The Vauxhall Cavalier at 50

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Cavalier’s public debut. Here are ten facts about one of Vauxhall’s most crucial models:

1.In 1973, Vauxhall’s state was so parlous that Car magazine suggested that they should “‘concentrate on trucks – in which field it has an excellent record – and, on the car side, switch to assembling Opels, with or without styling modifications”.

2.Vauxhall originally planned to replace the Viva HC with a larger Cortina-sized HD. However, declining sales at home and abroad – Vauxhall lost their vital Canadian export market in 1972 – meant Head Office at General Motors decreed it would not be worth investing in tooling for the HD. Instead, Vauxhall would build a version of the forthcoming Opel Ascona B.

3.To differentiate the Cavalier from its Opel counterpart, Wayne Cherry, Vauxhall design chief, devised an attractive new frontal treatment.

4.Management at Luton initially aimed for a 1977 launch date. However, Vauxhall’s financial state was such that the Cavalier’s dealer launch was on the 29th of September 1975 at Studio 6 of Elstree Studios. Its rapid development meant abandoning early plans to use Vauxhall’s ‘Slant Four’ engines.

5.Also present at the dealer launch were Patrick Macnee and the Monty Python team, but there are sadly no records of anyone saying, “And now for something completely different” on seeing the Cavalier.

6.The 20th of October marked the Cavalier’s public debut. The first examples were Antwerp-built, and the reaction to the first wholly imported Vauxhall was not always positive. The Daily Mail of the 10th of October 1975 ranted, “Stop This Foreign British Car”. The Telegraph reported: “Unions at Vauxhall have been concerned at the prospect that General Motors might give up car production in Britain, to concentrate British output on vans and lorries. But the company has given its assurances that Vauxhall will retain its separate identity”.

7.Motor thought that Vauxhall was “on to a winner”, Car wrote “the Cavalier looks right and is right”, and The Telegraph praised its “splendid handling and road-holding". What Car believed that “Vauxhall’s version of the Opel Ascona has helped put the previously ailing Luton firm on the road to recovery – and it’s easy to see why”.

8.Motor Sport similarly wrote that the Cavalier would go “a long way to getting Luton out of its financial rut”. They also thought it made “the Victors and Vivas all look a little uneasily old-fashioned on the same Stand” at the 1975 London Motor Show.

9.The Observer believed the prices of the 1.6-litre and 1.9-litre Cavalier saloons, which ranged from £1,975 to £2,307, made the equivalent Opel Ascona Bs look “about £150 over the top”. The £2,702 1900GL Coupe was the flagship version, and Motor found that it received “admiring glances wherever it goes”. Similarly, Motor Sport found that “people stopped to admire it and to enquire about it”.

10.When UK production began in Luton on the 26th of August 1977, the Cavalier was Vauxhall’s most popular model.

With thanks to Richard Watt for his time.

With thanks to Richard Watt for the permission to use the images in this blog.