Keith Adams enjoys a week in Vauxhall’s very own Cavalier Mk1. But it does get him thinking about the past and present. And asking the obvious question. Cavalier progress I’ve already introduced Vauxhall Heritage’s timewarp Cavalier 2000GLS. And you already know just how important this car was to the overall health of the British arm [...]

Keith Adams I’ll start this blog by admitting I’m creating it from a completely biased position. My first (legal) car on the road was a Cavalier Mk1, and despite it being ropier than a ropey thing fashioned from hemp, I had a lot of great times in it. Character-building episodes, such as locking my keys [...]

Keith Adams Remember when 90bhp was enough? When the Vauxhall Cavalier Mk2 was launched in August 1981, it really did revolutionise the repmobile market. Yes, as FWD saloons went, it was conventionally engineered, but its solidity and all-round competence did rather a lot of GM’s fortunes. The result: fleet managers quickly switched allegiances from Ford. [...]

The General’s turn-around Vauxhall was in trouble in the early 1970s, and sales were taking a nosedive. The Viva might have been selling reasonably well in HC form, but in the fleet car market where the Ford Cortina Mk3 was king, the FE-Series ‘Transcontinental’ Victor singularly failed to measure up to this – or the [...]

Vauxhall’s new pragmatism… FEW WOULD have predicted Vauxhall’s stunning turn-around in fortunes during the mid-1980s. A mere dozen years before the launch of the Cavalier Mk2 in August 1981, the UK’s iconic GM division had a shocking reputation in its home market for producing rusting cars that just didn’t stack up against the opposition from [...]

It’s got pulling power… Vauxhall was onto a winner with its Cavalier Mk2, but the switch to FWD was a radical step for the conservative company, and it wasn’t sure that its clientèle would understand the advantages. And this advert was designed to explain at least one of them…