Mk3 Cavalier Owners Club | Vauxhall Cavalier Dot Com

Wow - Groovy man.

Just look for the person with long hippy hair, mutton-chop side burns and beige cord flares.

Super 70's retro. Even down to the jacked up rear suspension shackles...

That lowrider is a Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme owned by Colin Mees who rolls with the ‘Diplomats’. Not sure of the set up, but I suspect a 4 pump hydraulics.

This in Paisley, Scotland

Looks like a Rover SD1 with a bodykit on.

You won't see many of these now... they rot out at least 5 times quicker than Cavaliers do.

Ah yes... the front bumper is drooping at the rear. A classic rotted mount indication.

Or just a shonky body kit bumper.

3.5 litre was quite a nice sounding engine.

That's a rare sight.
I do love SD1s.

A few older cars from my travels this week.

A 1964 Ford Zephyr 6 in an NHS car park in central Manchester.





And one for Andrei - a big yank tank on the market car park in Widnes.
A big lumbering 1958 Ford Thunderbird.

Not many of the Zephyr's about, especially an estate!
Good parking with the Thunderbird, nice to see though.

Alan

If you ever visit Widnes market, you will find that about 20% of the locals cannot park.
A car parked properly usually belongs to a visitor to the area.

The first time we visited, my wife and I were quite exasperated by the jaunty abandonment of vehicles on the car parks... now we find it to be just part of the quirkiness of the locals.

There is often an old Ford Anglia parked there too.

Lol the driver of the Thunderbird must have just swung her in there while sipping a beer and munching down a 1 lb hamburger. Amazing. Nice one Robsey.

Spotted this last Tuesday at my local shopping centre, just before that little snow flurry

91 sierra xr4x4



Seemed to be in good nick.

I remember the public backlash when the sierra first hit the roads, "jelly-mould" and "It'll never catch-on" are the main phrases that spring to mind.
I was one of the doubters but now I accept I was wrong (TF I got the fiat multipla right!)
a bit of age has made me realise that without this radical change the mk3 cav may never have been born.
Looking at the pic they're not that dissimilar.

I like to think of it as an aerodynamic prototype- something to be improved on.
I have to give credit to the sierra for " breaking the mould" and featuring much improved aerodynamics- It gave vauxhall the challenge it needed.
The result- a better car with less drag, in my opinion.

Nature seemed to disagree during the inclement weather and re-sculpted my car.


I was impressed by the sweeping curve to the door mirrors but not so much with overall styling-yet it looks familiar....

Ah yes, the jelly mould...
To be fair the XR4x4 and the other XR cars always looked much nicer than the standard models.

The standard phase 1 Sierra's were bland hideous machines. End of!!

As for sweeping lines improving the look.
To be very contentious, I would have a Mk2 Cavalier over my Mk3 any day.
Not so much the Mk1 though..not even the GLS / Manta-A

Sadly sweeping lines have led to the myriad or "samey" euroboxes now plaguing our roads.

Still - always nice to see a slice of yester-year. So much nicer on the eyes than this modern electickery.

I can remember where I used to work (Gilbarco petrol pumps) on the electronics shop floor someone had a full page newspaper ad of the Sierra and it got a pretty unanimous thumbs down! Most thought it really ugly.
Can't recall what the figure was but the Cavaliers drag coefficient was a class leader at the time.
Your right about everything being samey, it's almost impossible to identify anything these days without seeing the badge yet alone identify something by its exhaust note (thinking Morris Minor here)
Moderns have all the gadgets, but no soul.

Alan

Hmm - I remember the Morris Minor "over-run" fart noise.
I could tell which car it was from the other end of the street.

Similar to knowing the unique sound of the VW flat four boxer and wasser-boxer engines by their unique rattle.

The Alfasud boxer was another unique raspy exhaust - I have fond memories of the wife's series 2.

And the true original Mini upto about 1980 with the A series engine....all unique

The modern equivalent is the Subaru Impreza boxer burble...

Sorry I went down the memory lane of engine and exhaust noises.

The only noise from modern cars is the electronic hand-drake scooching into place... boring!

From memory the drag coefficient figure was something like 0.28 for either the Kadett-E / Astra mk2 or for the Calibra.

The scathing amongst you would say the Calibra was a Cavalier mk3 in a dress.
(I heard it said many times 10 years ago on many of the Cavalier forums).

Robsery wrote:Thanks my friend.

Being an old-timer myself, means I look for older stuff as it has more character.

I travel a lot at weekends, so often see unusual or older cars about.

Awesome pics, Robsey. It must be so neat to run into old timers on the street like that. Never happened to me yet, sadly.

Thanks my friend.

Being an old-timer myself, means I look for older stuff as it has more character.

I travel a lot at weekends, so often see unusual or older cars about.

I also love seeing classics on the road, makes me appreciate the fact that they stand out to me from the lake of boring uni-colour plastic that has flooded the roads nowadays. I would much rather fill my lungs with the smell of a carburetor non-catalyst motor exhaust than to cough and be sick from smelling filthy horrible polluting crappy disgusting and pointless diesel fumes.

Robsey wrote: From memory the drag coefficient figure was something like 0.28 for either the Kadett-E / Astra mk2 or for the Calibra.

The scathing amongst you would say the Calibra was a Cavalier mk3 in a dress.
(I heard it said many times 10 years ago on many of the Cavalier forums).

The drag coefficient for most Cavalier MK3s was 0.29
The GSi and the Turbo was slightly higher at 0.31

The Calibra 2.0 8v was just 0.26
But every other model (so turbo, v6, redtop, ecotec) had a 0.29 rating, the same as a Cavalier.

The Carlton also had an impressive rating of just 0.28

I heard recently that a VW camper had a lower drag coefficient than their Beetle!

Alan

I'm lost, why on earth are people talking about german shite on here? Seriously, get back to the real world guys.

Easy there fella.
This is not a Vauxhall specific thread.

I have a T25 wedge (T3) camper van and although not high performance American muscle cars, they can have character.

With regards our T25, it doesn't go fast enough to create drag... ha ha.
In fact it hasn't moved more than 3 feet in 28 years.

A work in progress awaiting a second false start.

Thought we were discussing drag coefficient?

Alan

Robsey wrote:Hmm - I remember the Morris Minor "over-run" fart noise.
I could tell which car it was from the other end of the street.

.

Lol Robsey you made me chuckle at that one, i remember seeing the odd morris minor when out and about on my bike as a kid, and it would pull through the gear it was in then as it changed it went paarrrpppp , so funny. I tend to emulate those noises now that i am an aging git too!

Glad to be able to bring a smile to your face.

Now some old Yank stuff from a place about 2 miles from my home.

Called Relics N Rust, they are an unusual retro company that also do on-site barbers and tattoos.

These vehicles are parked outside the shop at least 5 days a week. The vans are normally parked up 24/7.







There is another dark green old car complete with surface patina regularly parked at the shop.

Always a nice sight at the end of a drab day.

Ford Econoline vans, apparently they fetch a few quid if restored or mint condition. I like that Dodge truck as well, ideal sort of project for Steve Darnell to build a rat rod from.

Nice spot Robsey.

Hard for me not to spot them...
I pass them every day or night on the way home.

They do give a pleasant funky change from the wall to wall carpet of bland euroboxes that plague our roads.