The Good Car File: 1990 Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6L

Still none the wiser...

I bought this to replace the awful Proton described earlier in the blog. I only had £250 to buy a car and was wondering how i was going to pull it off, but ebay saved the day again, the day after i sold the car, i spent it looking, and looking, and looking again for another motor. Nothing doing.

So i went for some lunch, and came back and hit ebay again: Bingo! just put on, an "Arthur Daley" style dealer in Rugby had a H Plate 1.6L Cavalier in Gold for a mere £175 with three months T&T.

That'll do, said i, i rang "Arthur", and arranged to view the next day and booked the train ticket. I got to Rugby and started the walk to the garage only to get there and find someone clearing it of junk, was i too late? No, thankfully. I did a drive, it drove a lot better than i expected a £175 car to drive and money was handed over.

It even had a original Vauxhall (Philips...) cassette radio that worked so i was MP3 ready, and had a pleasant 45 mile trip home.

And it was a good car. It ran brilliantly, the only problem being that a rubber breather pipe had rotted and burst and was spitting oil in the engine bay so i toddled off on foot to the local Vauxhall dealership, only to discover that the parts guy was an Aussie and the parts system was based on the Opel naming system.

After nearly twenty minutes of trying to convince him that "actually, Vectra A is a Cavalier in the UK and you really don't have to ask everyone on the staff bar the cleaner what car i've got and scratching your head really is a waste of time because i'm telling you in the nicest way possible that i can that it actually is a Vectra A re-badged for the UK", that i could finally order my part. The only problem is that it was in a warehouse in Germany and would take up to five days to arrive. Oh bugger.

I tried to get radiator hose to fit but it just wasn't pliable enough, i had to have this poxy part, but once on it behaved impeccably for eight weeks and i loved it, from the crusty rear wheelarches and 40 MPG to the stuffing coming out of the driver's seat.

Then the cambelt snapped on a journey to my Parents. I don't know what provoked it unless you count the Kate Bush i had on the MP3 at the time. It didn't even go with a bang. Just tootled slowly without power into a very conveniently placed lay-by.

RAC to the rescue then: he described cambelt death after less than two minutes under the bonnet. It was a nice ride home on the tow truck though...

Then i was saddled with the problem of disposing of a scrap car that wouldn't move under it's own steam. Three cheers for the "we buy any scrap car, good prices paid" merchants in the back of the paper. They said thirty quid, and seeing as it was clogging up my parents' drive, i couldn't say no.

What i could do though was try to take anything of value off such as the stereo and battery, but they wouldn't budge an inch with the poxy "World Of Pound" spanner and screwdriver set that i had at the time, so i couldn't even get anything of value from it bar the handy UK map of all Vauxhall/Opel dealers in the UK circa 1990. In fact, i've still got it mounted on the back of a door in my flat.

Nice car, shame it couldn't have lasted longer...