
-C/K Pickups
-G-series Van
-Suburban
That’s 20, for those who are counting. 20 different models. 12 of them cars, or 13 if you count the El Camino under cars. Even if you compress the S-10 and its Blazer variant into a single model, and lump the K-5 Blazer, Suburban, and full-size trucks together, even then you’re still at 17.
Must have been just a little overwhelming, and a lot inefficient, but darned if there wasn’t something for just about anyone who’d consider a Chevy!
Not to mention all the different variants within those models, though the Berretta/Corsica L-cars were introduced in 1987, very few 87’s were actually sold through dealers, most of the initial run of “Beretsicas” was sold to fleet and rental usage to get some real world durability testing before they were sold to the public.
this is like shoe sizes:
6
6-1/4
6-1/2
6-3/4
7
.
.
.
Yes, I know they don’t make 1/4 and 3/4 intermediates in shoes.
And the sad part was that a bunch of them (Sprint, Spectrum, Nova) ended up being badged as Geo (but titled as Chevrolet) to sell to people who wouldn’t consider buying a Chevrolet anymore.
My uncle that lived in Russia’s far North in Arkhangelsk had a Kadett identical to the green one pictured above. He was a decently high ranking military man in the Soviet-turned Russian armed forces. I remember us cramming our family of 4 and my aunt (his wife) into that Kadett to go have a picnic, and I remember crossing checkpoints near the Plesetsk cosmodrome. I was very young and this was the early 90s. To be driving a Kadett at the time was borderline prestigious, grey market imports from the West were just beginning to pick up steam. My uncle’s previous car was an orange ZAZ 966, the Kadett was a very big upgrade indeed.
I’d much prefer the Kraut version, the Opel Kadett any day than that of the Daewoo based Pontiac LeMans. I got to ride in one, and I couldn’t fit in it, and even once I was inside, it was impossible to get comfortable. The car was fragile at best.
Ah, Opel’s Golf, the car that took the then most conservative German brand into the modern age. However, Opel still had to serve the saloon buyers and built the one saloon that lacked the only practical advantage over a hatchback in this size: a spacious boot.
BTW the text contains an error: although this Kadett is correctly identified as a D in the title, it’s referred to as a C in the text, and the E-Kadett as a D. The last bit is quite appropriate as the E was mostly a more aerodynamic re-body of the D.
Noticed that as well. Story is about the D, with the last photo one of the E generation.
Everyone loves a good story about the D.
Giggity.
My apologies; too much rushing on this one. Fixed now.
Some google-fu learns the saloon actually did have one advantage: the rear seat was more comfortable because the back rest was taller and wider.
It appears that parking space lines are seen as just a suggestion elsewhere in the world too, and not only in the US.
It was also built in the former Yugoslavia by a joint venture between GM and a local company called IDA in Kikinda, Serbia.
Almost. IDA had manufactured hard parts for GM Opel. Car assembly became less significant lately. The IDA badge on the grille had to promote the “domestic” origin to the market and had not been allowed to be exported. Kadett-D, Ascona, Rekord-D, Rekord-E series, Senator-A and Senator-B had covered GM’s lineup. Some limited quantity of Senator-A had been rebadged and marketed as Opel Kikinda. They have named their own GM flagship by their own town where factory IDA had been located. After all we know that GM had attached few french and italian city names on their automobiles. After Firenza, Le Mans and Parisienne, Kikinda was put into the bunch. Till approx. 1992 the IDA factory had enjoyed the exclusivity to import and deal with Opel in ex-YU. Concerning to the Kadett-D, IDA had excluded the performance models like the 1.3 SR, 1.6 SR and the GTE with the 115 hp 1.8 Litre TBI OHC inline 4.
Had I not emigrated to the US of A I would have purchased a used Kadett D Caravan as successor to a VW 1302. Everything was so reasonable and practical about that car.
What else to say?
My brother had one, after his lime green Fiat 127 1050. A blue Kadett D 1.3S. The only thing that faded, for whatever reason, was the paint on its hood. A good and well-built car, like all Opels from the seventies.
It looks like it was painted in Pepto-Bismol.
Great article! This touches on “Badge Engineering” which has always fascinated me. This car, the Canadian “Pontiac LeMans”, was also sold as the 1988-1991 Passport Optima, through Canadian-only Passport dealerships (which was phased out when Saturn arrived in Canada in 1992). Then, this car was sold as the Asüna SE or GT (without a proper model name). Asüna was a Canadian only “marque”, for Buick dealers to sell a few imports, similar to the Geo concept at Chevy dealers. You can learn more about all this on Wikipedia. Here’s a photo of both these variants.
Of course, if its a diesel, then its a Kadett D D…
Better to remember that this, as the Vauxhal Astra, with the 1981 Cavalier mk2/Ascona C (?) pretty much rebuilt GM in the UK from being a semi-terminal dead end to a strong second in the market behind Ford.
Important and underrated car.
Quite right ! And its successor with fuel injection was a Kadett E E.
This is the Kadett D hot hatch, the GTE. It had a 115 hp 1.8 liter OHC engine with fuel injection. As such it was a direct competitor of the contemporary VW Golf GTI and Ford Escort XR3i / RS 1600i. (Jason Shafer knows what Escort I’m talking about)
I ran a D-type Kadett for most of the 90’s, but with the old 1200 pushrod engine. The interesting thing about this model is that it came as a saloon or a hatchback, but both were exactly the same shape. On any used Kadett saloon you looked at, the steel cross-bracing behind the back seat would be broken or else welded-up – GM had started building bodyshells that weren’t quite strong enough.( The last Ascona and first Vectra continued this trend.) Otherwise the 1200 Kadett was bomb-proof, and the fact that you could change the clutch in 20 minutes ( by dropping it thru the bottom of the bellhousing) was a real plus.
And to this day Vauxhall/Opel red paint does that pink discolouration thing – I see late model Corsas with exactly the same thing going on.
Is is worse than other makes?
Yes, this is my photo, and I can of course confirm that this was taken in Israel, as guessed above. I have nothing to add to David42 and T.turtle’s words, as they are correct.
I might just add that in Israel, Opel have always suffered from high pricing and small engine capacities (set by all those who imported them), therefore they gained a reputation of “cars for old people”. And if you happen to have had the money for this Kadett, you went and bought a Golf instead (it was always considered to be the class-leader anyway). Still, this Kadett sold well (relatively for Israel) and I remember them well while growing up.
Funny that I should find myself as the current owner of the Kadett’s grandson’s grandson… the Opel Astra J. A recent change in importers finally brings a decent crop of Opels to Israel- mine has a 1.4 liter Turbo engine which gives out 140hp. It’s adequate enough:
Opels were the ultimate no-nonsense cars. But young guys also lusted for them thanks to their wide and long-lasting range of sporty and fast models. Remember that Opel was very successful in races and rallying for a very long time.
This was one of them from the late eighties, a Kadett E (the last one) GSi 16v with a 150 hp 2.0 liter fuel injection engine.
I think it was Walter Röhrl’s success with the Kadett C that laid the foundation for the Kadett’s sporting career.
Hang on to your hat:
Eine lebende Legende !
One of my favorite rally cars back then, the Ascona 400. World champion in 1982.