Vauxhall Cavalier GSI: PH Ad Break

Vauxhall's performance saloon of the 90s walks on water. Don't try this at home, kids...

As was discussed heavily in the forum post resulting from our last Ad Break, these days a car advert is expressly not permitted to show a sporty car doing anything... well... sporty. Fortunately, things weren’t quite so strict back in the early 90s.

The Cavalier heads off road...

So enjoy these gratuitous shots, set to a rousing classical score, of a brand new Mk3 Cavalier GSI 2000 4x4 - a car in contention for the 'longest badge of the early 90s' award - barrelling down an alpine pass, its tarmac sodden despite the blissful blue skies to highlight the grip offered by the drivetrain. But wait... what’s this? There’s a queue building. How will the happy Cavalier driver deal with this? Well, isn't it obvious? He turns off the road, plunges down a bank and dives into an adjacent lake to continue his journey. Naturally.

The reason becomes obvious as the voiceover comes through – the Cavalier, of course, is so good in the wet that it can drive across open water, neatly avoiding the queue and allowing the driving enthusiast behind the wheel to continue his journey unhindered. Erm... quite. But we can’t fail to be smitten – as the tagline suggests – by this ad, and not just because a mint, standard Cavalier GSI in black today looks a rather handsome thing, especially in this setting. It’s simple, amusing, memorable and effective – all things a good car ad should be; and the sort of thing Vauxhall was good at before it resorted to using disconcerting shouty stuffed toys. Oh, and listen out for the fantastically over-dramatic orchestral snippet of Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’, Vauxhall’s standard jingle in the early 90s, at its close.