The Chevrolet Cavalier is a line of small cars produced for the model years 1982 through 2005 by Chevrolet. As a rebadged variant of General Motors' J-cars, the Cavalier was manufactured alongside the Cadillac Cimarron, Buick Skyhawk, Oldsmobile Firenza, and Pontiac J2000/2000/Sunbird at GM's South Gate Assembly and Janesville Assembly plants, achieving its highest sales in 1984.
Predecessors
The Cavalier replaced the Monza in North America. The Monza was available as a 2-door coupe, a 3-door hatchback and a 3-door wagon (using the same body as the discontinued Vega wagon, the model it replaced). The inexpensive Chevette was retained even as sales declined, and was formally replaced by even smaller captive imports. Both previous platforms had rear-drive layouts while the new design followed the front wheel drive trend, as in the Dodge Omni and Honda Civic. Ford and Chrysler also introduced new front drive compacts. The largely successful mission of capturing the bulk of domestic compact sales would fall on the Cavalier's 2-door coupe, 4-door sedan and 4-door station wagon, the relatively short-lived 3-door hatchback (which replaced the Monza 2+2 Sport 2-door hatchback) and, in later years, a 2-door convertible. The small Cavalier even helped fill in lagging sales of the compact Citation.
First generation (1981-1987)
The Cavalier first went on sale in early 1981 as a 1982 model with front-wheel-drive, a choice of two carbureted versions of the GM 122 series four-cylinder pushrod engines, and 2 and 4-door sedan, hatchback, and station wagon body styles. Convertibles were added in 1983, initial production totaling less than 1000.
1983 Cavaliers offered throttle body fuel injection, and a V6 engine became available in 1985. The 1984 models received a mild facelift featuring quad headlights.
The Cavalier in Mexico was identical to the Pontiac Sunbird before the Pontiac brand was officially introduced there in 1992. After that time, the Cavaliers sold there featured Sunbird body panels, as opposed to US-spec Cavalier panels. From 1993 on, the sibling marques were both offered, much in the same way as in the United States.
Source: wikipedia
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