Vehicle Overview The front-drive Cavalier, General Motors’ best-selling car line, gains several standard features and a spruced-up appearance. Cavalier is the largest of Chevrolet’s three small cars but fits between the Metro and Prizm in price with its base MSRP of $13,065. Cavalier is built from the same design as the Pontiac Sunfire but has different front and rear styling. The two share engines and other major components.
Interior A new standard center console boasts five cupholders three for the front occupants and two for the rear and slots for coins cassettes and CDs. A rearranged instrument panel mounts the stereo above the climate controls instead of below. An optional sound system with cassette and CD players adds Radio Data System technology. RDS interrupts regular programs, tapes or CDs to broadcast weather and traffic bulletins. Air conditioning and a rear defroster, previously optional on most models, are now standard on all. All models seat five and have a rear seatback that folds for extra cargo space.
Exterior Cavalier comes as a two-door coupe, four-door sedan and convertible, and all three sport a new body-color front fascia trimmed with the Chevy bow-tie emblem, new headlamp and taillamp designs and new wheel covers.
Under the Hood Base models and the LS sedan come with a 115-horsepower, 2.2-liter four-cylinder engine, and the sporty Z24 coupe and convertible use a dual camshaft 2.4-liter four-cylinder with 150 horsepower. Both are available with manual or automatic transmission.
Safety Cavalier has standard anti-lock brakes, a feature still optional on some more-expensive mid-size models. Also standard is GM’s PassLock theft-deterrent system, which must read an electronic code embedded in the key before the engine will start.
