(first posted 1/18/2016 There seem to be lingering misunderstandings about the import of US cars to Japan. Specifically, that Japan has managed to stave off a tsunami of Chevy Cavaliers and all the other wonderful American cars that the rest off the world has been snapping up by the imposition of certain restrictions, barriers or other obstacles. It’s way time to shed a bit of light on the Toyota Cavalier and this subject of great import.
The vehicle you see above is a Toyota Cavalier. No joke! In response to concerns about the trade imbalance, and to help stave off any further US restrictions of Japanese imports to the US (more on that later), Toyota entered into a deal to help facilitate imports of genuine made in the US Chevys and other good GM stuff of the era. Not only did Toyota offer help, advice and facilities for the cars imported (without the slightest “restrictions”, which Japan has never had in modern history) under their original US brand, but Toyota went a giant step further.
Toyota offered to upgrade and modify Cavaliers and sell them under the Toyota brand name. How’s that for import restrictions! Here’s some details from Wikipedia:
The Toyota Cavalier featured leather-wrapped shift knob and steering wheel, wider front fenders, amber turn signals for Japanese regulations, power folding side mirrors, side turn signal repeater lights on the front fenders, and carpeting on the inside of the trunk lid. Interior seats were often flecked with color, and the rear seat had a fold-down armrest. The Toyota Cavalier was entirely produced by GM in the USA and sold from 1995–2000. 1996-2000 Toyota Cavaliers came equipped with the 2.4 L LD9 engine, while the 1995 used the 2.3 L Quad 4.
The cars were carefully prepped to maximize their acceptability to the notoriously fastidious Japanese buyers. Did it work? Three guesses…
Japanese buyers found the panel gaps and general build quality well below their expectations and comfort level, and the whole Toyota Cavalier program as well as the import programs by the other Big Three were phased out, after lots of big press hoopla at the beginning.
Meanwhile, VW, Audi, BMW and other European premium brands have had a very successful export program to Japan for decades. Oh, one more thing:
In 1981, after tremendous pressure from President Reagan and Congress, the Japanese Automobile Industry agreed to a Voluntary Import Restriction, substantially reducing imports from Japan to the US to under 1.68 million per year. The result: content and transaction prices on all cars dramatically increased, screwing the American consumers out of untold billions. The Japanese used the dramatically higher profits to invest in US production facilities and the expansion into luxury brands like Lexus, Acura and Infiniti. The US manufacturers squandered theirs on buying Jaguar, Saab, Volvo and stakes in Japanese companies, all of which were eventually unwound. It is considered a text book example of how markets are distorted through import restrictions, and materially contributed to the decline and crash of the US auto industry.
Want to import cars to Japan? It’s one of the easiest countries to do so. Just make sure you know the market.
Update: Chevy should have imported Astro Vans to Japan, as they developed a very serious cult following.
Custom Astro Vans are big part of the whole tuner scene.
Which of course explains the looks of the bB/xB. Hate the looks of it? Blame GM.
I was walking along the harbor in Yokohama just down the street from the Red Brick Warehouse in late December 2012 when I heard something I never thought I’d hear in Japan: The burble of small-block Chevy. I turned and saw a black mid-’60s Impala churn past, its occupants looking very pleased with themselves.
I did see more than a few Astros there as well.
You didn’t ask for it, you got it! Oh, what a feeling! Toylet.
Wow ~
This is the sort if news I never read anywhere else .
Tool cool .
Not surprised Cavalier didn’t make it in Japan though .
-Nate
It didnt make it in NZ either imported here used ex JDM they are nearly impossible to sell either badged Toyota or Chevrolet and Kiwis love their Chevies but not those ones.
Bryce ;
I remember when we bought an entire fleet of Cavaliers and the GM Tech guy came out to give us a pep talk and show us how to easily diagnose the myriad ignition problems they knew were designed in from the jump using basic tools instead of the $uper $pendy Dealer magic tools the City was never going to spring for….
IIRC we salvaged _all_ of them in less than two years with fairly low easy miles .
Cavaliers are _NOT_ the Chevies you Kiwis and most Americans grew up with and know to trust and love : cheap , reliable and fun to drive , easy to repair affordable cars .
-Nate
Apologies in advance for anyone who’s a fan of the Cavalier, but I have to think it must have absolutely killed Toyota execs to see their logo on those things. Having driven a few rental Cavaliers of that generation, it would have taken a bit more than a leather-wrapped wheel to get me to buy one, that’s for sure…
Another interesting thing about the Cavalier is that it allows you, if you feel like confusing people, to buy a toyota badge from a GM dealership and branded as a genuine GM part.
GM part #22649423 to be exact.
Toyota Cavalier! I can’t believe Toyota agreed to that. Oh, and by the way, that “woody” Astro is pretty nice!
Astros we have here in RHD ex Japan quite a few of them actually also a whole slew of Chev Blazers have turned up ex Japan the poor reliability is blamed on uncaring japanese owners who ignore maintenance being used to Japanese cars that rarely go wrong, They’ve never seen a Chev 350 with three different sized crank main bearings from the factory I guess.
Never seen an RHD Chevy Astro…they were all exported to Japan in LHD as far as I know. If you have any photos of an RHD Astro, that would be interesting to see.
American cars seem a bit more marketable in S. Korea, which is LHD. Check out the local corporate websites there, e.g. http://www.ford-korea.com/all-vehicles, & http://www.chevrolet.co.kr
Korea ranks lower than Japan in per-capita car ownership.
Just. Wow. “An American package based on a new concept.” I wonder what “new concept” was being described here? That someone take an American car that is none too well thought of in its home market and try to sell it in Japan as a Toyota? New concept indeed.
The US automakers have never been serious about exporting american made vehicles to anywhere but Canada, with the exception of Chrysler’s attempt in 90s/00s, but they didn’t follow trough on it.
Once upon a time American cars were a common sight all over the world and well thought of then the 50s happened and it was downhill from then on, theres been a revival of sorts lately led by Chrysler and their 300s but those are European built and we are inundated with late model Mustangs nearly as many as early ones now in fact its hard to believe Ford never sold them here new.
I think they fell out of favour (in Australia at least) when they super-sized them in the late fifties. Styling excesses worked against them as well. Customers looking for something bigger than a Holden and able to afford one tended to be conservative in their tastes; I saw a lot more ’49-’54 Plymouths, Plodges and Plysotos than I did Chevys or Pontiacs of those years.
Their approach was to establish or buy local satellite divisions instead. While this could be blamed on the “gravitational pull” of the domestic US market, there are other areas where American apathy toward understanding & adapting to foreign ways can be seen, even among our Ivy League-educated ruling class.
Contrast this with the continued diligence Japan has exercised since the ’60s. Germany is perhaps the closest European counterpart, also having an export-oriented economy, though they do this instead by educating Americans about how wonderful costly German Engineering is (e.g. BMW’s ad campaign), sort of like Listerine convincing Americans they have halitosis (a pseudo-disease), or Kellogg teaching the British to eat breakfast cereal.
Never saw many US-made cars in Australia despite the similar market conditions (big affluent country, sprawling suburbia, affordable fuel). Having local affiliates with their own production to sell was probably a lot of it, but they didn’t seem to make much effort.
Australia had stringent local-content laws that would have added even more on top of the high cost of shipping a car halfway round the world. Moreover, American cars—even in RHD—generally weren’t suited to Australian conditions. North American cost-optimised suspensions, for instance, weren’t up to the Australian task even when specced up to the max. Ford went to the expense and hassle of Australianising the ’96 Taurus and offering it as the “Taurus Ghia”. Compared to the excellent Australian Falcon, that Taurus was a profoundly uncompetitive turd—for one example.
I was going do an article for Toyota Week on this oddball.
I did a post on this on a Toyota forum, back in the early 2000s… The jokes that came out of that.
No love for the Cavarolla, there. 😀
So Toyota let GM sell the Prizm in the US, and in return, GM graciously allowed Toyota to sell the Cavalier in Japan? That’s just great. Some of you have already heard this story, but here’s a rather telling irony: Way back in December 1991, when my brother and I helped Mom pick out a new car, she left for the dealership determined to come home with a new Cavalier. After she had a chance to compare Cavaliers and Prizms side-by-side, she went for the Prizm. She never regretted the choice! I wonder what the typical profile for the Japanese Cavalier driver would have been? Someone with more yen than sense who just had to have something different?
Of course, the Prizm was built in the US. At an ex-GM plant.
This was revenge for the NUMMI Nova. Pity the build quality didnt carry over to Tesla .
“that knows all about driving pleasure”
That reads pretty creepy.
“A new form of luxury,” indeed!
Yep, pretty funny.
Brought to you by the same visionary in 1982, who thought the “luxurious” Cavalier would be a good base for Cadillac’s new Cimarron. 🙁
I pity the copywriter who had to find something good to say about this rolling dog dirt.
Yet another fine example of how blurred Toyota’s vision was by the mid ’90s. Today they are totally blind, and if they vaporized off this planet I would not shed a tear.
Completely wrong. I was in Japan when this farce was going on. At the time, the US car companies were ranting how American cars were just as good as those from Japan, even though they hadn’t actually driven any of them. The US government really pushed the Japanese to allow American imports into Japan.
The Japanese always replied that America simply didn’t build a car that suited Japanese conditions. Ford even tried to get the Japanese government to slash their displacement taxation system.
So GM sold the Cav, a total crap box even in America, with a 2.4 litre engine, which put it into near luxury prices. A Nissan G20 was less money in Japan at the time and I know what I would have bought.
Ford brought in the 3.8 litre Taurus, which had to compete with 5 series BMW’s and the E320 Merc. Ford also neglected to change the cars over to RHD.
Wrong about the Japanese market Taurii – Right-hand drive . Many of them ended up in New Zealand. Especially the wagons which were not sold here new. Very few of the imports or the NZ-new Ghia sedans left now due to durability issues.
Care to give more examples of Toyota’s blindness?
Sure, the “blindness” that made the largest and most profitable car company in the world.
The “blindness” that caused Toyota to invent hybrid synergy drive, of which they have now sold millions, and made a profit on every one.
The “blindness” that led Toyota to beat Detroit at their own game and become the number one sedan in America for years.
Yup, pretty “blind.”
Exactly!
That’s right, Detroit was seeing to much. They were actually hallucinating.
I was living in Japan at the time GM tried to pawn off the Cav as some sort of high end car. My Japanese friends never for a second took the Cav seriously, correctly believing their own home market cars were much better for their needs.
GM (and Ford) made a huge blunder on engine choices. In Japan, the road tax system gets crazy expensive after 1.5 litres, so most family sedans are 1.5 litres. Given that Japanese don’t drive that much, and usually in cities, a 1.5 is more than adequate. However, GM, in their great wisdom, put a 2.4 litre in the Japanese market Cav, giving it an almost luxury car price. No surprise they didn’t sell.
I vividly recall walking by a Toyota store in Fukuoka ever weekend for a year. The same green Cav was sitting in the showroom the whole time.
Were there any other colours most I see are the same metallic green.
So my question is this. If there is an expensive road tax system in place after 1.5 L displacement, to own an Astro or any American car that has developed a cult following is very expensive?
Indeed having an Astro would be very expensive. However, they are usually owned by youngsters trying to be cool, or in many cases, Yakuza.
Yakuza in mini-vans? Sounds like a real-life “Get Shorty!”
How do you say “It’s the Toyota of minivans!” in Japanese?
I believe the engine displacement tax bracket in Japan increases at above 2.0 liters. This is indicated by a 3-digit classification number on the license plate that starts with a “3.”
This got me thinking – if it was technically possible, could GM have allowed Toyota to install a sub-2.0 liter Toyota engine in the Cavalier’s engine compartment? That would have alleviated a lot of quality concerns the Japanese customer may have had concerning American cars, would probably be more fuel efficient than the 2.4 liter GM engine and may have placed the Cavalier in a lower engine displacement tax bracket. I say “may have” because the Japanese vehicle tax bracket is also based on the dimensions and weight of the car.
It depends on the period you’re talking about and which tax. Until 1989, there was a commodity tax on new cars (generally factored into the purchase price, from what I could tell) which was based on size class (kei, 5-number/7-number, 3-number) — including both dimensions and displacement. That was dropped in 1989, although I think the size class still affects some other running costs, like maybe insurance or parking charges.
Road tax, which is based on engine size, is separate from the old commodity tax and is still ongoing, although the formula has changed. It used to basically double, or near enough, for anything over 2 liters, but by the time these cars were imported, the scale was a little more gradual, which is why you got a lot of JDM cars with 2.2 and 2.5 L engines. However, most of those were either sporty cars or more upscale sedans, and the Cavalier was neither.
All it’s other faults aside, in a country that is so crowded….why in the heck did GM make the “JDM” Cavalier….with WIDER fenders?
As for the engine choices….I may be wrong, but trying to sell a Cavalier saddled with an OHV engine in a country where buyers are known to be seriously “tech-concious” would have been a definite non-starter.
I’m no flag-waver, but as has (sort of) been pointed out, even when GM had the weight of the U.S. government behind it the best they could do was “phone-in” this effort? This feeble effort (would seem to) prove just how little they thought of American consumers…..that we would think that what is wrong with the Cavalier could be corrected with judicious checks on the options sheet.
I believe it was only sold with DOHC engines not OHV. The Quad4 and then the updated 2.4L Twin Cam version of the Quad4.
After reading what I wrote I can see I confused folks.
Part of the spec for Japan was replacing the 2 liter OHV engine with a larger displacement (and more expensive, tax-wise) DOHC engine. Along with other mods that were made to the run-of-the-mill Cavalier GM was between a rock and a hard place. The car with a OHV engine would have been a non-starter, but a large displacement (tax-wise) 4 or 6 cylinder engine was not a better choice.
Particularly since the Quad 4 was never a very refined engine, and being in the 2.0 to 2.5-liter class put it up against slick home-market fours (like the 2.2 and 2.3-liter Honda engines) and various small sixes/V-6s.
The LD9/Twin Cam made quite a bit more power than the Honda 2.2, if I’m not mistaken. You are, however, correct that it was much, much less refined.
It depends which version you’re talking about. The LD9 Twin Cam sacrificed a fair bit of the Quad 4’s power for balance shafts, leaving it with 150 hp. Honda’s SOHC F22B ranged from 130 hp to 145 hp (the latter with VTEC) and the twin-cam version in the Prelude had 160 hp. The LD9 was more powerful than the Toyota 5S-FE, which was 130-135 hp.
The Quad 4 had nothing to apologize for in terms of power (160 to 190 hp depending on application), but whether you’d want to brave the noise and buzz to get it is another question.
Howard: I question the validity of the Wiki entry. Cavaliers had orange turn signals from the beginning. The wider fenders claim makes no sense.
I think the wiki entry is referring to rear amber turn signal lights. The rear turn signal lights on the US Cavaliers were red.
Japanese automotive regulations stipulates that tires must not protrude from the fender to prevent injuries to pedestrians; wider fenders were presumably installed on the Toyota Cavaliers to completely shroud the front tires and to bring the vehicle into compliance with this regulation. Some imported vehicles like older C4 Corvettes have fender arches installed on the fenders to comply with this regulation.
I drove a friend’s 1995 Cavalier once, it was maybe 7 yrs old at the time. Didn’t think much of it and can understand why the Japanese didn’t think much of it either!
Keep in mind that while us American think that the Japanese must all own high horsepower cars with load of techie stuff in the car and under the hood, the majority of Japanese own and drive small cars (called Kei Cars) which are small, slow and are not really great to make long distance trips with.
The Cavalier with its 150 hp engine (2.3l DOHC in 1995 and 2.4l DOHC 96-00) would have been a rocket compared with those Kei cars that were putting out 80 HP with a 3 cylinder engine.
You’re conflating issues. You make it sound as if the Japanese makers didn’t offer cars in the Cavalier’s class. They had a huge range of cars in that class, much wider than what they sold in the US.
Yes, the Cavalier would have been a rocket compared to some of the kei cars, but that’s completely irrelevant. The Japanese were building and selling cars domestically that made the Cavalier feel like a stone.
Japanese kei car buyers weren’t cross-shopping with a Cavalier, or a Corolla or Civic.
It has nothing to do with horsepower and everything to do with quality.
Also, current kei cars are limited to a nominal 64 PS. (With some of the sportier variety, the rating is perhaps more polite than accurate, admittedly, although those are the exceptions.)
I also lived in Japan while these were being ‘sold’ there, and despite some marketing they vanished without a splash. One of the reasons is that foreign cars are expensive compared to Japanese cars offering the same space capacity and it’s a given that they are more expensive to maintain as well as local mechanics won’t understand them and parts availability is more limited.
This means that foreign cars have to offer something special to compete in the marketplace. Great styling, great performance, or a legendary reputation is necessary . Cavalier ain’t got none of them things and that’s -before- we start discussing quality. The Japanese were VERY aware of their reputation fo poor quality. When the Americans started beating up on Japanese cars, the response in the Japanese press was to point out that Americans bought Japanese cars because American cars were junk. This left a lingering perception that was hard to overcome.
TL/DR In all the years I lived there I saw quite a few foreign cars a decent number of American cars and exactly one Cavalier.
I wouldn’t call importing a vehicle to Japan an easy task. Please see series “Swimming Upstream” by Thomas Kreutzer, who decided to import his van when he moved to Japan: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/tag/thomas-kreutzer/
That’s a different situation. One individual, not an automobile manufacturer.
Wow, I had no idea that Toyota ever did this! It’s an interesting idea in theory, but Chevy should have done that with one of their higher end, sporty cars. Maybe a Camaro, or something. I have a feeling that the Cavalier was the basis for this experiment, because its an affordable, sporty car (moreso the Z24) that is good on gas. Speaking as someone who owned a 2000 Z24, they were excellent, fun cars for the price…..when they weren’t breaking down quite frequently. By the time Toyota had upgraded and modified the cars, one wonders how affordable that they were for the Japanese people. A Camaro may have been a more niche oriented car over there, but with a torquey American V8, at least it would have likely had a legitimate edge in that market that isn’t really catered to.
The other thing is that the styling of the Cav of those years isn’t really that different than a lot of European and Japanese styling. There’s nothing really distinctively “American” about what the Cavalier would have to offer Japan, so I’m guessing that this is why it never really probably sold as well as Toyota and Chevy would have liked.
Another parallel is this: I like and play various music gear, and there are some smaller entry level amps that guys will mod heavily to get to be like certain amps that are more coveted. The problem is that by the time that you mod them, they’re really not that affordable anymore, and you’re still left with an amp that everyone knows is a cheaper, more widely available amp. Consequently, they don’t retain value very well, and they’re still regarded as entry level amps.
It’s still a Cavalier, no matter what.
That’s the thing about GM’s efforts to sell the Chevrolet brand in other markets. There are lots of people outside the U.S. who have warm feelings toward the brand (British auto critics notwithstanding), but when they think Chevrolet they’re thinking ’55 Bel Air, ’64 Impala, Corvette, or something like that. When GM then slaps the Chevrolet nameplate on something like the U.S. Cavalier (a platform that wasn’t all that successful in competing against the Accord of three generations prior to this exercise) or workaday A- and B-segment Daihatsu models, it doesn’t appeal to non-U.S. Chevrolet fans while just getting the turned-up nose from non-U.S. buyers who think American cars are categorically inferior. It’s a lose-lose proposition.
Same thing when they tried to sell re-badged Daewoos as Chevrolets in Europe. I’d hate to think how much money GM lost on that one!
Oops, I meant Daewoo rather than Daihatsu (as far as I know, there’s no connection between GM and Daihatsu). My mistake! The European exercise is what I was thinking of.
I tought you meant the Chevrolet Cruze… the original one, designed in Australia and made in Japan, since its basically a Suzuki Ignis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Ignis#Chevrolet_Cruze
There are several examples, although I was thinking of the rebadged Daewoo models specifically.
I think it would be fun to reverse import one back here and just screw with peoples minds when they see a RHD cavalier with Toyota badging and registration!
There are places like Postal Cars ( see https://www.postalcars.com ) that specialize in importing used RHD Japanese cars for rural postal workers. I wonder if they’ve ever re-imported one of these, now that they would be eligible under the 25 year rule? For this kind of use, it would actually kind of make sense as unlike some of their more exotic Japanese inventory, parts in the US would be widely available and you could get it serviced just about anywhere.
Crapaliers imported to Japan! How embarrassing for the the U.S.
I was also in Japan when these were first imported and have been here for the last 12 years. It was a typical US car manufacturer initiative that was bound to fail from the beginning. Chrysler tried it with the Neon and had the same results. Contrast that with BMW, Audi and VW, which were and are much more popular – due to a much better reputation, and a much larger marketing and support effort. Even Peugeot has done better.
I agree with the remark on the Astro van – for some reason, it is extremely popular here, old hoary Vortec V6 and all. I think it just fits a niche size-wise that the Japanese manufacturers have skipped – it is wider than the typical large class van.
The other US vehicle that you see frequently, at least here in the Tokyo area, is the original Jeep Cherokee – they’re the right size for small Japan streets and the 4.0 straight 6 is as strong and bulletproof as anything Toyota built.
But for foreign built vehicles, the BMW 3 Series seems to be the most popular.
In 1970 the US automakers should have lobbied for minimum width and minimum engine size legislation. Just in the spirit of no import restrictions.
Can a cavalier have an attitude and if so, what would it be?
It has a very cavalier attitude, in fact.
🙂
Ryan ;
You nailed it ~ I was going to say ” meh ” .
-Nate
1. I find it interesting that the only picture of one of these Toyota Cavalier on the “curbside” here, was taken in Russia. And in the background there is another odd Chevy, the Chevrolet Niva.
2. Did you know Saturn was sold in Japan as well? I found some commercials and videos and put them together here: http://ripituc.blogspot.cl/2016/01/saturn-of-japan.html
Could have got pics of Toyota Cavaliers here once upon a time but theyve all been scrapped
The CC commentariat have pretty much said it all, but talk about taking a knife to a gun fight…
Under ‘Cavalier’ (or Hubris, more accuretly, but less ironically) in the dictionary there is a pic of a GM exec giving a powerpoint to Toyota execs on how the Toyota Cavalier was a sure-thing hit.
You have to wonder what the conversation was among Toyota management when this deal was being worked out with GM and they actually drove one of these for the first time. What is the Japanese term for WTF?!
Agreed. And I was once a hardcore, dyed in the wool GM guy. I still appreciate GM, but from a styling/ it factor point of view…..I would never buy GM again. One has to wonder how attitudes at GM like this either were a Deadly Sin or lead to it. The problem lies in the actual *knowledge* at GM, at the top, of what they’re actually selling, and how it compares to the competition. If you don’t know your product, it will be difficult to sell it to a more knowledgeable customer base that knows that you don’t know what you’re talking about as a company.
GM had got schooled, again, by foreign car makers who had surpassed them in quality, and the “let’s throw more money at it because it worked in the past” ideas just won’t work anymore. Once a brand starts to lose credibility, it’s tough to get it back.
On my Z24, there were a whole bunch of things on it that were breaking down–rear struts, front control arms, a litany of trouble lights on the dashboard (traction control, ABS, etc), rear window defogger didn’t work, front seat adjuster broke, water pump went ($1200 repair, which was mostly labour due to the ridiculous water pump location…..and another one started to go about 2-3 years later. Dexcool issue?), front wheel bearings, plus the hanging/ bouncing muffler at the back that you quite often see on the cars. The brakes needed replacing every couple of years, too, and I didn’t drive the car very hard.
For GM to sell that type of car to the Japanese, they may as well have just set fire to whatever money that they sunk into that project. It would have been the same concept.
The funny thing is that I was at the mechanic’s shop one time, and the mechanic was speaking to someone on the phone. “You need a front control arm and a wheel bearing”. I asked the mechanic if the person on the other end of the phone owned a Cavalier, and he nodded yes. That’s the type of rep that a manufacturer gets when they put out sub-par product……it becomes the basis of a joke.
I still feel like this is all an extremely well thought out prank, using computer hackers, photoshoppers, paid off testimonys and using airplane contrails with mind control chemicals flying over Japan to make the people falsely remember these being real. That really is the occam’s razor compared to reality!
This generation Cavalier was just brutal, pretty much every bad thing GM was known for culminated in these cars – ancient underpinnings, bad paint, cheap plastic interior, horrible handling, no power, leaky, noisy, smelly, rust buckets. I’m no real fan of Toyota but putting that badge on a Cavalier is just blasphemy.
Toyota may have had better luck selling NUMMI-made Prizms in Japan. Or the whole exercise was intended as a show “See, we tried, we tried hard!”
In 1999, my dad gave us $3000 credit toward a GM car that he’d built up on a credit card. Naturally, we used it to get a new $11,400 Chevy Prizm (5-speed with a/c, rear defog, no other options, no radio) rather than this generation of Cavalier. I don’t think Toyota would actually try selling the Prizm in Japan – you’re joking, right? There were some little differences from a Corolla sedan, but none that would have attracted a Japanese buyer away from one and toward the other.
I think Toyota actually did this with the Pontiac Vibe, a GM version of the Toyota Matrix, both built at NUMMI for North America.
NUMMI built Vibes were sold in Japan as the Toyota Vibe. I seem to recall a picture of one. It even had the Pontiac arrowhead on the front too.
I had a Prizm, as far as I recall the differences on mine from a Corolla were 1) badges (I don’t recall if mine had Chevy or Geo badges), and 2) air conditioning compressor, I assume a Corolla had a Denso, on mine it was a GM (don’t recall if it was badged GM, Delco, or Frigidaire..).
The HUGE surprise I had with the ~1990 or so Prizm I had, compared to the several fuel injected GM vehicles I’d owned before that (first one a 1985 Chevy Celebrity with throttle body injection and later ones multiport fuel injection), they had very few extra parts on them since the injection took care of idle air control and cold start. The Prizm had a cold start injector and several idle speed screws (base speed, one for.. something, I didn’t mess with it, and one to kick up when A/C kicks on.) It also had this choke-style wax thing to kick up the idle speed when the engine’s cold. GM just used a idle air control valve for all of that. The A/C charge had gotten low so previous owner had cranked up A/C “idle” to like 1400RPM. I charged and leak-stopped it, and turned the idle back to normal, which of course improved my gas mileage about 20MPG 8-).
I test drove a 01 cavalier once. I was blown away as to how BAD the build quality was. I was coming from a 95 achieva (which was also horrible) and had owned a plymouth reliant too. Ive driven my share of bad 80s and 90s american cars and the cavalier was by far the worst. The dashboard literally shook up and down as you drove! It was the top example of gms distain for small car shoppers.
I’m glad someone else has noticed the bouncing dash. A friend of mine bought one of these (a huge out of left field move for a redneck) and I saw the whole top of the dash wobbling going down a fairly straight and level road. I think he kept it for all 6 months, if that, and went back to Cheverados and Jeeps.
I had a Cavalier to drive at work for a while. The tube styling was so severe at a towering 5’9″ I would hit my head on the seatbelt hanger if I moved the wrong way. The whole car was painful. I bet those at GM who decided to try exporting them to Japan never even drove one. The fleet manager at work who bought them admitted it was one of his worst purchases.
Never heard of a Toyota Cavalier. Interesting story.
My daughter owned a last model-year Cavalier. I actually enjoyed driving it. There was good power, the seats were comfortable and it rode nice and smoothly. Actually it rode and felt similar to my friend’s 1986 Cavalier that I was often a passenger in.
I know, as everyone knows, that it was a crappy effort from GM and the dash design and interior quality made me shake my head. But I actually preferred the vehicle to the 2007 Accord that my wife drove at the time (the seats were unbearably hard and uncomfortable, it had poor visibility, and the seats material attracted endless debris and hair).
One bit of trivia about these was that at least for a while in the ’00s and early ’10s you could purchase a pair of Toyota emblems (a “pretzel” logo and a script) in a factory-sealed clear plastic “Genuine GM Parts” bag. You just needed to find a GM dealer parts clerk willing to override the “Export Parts Only Not DOT-NHTSA Approved” flag on the computer for your conversation piece never to be removed from that GM-branded bag let alone put on a car.
What were they thinking? ANY of them?
Gutless wonder!
I truly had to do a double take to make sure this wasn’t originally posted on 1 April a few years back.
This just exemplifies the level of hubris that knew no limits at GM in the 80s and 90s. I owned a 1992 Cavalier Z24 and it was truly the bottom of the barrel and a real sign of just how bad the American auto industry was at that time.
Why we as Americans accepted such utter junk from our own domestic companies will always be a mystery to me.