Cars I have owned - No 14: Vauxhall Cavalier Mk III 2.0GL

Wow - another Vauxhall Cavalier! When I left Thomson Free Newspapers to become managing director of Central Press Features in 1990, it meant a change of car. I was not sorry to see the Peugeot 405 go, I had suffered my fill of the lack of power steering and the incurable wheel wobble at speed.

In selling myself for this new job and finding out about the company, I had neglected to ask any questions about its company car policy, apart from the fact there was a company car with the job. I think I’d assumed it would be a Rover 800, Ford Granada or Vauxhall Senator, so when it came to the process of choosing my company car, I was a little disappointed to be offered a Vauxhall Cavalier – my third and final Cavalier (and appropriately a Mk III).

It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it was actually a really nice car; the new body shape was a hatchback with loads of room and a reasonable specification.

My work was taking me to London and we had offices inside a small complex off Gordon House Road in Kentish Town. I had negotiated a season ticket and parking at the railway station as part of my package, so the car was initially used to go back and forth between home and Peterborough station.

That first year commuting to London wasn’t quite what I had in mind. This was in the days before rail privatisation and so all trains were operated by British Rail. They were hugely unreliable – I thought trains might be late now and again, but I never realised that they might break down, which they did (all the time) - and when the train managed to keep running, the signals often failed.

The local service (from Peterborough to King’s Cross) took an hour-and-three-quarters but it was the same price as the inter-city (which took 50 minutes), so everyone got the inter-city. It was always packed, almost always full by the time it arrived in Peterborough and there was no automatic seat booking as there is now. I remember thinking: why don’t they book seats like they do on an aircraft? That was 20 years away!

I’d push onto the train and invariably stand in the space by the doors, sometimes I’d move down the train to try to spot a spare seat, but they were rarer than hen’s teeth. In those days, you could still smoke on trains and the last coach was always the smoking coach. That was often the best bet for finding a seat, but when the connecting doors opened, it was like walking into a smoke-house. People using this carriage were the people who couldn’t last 30 minutes without a cigarette and so they smoked a lot – it was awful. Fifty minutes in there and you'd be cured (like a kipper).

During the winter, the reliability was even worse and sometimes you were forced onto the slow train. I remember one winter night just before Christmas when that was the only option and I stood on a freezing train carrying double the number of passengers it should. Every station we stopped at (and we stopped at all of them because this was the only train running), the doors would fail to close because the runners were icing up. Sliding doors might have seemed a good idea, but they weren’t that night. At some stations, hot water was poured on (which meant even more ice when it cooled and froze) and at others, staff had to come down and hack at the ice on the offending channels. The train couldn’t move until the doors were closed. We were more than three hours on that train and the chap next to me was trying to get home to Grantham. Peterborough was as far north as he could get and he was hoping to grab a taxi to finish his journey.

On another night, on another overcrowded train, we were packed in like sardines and some pushing led to words and a fist fight. I was right in the middle of it. I grabbed the pair of them and said: “Jesus Christ it’s bad enough being late and crammed onto the train without this!” I must have sounded quite scary because they both behaved after that and one of them apologised to me for his bad behaviour.

People who say railways should be renationalised would change their tune if they’d ever suffered those commutes. It's not perfect now, but it's a heck of a lot better.

When I got to King’s Cross, the Tube awaited. At least going north on the Northern Line meant it was relatively quiet, but sod’s law always seemed to mean the first train was Edgware and not the High Barnet branch that I needed. The tube had its fair share of outages too, but the worse part of the journey was the long, straight escalator from Kentish Town station onto the street. The wind used to blow straight down and cut you in two. You were almost pleased when the escalator broke down and you had to walk – at least the exertion warmed you up.

After a year of commuting hell, I decided not to renew my season ticket and to drive instead. My season ticket was counted as part of my wages and so I was taxed on it at 40 per cent, which increased my tax bill. I those days, company cars were not taxed so heavily and I could put petrol in without penalty. Also, we were allocated two parking spaces at the office, but there were not many people in the complex and so parking was never an issue. It was a two-hour drive (each way) about the same as the commuting time, but the Cavalier proved far more reliable and comfortable than the train (and it was about the same price).

It never broke down, never stopped due to signal problems and kept going through snow and ice.

Hold-ups were predictable and I learned lots of north London rat-runs to get to work. I used to walk Jack half-way up Toneham avenue and set off at 8am to get into the office for 10am. I'd leave about 6pm to be home for 8pm. Saturdays were good because traffic was lighter and school holidays were an absolute blessing. You could sometimes be home in 90 minutes.

As well as commuting, the Cavalier took me to meetings all over the country. I wish I knew what mileage it finished on, but it must have been well into six figures.

To drive, the car was very solid and fairly high gearing meant motorway cruising was very comfortable. It was a 2-litre petrol engine with eight valves (nothing too spicy). It had fuel injection, but a minimal of electronic controls and sensors compared to cars of today. It was very reliable and managed close to 40mpg on my commutes. There was central locking, electric windows, head-restraints and this was my first car with power steering - bliss!

Compared to the 405, where you braved hand-shakes at speed, this was wonderful.

During my spell with the car, Central Press was negotiating with a number of other groups to start a new national news agency in competition with the Press Association and we had a number of meetings here, there and everywhere. At one meeting (at the old Birmingham Post & Mail building in the centre of Birmingham) I managed to reverse into a concrete mushroom and dent the rear bumper. That was the car's one scar.

The news agency came to nothing because PA dropped its prices massively to keep everyone on board, but it had been a close thing and I made a lot of good contacts during the process. I didn't realise it, but only a few years later, I would be working for PA.

The Cavalier never travelled abroad. Max was only a few years old when I got it and we couldn't face packing three of them into the car for France. We did a few longer holidays in the Cavalier, including a couple to Wales. We rented a castle in South Wales (Roche Castle, near Solva) with the Knights one year and got around quite a lot that holiday. The following year, we went to North Wales and rented a cottage at the eastern end of Colwyn Bay. It was a cold, damp place and it rained quite a lot. The children were cheered by visits to the Red Dragon amusement arcade in Rhyl and we had a few walks, including a soaking day around Betws-y-Coed and a trip up Snowden with Tom and Max.

In those days, Bristol United Press had a policy of keeping company cars for four years, so I had the Cavalier a long time. I was pleased to see it go because it was getting a little small for our needs by this time. People-carriers were all the rage and although I couldn't stretch my budget to a Renault Espace, I could get the family an eight-seater Nissan Serena. Thus I moved on to my second Nissan.

Above and below: on holiday in North Wales with the family.

Also see:

Ford Popular - click

Bedford HA Van - click

Morris Mini - click

Vauxhall Viva HC - click

Citroen GS Club - click

Morris Marina 1.3GL - click

Talbot Horizon 1.1 LS - click

Vauxhall Cavalier 1.3L - click

Datsun Stanza 1.6GL - click

Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6L - click

Peugeot 405 STi - click

Ford Escort Mk IV 1.6D L - click

VW Polo Mk II 1.0L - click

Cars I have owned - No 10: Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6L

As I mentioned a couple of cars ago, I have owned three Vauxhall Cavaliers - and this was the second of those.

The first was a 1.3L Mk II model in 1982. By 1985, I had a better-paid job with a higher-spec car, so my second Cavalier was a 1.6L four-door saloon.

I don't think the quality was quite as good on this model as the first and the shut lines between the leading edge of the bonnet and the headlights was wide enough to get your fingers in.

At this time I'd started a freelance motoring agency supplying editorial to regional newspapers. It was hard work on top of my day job, but it meant we had money spare at the end of the month and it also meant that often I had a test car on loan from one of the manufacturers. We were effectively a two-car family!

The Cavalier was much more lively than the Nissan Stanza we'd had before. It developed 90bhp and the car seemed quite a lot lighter. Steering was much lighter too - it was a far better car to drive. There was a radio, cloth seats and head-restraints, but no central locking or electric windows.

This was also the first car that Margaret drove on a regular basis. There had been several attempts to teach her to drive; all of which had ended in cross words. Margaret hates to take instruction from anyone, but especially me. After the last attempt, I vowed I would never try to teach her again, so when she finally decided she had to be able to drive, it was a driving school that took on the task.

The catalyst for driving was a desire to take Sam to a pre-school club in Whittlesey, where he went with Claire London, a little girl whose mother Margaret had become friendly with. Sam had been missing Tom since he started school and these sessions, a couple of times a week were a means of diverting him and also preparing him for school. There were no buses to Whittlesey and Jane London didn't have a car, so if Sam was to go to pre-school, she would have to pass her test pronto.

In fairness, she did exactly that and also passed first time too!

Vauxhall Cavalier on holiday in Somerset (Cheddar Gorge) - that's Tom peeping out of the rear window.

Like the 1.3 model, the Cavalier 1.6 had an automatic choke. It gave no trouble and, overall, the Cavalier was a pretty good car.

Back in 1985, company cars were a real perk because they were very lightly taxed. It meant that a business could give an employee private and personal use of a car that was "needed" for work. The value to the employee of such a relatively tax-free perk was massive and the cost to the company was far less than paying and equivalent value in extra salary.

It meant that company car purchases drove the market for new cars and former company cars (traded in at three years old) also dominated the used car market. Ford was the big player in this market and Vauxhall was desperate to get a bigger share. The Cavalier, as I said in my earlier piece, was a much better car than the Cortina and it should really have won European Car of the Year, but was beaten by the Renault 9 (French fix!).

Ford’s new Sierra was somewhat radically styled and it wasn’t going down well with the British public. The Cavalier out-sold the Sierra in 1984 and again in 1985, but Ford’s fleet operation was unbeatable and by the time the second-generation Cavalier was discontinued to make way for a new model in 1988, the Sierra was almost twice as popular.

Vauxhall sold 807,624 Mk II Cavaliers between 1981 and 1988. By December 1989, it was the third most common car on British roads

I really liked my first Cavalier and this one, although some costs had been cut in manufacture, was also a very good car. Build quality also seemed better. The 1.3 had suffered lots of niggly problems after about a year (thankfully after I'd passed it on to a colleague) but this one was fine.

It took Sam to pre-school and served as a reliable family car for two years. It also took us on our first foreign driving holiday when we went to France, had a couple of nights just outside Paris and then did a quick tour of the Loire before an overnight stop at Rouen on the way back.

In August 2006, Auto Express magazine named the Mk II Cavalier as the country's sixth most scrapped car of the last 30 years, with just 6,343 still in working order. By December 2009, that figure had fallen to a mere 1,289. Six years on, I'd be surprised if there were more than a couple of hundred of them.

A contributing factor was that the Mk II Cavalier was one of the most stolen cars of the 1980s and early 1990s and they were particularly popular with joy-riders because of their better-than-average performance and the fact it was easy to break into and start. Other factors included corrosion and premature camshaft wear.

Also see:

Ford Popular - click

Bedford HA Van - click

Morris Mini - click

Vauxhall Viva HC - click

Citroen GS Club - click

Morris Marina 1.3GL - click

Talbot Horizon 1.1 LS - click

Vauxhall Cavalier 1.3L - click

Datsun Stanza 1.6GL - click

Cars I have owned - No 8: Vauxhall Cavalier Mk II 1.3L

I have owned three Vauxhall Cavaliers - the only model of car I’ve purchased more than once.

The first was a 1.3L Mk II model and it arrived in 1982. The car was launched at the end of 1981, so I was among the vanguard.

Back then, the procedure when my company car was due for a change was to ask the fleet manager for a list of the cars you could have within your band. My band said I could have a car up to 1.3 litres, depending upon cost and now I had a family, I could choose a four-door car of a size bigger than the Talbot Horizon I was replacing. Favourite seemed a Ford Cortina 1.3L, but I was a real snob at the time (not about owning a Ford Cortina - that would have been fine - I was concerned about having “only” a 1.3-litre car).

We’d been for a test drive in a Cortina from Peterborough Motors, which was sited in the centre of the city then, occupying the space between Brook Street and New Road, just across from the market. The 1.3 Cortina was certainly underpowered. The heavier bodywork on the Mk III model made a big difference to the feeling of quality, but it took some lugging around and 60bhp just wasn’t enough. It was OK when you got going - the car would cruise along at 80mph, but it took ages to get there and overtaking would need very careful planning.

The Cavalier didn’t have any badges to say it was a 1.3 or a 1.6 and its 1.3-litre engine developed 75bhp, which was as much as the 1.6 engine in the Cortina. This was a critical factor, not only did the Cavalier have much more power, it didn’t have any badges to advertise that you were driving only a 1.3 model. A bonus was that it had a radio, cloth seats and head-restraints.

The Mk I Cavalier had been a rear-wheel-drive four-door saloon - a direct competitor to the Ford Cortina. It had done all right, but never threatened the Cortina in the sales charts.

Now Vauxhall was proving quicker to adopt front-wheel drive than Ford, which retained rear-wheel drive on the Cortina’s successor (the Sierra). I have never really worried about rear-wheel-drive cars, I prefer the balance of handling although they are not as easy to drive in the wet or snow. Interestingly, I’ve now gone full circle and my last two cars at the time of writing - a Mercedes and a BMW - have both been rear-wheel drive.

The Cavalier was the first car I owned with an automatic choke. Back in the day, cars had carburettors rather than fuel injection and the high-performance models would have twin-choke carbs (with two inlets for improved gas flow) or twin carbs (sometimes a bugger to keep in balance, especially as they got older and components were worn.

To start a car from cold (and each car had its own particular starting technique), you’d pull out a button which would apply the choke. This restricted the air-flow into the engine and made the fuel/air mixture richer. A lot of people, especially those who were not mechanically minded (women drivers) found the choke a real problem. How far should it be pulled out, when should it be pushed in, when should it be used? Often chokes were left out, so fuel consumption rocketed and cars spluttered to a stop; they weren't pulled out and cars wouldn't start or they were pulled out when an engine was hot and the engine would be flooded.

The auto choke was designed to do away with that and it generally did. Volkswagen was one of the first adopters of the auto choke (in my experience) and there were anecdotal tales of fuel consumption going through the roof.

The Cavalier worked pretty well and it was a really good car in many ways. I'd say it was something of a bridge between badly designed, badly built cars that we put up with in the 1970s and the well-built vehicles that finally started to arrive in the 1990s.

It had some features - cloth seats, radio, servo brakes - as standard; I liked that it had head-restraints. Having a growing family - Sam would have arrived about this time - I was more safety conscious so I appreciated the head-restraints and I also got a white car because I'd read they were easier to see and people were less likely to pull out in front of you.

Compared to the Horizon, the Cavalier had loads of interior space, hard (but comfy) seats and a massive boot.

It was a much better car than the Cortina and should really have won European Car of the Year, but was beaten by the Renault 9 (French fix!). Ford’s new Sierra was somewhat radically styled and it wasn’t going down well with the British public. The Cavalier out-sold the Sierra in 1984 and again in 1985, but Ford’s fleet operation was unbeatable and by the time the second-generation Cavalier was discontinued to make way for a new model in 1988, the Sierra was almost twice as popular.

Vauxhall sold 807,624 Mk II Cavaliers between 1981 and 1988. By December 1989, it was the third most common car on British roads

I really liked the Cavalier. It was fast for a 1.3, no power steering (so a bit heavy to park) and a bit nose heavy when cornering, but nothing like the massive understeer of the Marina. The one thing I really remember about it was there was a strange induction hiss when you opened the throttle past half-way. I guess it opened a second choke in the carb or something. It sounded odd, but didn't impact on performance or economy.

I didn't have the Cavalier much more than a year. I got a job as Group Features Editor, which meant my car went up a grade and I could get a 1.6. The Cavalier was passed to Peter Corder, who took over from me as Sports Editor and bits immediately started to go wrong. Oddly, all the locks failed, so he ended up with three keys - one for the ignition, one for the door and one for the boot. It also started to show some surface rust.

Design had improved, but build quality still left a lot to be desired. In August 2006, Auto Express magazine named the Mk II Cavalier as the country's sixth most scrapped car of the last 30 years, with just 6,343 still in working order. By December 2009, that figure had fallen to a mere 1,289.

A contributing factor was that the Mk II Cavalier was one of the most stolen cars of the 1980s and early 1990s and they were particularly popular with joy-riders because of their better-than-average performance and the fact it was easy to break into and start. Other factors included corrosion and premature camshaft wear.

Also see:

Ford Popular - click
Bedford HA Van - click
Morris Mini - click
Vauxhall Viva HC - click
Citroen GS Club - click
Morris Marina 1.3GL - click

Talbot Horizon 1.1 LS - click

Cars I have owned - No 4: Vauxhall Viva HC

My Vauxhall Viva was a J-reg and I’m pretty sure it was a 1971 model. After the Mini it felt slow and very cumbersome, although if you really put your foot down there was a little band of torque in the middle of the rev range where you could almost feel acceleration. It wasn’t nearly so much fun to drive as the Mini.

It was four-speed and rear-wheel drive. Compared with modern cars and compared with the Mini, there was a massive amount of space under the bonnet. The engine, which was 1159cc, was really tall and thin and it sat longitudinally, with the crankshaft in line with the gearbox and drive-shaft. You could have got three engines side by side under the bonnet.

Our car was a two-door model and there was plenty of room inside, although not massively more than the Mini. It was dark blue and I bought it from a chap at work (a compositor at the Warrington Guardian). It had started life as a company car belonging to Les Senescall, chief sub at the newspaper.

Our time together didn’t get off to a great start: as soon as I bought it, I got landed with a massive (for the time) bill for work on the brakes and a few other jobs. I was working on the sports desk and I told the sports editor, who told the bloke who sold it to me and he gave me £100 back (I think his workmates shamed him into it). I’d paid about £600 for the car originally.

At the time, around 1977, the cars that dominated the UK market were the Ford Escort, Vauxhall Viva and the Austin/Morris 1100, which had just been replaced by the Austin Allegro. The Morris Marina would have appeared around this time too (but more of that later).

Ford and Vauxhall had traded blow for blow as they tried to be top seller and I’d always favoured a Vauxhall. The Viva HA was a lovely little car, although very boxy (three boxes in fact), but its replacement (the Viva HB) had gone all curvy and had the Coke-bottle design cues along its rear waistline (just like the Mk I Escort).

The second Escort had gone back to more angular lines, while the Viva HC had taken a more imaginative route. It seemed almost art deco in some of the design cues - strong bold lines, which looked almost as if they’d been sculpted. The front wings had a real edge to them and the bonnet, which had a bold ridge down the centre, was turned up at each side to mould with the wings. The grille had a strong centre feature which matched the ridge on the bonnet.

Other lines were smooth, with a prominent waistline and a rounded boot. I really liked the style of the car, although it always seemed to sit very high on its thin tyres so that, from the rear, it looked a bit out of proportion. The Viva models with bigger engines had fatter tyres and they looked really good; in fact, the later Magnum versions of the Viva were considered to be real muscle cars, a step above the old Viva GT or Escort GT.

Inside, the car was basic as all cars were. Instrumentation comprised a letterbox-style speedometer with a big red needle which wasn’t that easy to read, but then the speed camera was well over the horizon. Interior designers had a bit of a field day in the ’70s and ’80s when round dials were considered old-fashioned and form took a higher priority than function. There were other weird things like oval steering wheels (Austin Allegro), U-shaped handbrakes (Alfa Romeo), non-cancelling rocker switch for the flashing indicators rather than a stalk (Citroen) and a strange cow-horn-shaped indicator switch/stalk from SEAT.

The Viva didn’t have a radio and it didn’t have front head-rests (my two great ambitions for a car at the time. It did have windscreen washers, which had to be pumped by pushing a big black button under the dashboard, but that was about it. Wind your windows up and down and lock the doors and boor separately. There was no ABS, no servo and the brakes were drums all round.

It was a fairly reliable car, although I seem to remember always being worried that something would go wrong. Nothing did go wrong apart from it needing a new exhaust, but it was rusting away quite quickly. The driver’s seat also partially collapsed when part of the frame broke. I never did anything about that. The seats were quite wide and, although it lacked a bit of support on the right-hand side, it was still useable and made getting out of the car quite easy. you just opened the door, leaned a bit to the right and out you fell.

Rust was the great issue with all cars at this time. The Viva HC was quite solidly built with good thick steel, but it was prone to rust. Mine would have been about six years old when I got it and there was the tell-tale bubbling of paintwork along the top of the offside wing. Corrosion was eating through the untreated steel from the inside and no amount of polish would help with that.

Eventually, both wings had rust as well as bubbled paint and the two front inner mudguards rotted completely. I remember spending a couple of hours just pulling rusted metal from inside the front wing. It was quite worrying, but also quite addictive and pleasurable, feeling the metal just crumbling like a dry Weetabix. The car was on its way out and I sold it for about £200 before it became scrap value only.

We did one long journey in the car, driving from Warrington where we lived to Ipswich and back one day. I’d been unsettled at work and keen to progress, so I was looking for a new job. I went to interviews at Widnes (what a dump!) and Bolton, but pay for journalists was awful and I desperately wanted a company car. I’d seen a job as editor of Pig Farmer and thought that might be quite interesting. It also came with a much better salary and a company car - a Triumph Toledo no less.

Winston Churchill said that a cat looks down on you, a dog looks up to you but a pig is the only animal on earth who looks you in the eye as an equal. They were nice people and I was offered the job, but decided it was a cul-de-sac that I shouldn’t drive my career down and stayed put in Warrington for a bit longer. The journey to Ipswich in 1977 was much different to today. We took the M6 to junction 1 and got off at Lutterworth to Market Harborough, then it was A-roads to Kettering, Thrapston, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich. I was staggered how small Ipswich seemed compared to Warrington. The size of the Marks & Spencer store and Woolworths was always a good guide and those in Ipswich were tiny! It’s a bit bigger these days and the journey would be much easier - M6 and A14, motorway and dual carriageway all the way.

The Viva was also remarkable for the fact that Margaret took her first driving lessons in the car. She had some starter lessons from a lecherous driving instructor in Warrington and then I took her out. I was frightened to death, she wouldn’t be told anything (no surprise there!) and we ended up having a massive row and me driving back. I never gave her another lesson.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the Viva HC:

The Viva HC (1970–1979) was mechanically the same as the HB but had more modern styling and greater interior space due to redesigned seating and positioning of bulkheads. It offered 2- and 4-door saloons and a fastback estate with the choice of either standard 1159 cc, 90 tuned 1159 cc or 1600 cc overhead cam power.

The American influence was still obvious on the design, with narrow horizontal rear lamp clusters, flat dashboard with a "letterbox" style speedometer, and a pronounced mid bonnet hump that was echoed in the front bumper.

The passing of the Viva marked a significant moment for Vauxhall, as it was the last car to be completely designed by the Luton-based company. All future Vauxhalls would be simply badge-engineered Opels, or in the case of the 2004 Vauxhall Monaro, a rebadged Holden.

The domestic market launch of the Viva HC coincided with one of the UK's periodic surges of debt-fuelled economic growth, and the latest Viva became Vauxhall's fastest-selling new model of all time, chalking up its first 100,000 units in under eight months months. Total HC sales ran to about 640,000 units, making combined Viva production top the 1.5 million mark. The millionth Viva, a gold HC, was driven off the production line amid much celebration on 20 July 1971. Although most Vivas were produced at Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port plant near Liverpool, the company's production lines were, by the standards of the time, flexible, and the millionth car was a product of the Luton factory. However, within seconds of the millionth Viva's completion at Luton, Ellesmere Port celebrated what was described - over-optimistically as matters turned out - as the first Viva of the second million.

The HC Viva has been less popular with classic car enthusiasts, as until recently 1970s cars weren't really sought after or considered true classics. This attitude is changing, with the best low-mileage examples of HC Vivas changing hands for a couple of thousand pounds on sites such as eBay.

I changed the Viva on a bit of a whim. I was driving past a used car showroom in Padgate and saw a Citroen GS on the forecourt. It was M-reg, they wanted just over £1,000 for it and it had front head restraints ...

Also see:

Ford Popular - click

Bedford HA Van - click

Morris Mini - click