Oh momma. The way an RX7 should have come. haha. Still one of my favourite cars and favourite swaps.

We used to put so much passion into our Hondas and Subarus. Any repair hat was needed, we would buy the parts and bust our knuckles making it just a little bit better.

For me, it was the build quality that led me to the import world. But let's face it, modern day imports aren't like they were in the 90's. They're no longer built in Japan, and they're built cheap. The eg civic had some of the best suspension design ever put in a commuter car. You don't see that anymore.

The domestics did one thing well, torque. That's what drew me to my g8.




Fuken amazing!!'

k

k

No. 15 years ago any parking lot you were in would be half full of them. Literally 99% of them are cubes now.
I'm not even close to someone that hates American cars, but the 90s and early 2000s most of them were garbage piles.
Remember that time THE BIG 3 WENT BANKRUPT and needed the us government to bail them out? It wasn't because they were making great products.

i never see Sunfires on the road...i did see an accident on the highway where it went under a logging truck and the entire roof was ripped off thou...

I also agree that you hardly see any Crapliers in Metro Van anymore. Even their replacement model -- the Cobalt -- doesn't seem that common either. At the time when these Cobalts were new, they were quite plentiful on the street.

:bowjerk:

Based on your username, was not expecting posts like this. Good discussion points.

Drove through Burnaby to get to Coquitlam today and did a count for fun.

4 Cavaliers, 3 G5s, 2 Sunfires and 2 Cobalts.

This was in 30 min. Probably due to their vanilla style, they're passed off as non-existent.

I feel like I'm on Cardomain circa 2000

http://ergonomicsindesign.com/wp-con...ncessbride.png

Kappa

The thing is you can get a decent 90s Honda for 2k ad well and I'd rather a Honda with 250k than a sunturd with 150k. Realistically the only j bodies left are >$1000 throwaway cars.

That said I see a surprising amount of shitty old domestics up north and I'd think the hard winters would destroy them

Compare that against Civics, Corolla, Protege / Mazda3, and the numbers will probably seem very small. Even if you were to count Chevy Cruze -- the replacement car for the Cobalt, the numbers will probably still be lower than Japanese cars.

I was given a Pontiac Sunfire when I rented a car to tour a good chunk of Atlantic Canada many years ago, and I remember the interior being a step down compared to a Civic / Corolla of the same era. The seats, in particular, was extra horrible. It was flimsy, the material felt cheap, it offered no support as I just sank into the seat.

The car had the newly released 2.2L Ecotec engine instead of the older OHV piece of junk, and the new engine was definitely the highlight despite being a coarse, buzzy, and unrefined machine. It had good hp and torque, and it was very willing to rev. I actually quite enjoyed my time with it while I beat the shxt out of it on a daily basis. The fuel consumption, however, was not the best.

The rest of the car was seriously unimpressive -- the chassis was sloppy, although Civics from the same era (the EK's) didn't exactly have a stiff chassis either. The (Craplier) suspension was slow reacting, sluggish, and always a step behind when I tried to drive it with some sense of sporty urgency. But that can be forgiven given the car's intended purpose and audience.

This now the official cavalier/sunfire thread

Guys.... let's agree to disagree

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-co...ier-ad-02l.jpg

best of both worlds, you get your badge AND Cavalier

OR

https://car-pictures.cars.com/images...JPG&HEIGHT=600

Chevy Corolla?

There are loads of them at the wreckers though, and the vast majority aren't there because of an accident.

I think the problem for a lot of them was their owners. They were cheap cars, so the people buying them didn't take good care of them and because there were so many people treated them as disposable. With a bit of care they could last but then who wanted to put much effort into a car that wasn't very good to drive?

https://vancouver.craigslist.ca/rds/...308791001.html

Did anyone ever go look at this? Kind of interested as a project but curious if someone can save me the time.

Let's do one better, a TRD Cavalier.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1087/...cf7c65e5_o.jpg

You can just tell some people just hate to hate, can't change their opinion. The discussion was about cavalier vs Japanese counterparts in the same era specifically now it goes to back to comparing american cars to Japanese cars again.

I appreciate your unbiased comment cuz obviously you have driven both cars from the same era. What you pointed out is exactly what I'm trying to say, the cavalier's suspension is bad, but the civics from the same era isn't so much better either, overall one isn't that much better than the other. Both cars have pros and cons, in the end, I think it evens out, just depends on what features people prefer to have.

For more than a cavalier's price, you get an older civic with potentially better seats, better ergonomics, better center console, better fuel economy; BUT it will be an older car with a gutless engine will way more kms on the odo, rusted and beat to hell probably. Choose what you prefer.

Civic or any other Japanese competition from the same era are piece of shits so is the Cavalier. Both cars aren't gonna be that much fancier or better than the other, both will be viewed as beaters, both are equally as reliable. but cavalier can be had for $1000-2000 less than a Japanese counterpart. I know what I'd choose.

We need to dial the time machine back a bit

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...-hatchback.jpg

:concentrate:

Just a couple of small things to clarify:

Chassis-wise, the EK (Civic) was not that stiff. The ES (Civic) seemed somewhat stiffer to me. If I have to compare, I can only say the ES Civic's chassis seemed somewhat stiffer than both the EK and 3rd gen Craplier, but it is more difficult to compare whether the EK or the Craplier had a stiffer chassis.

I'd have to say though, that both the EG and the EK Civics had a fantastic suspension for sporty driving. In their pedestrian models, the spring rates might be soft, but the cars still drove very nicely, even when you put them in a performance driving environment. The Craplier, on the other hand, did not behave like that. On those windy coastal roads, the Craplier suspension always felt a beat or two too slow. My ES beater Civic from a few years ago felt better (than the Craplier) despite having a Mac strut suspension up front.

You are quite right with the different vehicles more or less evening out though. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, it all depends on what you are looking for.

wow i created a shitstorm mentioning Cavaliers. Should've said Geo Metro:fullofwin:.

I owned a Suzuki Forsa as my first car, fiance owned a Chevrolet Sprint as her first car, and my boss and co-worker both owned Metros a few years back.

If anyone tells me those are reliable (no one will ... I hope ... but someone said the Cavalier was reliable, so who knows).

Of course, they're re-badged Suzukis (de-tuned in the case of the Metro), so not an "American" car.

I rarely see Cavaliers in Burnaby and Vancouver
may be it's slightly a different story in the valley

were their fuel effciency terrible compared to the civic/rolla?

on the topic of being car racist, it seems performance-oriented domestics were rarely seen driven by the visible minority 15 years back....now I see all colours under the sun driving Mustangs and Camaros. What changed the perception?

There was someone on the Accord forum I visit that has a Cavalier now, and she said it's not as unreliable as some people make it out to be.

It's not really like Corollas didn't have issues. The 1999 Corolla I had burns way more oil than my RX-8, and supposedly, it's a very common issue for Corollas and Camrys of that time period due to a badly designed oil ring.

Funny thing, I was looking to buy a MT Cavalier Coupe when I was looking for a MT beater to learn MT on. The dude told me that he didn't know how to drive a stick(hence why he's selling it). I looked around. There was a bunch of thick wires and a tire in the seats, the coolant looks like shit(literally; it was a gross brown color), and I couldn't test drive it because he pulled the battery out. Needless to say, I wasn't interested.

Fuel economy-wise, I think it's fairly close to Corolla and Civic. Maybe just see what the data says on Fuelly.

I'm just gonna go ahead and chalk this page up as a loss

.