Plain Or Fancy, Your Choice: 2005 Chevy Cavalier vs 2007 Cadillac CTS

Sbsd 3 22 2023
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Welcome to your hump-day edition of Shitbox Showdown! Today we’re headed to Austin, Texas to look at two cars at opposite ends of the GM family price range, at least when they were new. But before we do that, let’s see which one of yesterday’s five-doors you picked:

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Wow, you all really hate PT Cruisers that much, huh? Or the appeal of the Opel by another name was just too strong? Either way, bad day for Mopar around here, it looks like.

But hey, if you want defunct GM models, you’re in luck: Today we have two of them! Both run, neither one has working air conditioning, and that’s about where the similarities end. Let’s take a look.

2005 Chevrolet Cavalier LS – $2,500

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Engine/drivetrain: 2.2 liter dual overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD

Location: Austin, TX

Odometer reading: 195,000 miles

Runs/drives? Yep!

If you keep building the same car for decades, gradually improving and refining it, it’s bound to turn into a decent car eventually, right? Introduced for the 1982 model year, with minor variations across five GM divisions (including Cadillac), the J-cars were a sales hit. It didn’t matter that they weren’t as refined or well-built as their imported competitors; GM dealers were everywhere, and J-cars were cheap. And gradually, a funny thing happened: the little GM front-drivers gained a reputation for cockroach-like survival. Neglect them, abuse them, it didn’t matter – the damn things just kept going. They weren’t reliable, exactly, just tenacious.

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Nowadays, nearly two decades after the last one was produced, J-cars are finally getting thin on the ground, gradually losing their long war of attrition against the forces of nature and the wrath of fifth and sixth owners. Examples like this little Cavalier coupe can still be found, though. This one is closing in on 200,000 miles, and I have no doubt that, barring catastrophe, it will reach that milestone.

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It does have a little rust around the edges, and some wear and tear in the interior, but the seller says it runs well, and has new brakes and tires. The air conditioning doesn’t blow cold, which is a disadvantage in Texas for sure. But who knows? It could be an easy fix, and if not, there’s always the “2/60” method.

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The good news is that it has a working CD player, so break out your Foo Fighters CDs, crank ’em up, sing along, and you won’t notice how hot it is. (Or whatever you feel like singing along to. I’m just in a Foo Fighters mood, I guess.)

2007 Cadillac CTS – $2,250

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Engine/drivetrain: 2.8 or 3.6 liter dual overhead cam V6, five-speed automatic, RWD

Location: Kyle, TX

Odometer reading: 135,000 miles

Runs/drives? So they say

GM, like the rest of the US auto industry, embraced front-wheel-drive like pop stars embraced drum machines, and it seemed there was no going back. Except for a few full-sized dinosaur holdovers, American cars moved to front-wheel-drive in the ’80s, and enthusiasts despaired. But twenty years later, rear-wheel-drive started to creep back in, in cars like this: the Cadillac CTS.

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Though honestly, when this car came out, I had no idea it was rear-wheel-drive until that big chase scene in the second Matrix movie. Even better, you could get a CTS with a manual transmission behind its “High Feature” V6. Sadly, this CTS is an automatic, and we’re not told whether it’s a 2.8 or 3.6 liter engine. In fact, we’re not told much about this car except that it runs and drives, and the air conditioning is broken in this one, too.

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I do question the “runs and drives” claim, simply because it’s sitting in a pile of leaves and debris up to the wheels, and the left rear tire may be flat. It might have run fine when the seller backed it into that spot, but I get the feeling that was quite a while ago. This Caddy has definitely seen better days; there’s a big dent in one front fender, the paint is shot, and the interior is, well, this:

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Filthy, ripped, littered with crap, and is that mold starting to grow on the steering wheel? I mean, it could be worse, and we do know how to get rid of it, but still, ew.

Depreciation is tough on cars. Drive it off the lot, and you lose your shirt on it. A few years and a couple hundred thousand miles later, and that fancy luxury car is worth less than the commuter special, and may be a worse deal. But I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)

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52 thoughts on “Plain Or Fancy, Your Choice: 2005 Chevy Cavalier vs 2007 Cadillac CTS

  1. When new, the CTS stickered for double the Cavalier, if you only looked at the interiors and nothing else, you might assume they were almost at parity

  2. Oh man, this is a lead-pipe-cinch. The Cavalier will run for years to come with like six tools at $28 worth of parts. That rolling crime scene of a CTS will ruin everything about your life.

  3. I’ve had both, my cts was manual though; here, you want the cavalier. I was like hell yes, manual rear drive caddy? Sign me up! The ride was terrible, the engine was extremely unimpressive, it just didn’t feel like it should of. We sold that accursed thing the second the title came back from the dmv. The cavalier will give you many miles of cheap, dgaf enjoyment before the rust finally takes it.

  4. What on Earth happened to the CTS? The clear coat/paint looks like it is peeling off.

    Someone call Gossin, this might be worse than that Park Ave he picked up. This thing is worth $200 tops.

  5. I am going with the Caddy. Mark that may be mold but it is Corinthian Mold. Take out the back seats, remove the trunk lid and you got yourself an El Cadilaco with tons of space.

  6. I thought Caddy all the way at the headline and then I saw just how fucked up it is. What a shame. That gen Cavalier is really sad too. Realistically if you are shopping these two buy a bus pass instead.

    1. Basically my thought as well, if you live somewhere with functioning public transport.

      Either of yesterday’s choices would be a slam dunk over these, but at least the Cavalier appears to have a couple years left in it. Not so much voting for it as against this particular example of CTS.

  7. The pictures you chose to show of the Caddy really undersell what a pile of shit that car is. The only thing it needs to come full circle is a few bullet holes. I’d choose the Cadaver without a second thought.

  8. Looked at that caddy, and now it’s soapbox time; it never ceases to amaze me how people can invest so much in the purchase of a vehicle and care so little about it over the long term. Doesn’t something ever kick in when they say to themselves, “hey…this cost me $X, maybe I should take care of it?” Example – I live across the street from a family that has a 3-car garage, yet all five of their family vehicles sit outside. Why? Because the garage is fairly well filled with boxes – much of it gets collected and put outside for a yard sale once a year, then the cycle repeats. They literally have roughly $100,000 worth of vehicles continuously exposed to the elements in order to spare the crap that they can get maybe a couple hundred for ONE TIME PER YEAR. Sorry about the O/T ramble, but I can never understand how someone lets a seemingly decent car like this turn to absolute crap. I understand that life circumstances sometimes get in the way, but damn…cut it loose and get what you can for it before it gets to this point.

    1. To be fair, it was 50k new, one year later it was worth 20k, and a year after that it was worth about 10k. These are crap cars that will make a 3rd or 4th owner poor with maintenance.

    2. The “life happens” thing is a pretty big factor. When I was in high school, my mom leased a 2005 STS, fully loaded, for >$900/month. Four months later, my dad walked out on the family and she couldn’t (wouldn’t?) return the Caddy without taking a huge hit. So, she kept driving it. Problem is, she spent the next three years in a state of near catatonia and trivial stuff like “basic car care” fell to the wayside. It didn’t take long before there were cracks in the bumpers, CELs, cigarette burns and coffee stains in the upholstery….I hope whoever eventually bought that thing off-lease did a very thorough inspection beforehand and knew what they were getting into, but in hindsight it’s probably better that my mom unloaded it at the end despite the fees she had to pay for the condition it was in before the Northstar V8 grenaded itself.

      Alternative theory: I wouldn’t be surprised if Caddies in general are frequent victims of sociological circumstances, like where Grandma dies and her low-mileage Caddy goes to your cousin Vape Pen Vinny, and a decade later….well, here we are.
      (See also: Regular Car Review’s video on the PT Cruiser for more insight on this phenomenon.)

  9. Is that a CTS-V grill slapped on there? Wonder if that’s a aesthetic choice by the third or fourth owner, or if this kitty got its front teeth knocked out at some point…

    Either way I’ll take the humble but honest Cav.

  10. It’s not surprising when the driver’s seat is worn out at these cars’ age, but the back seat, too?!? That CTS has seen some stuff!

    Cavalier FTW, in this case.

  11. I went with the Cavalier because the interior pics of the CTS gave me both the heebies and the jeebies. I’m curious about the rust though, I wonder if that car lived up north for a while because we don’t usually see that down here.

    1. Speaking of interiors, look at how beautifully uncluttered those controls are in the cavalier. There’s, like, 3 (ok, slightly redundant) HVAC knobs and a CD player. No screens, no masses of weird buttons, just hot/cold and loud/quiet. Mmmmmmm,hmmmmm, yes. What more do you need?

      1. Well, if those knobs were attached to a functioning AC that would be a plus. It’s nice out right now but these same two cars won’t sell at all come August.

  12. That CTS either has a 3.6 that needs a timing chain, or a 2.8 that is a nightmare to find the replacement engine it will inevitably need.

    The Cavalier is apparently from one of the zillion transplants from other places that have ruined Austin given the rust.

    I’d buy the Cavalier, provided that it’s former owner would use the cash to go the hell back to where they came from so those of us FROM the area could fix the mess they’ve made.

  13. Used to call them Cadavaliers because there were so many of them dead on the side of the road. But in running shape, it’s better than that beat to crap Cadillac

  14. At one time it would have been a bit impressive pulling up to to the supper club with your date riding shotgun in the CTS. Now both look cheap and abused so why not go with the one that at least doesn’t look like it shouldn’t have been? Cavalier all the way!

    1. The Cavalier looks to be in decent shape. Dirty inside, sure. It has 200k miles on it. Couldn’t have been abused that bad. Probably just someone’s commuter car to rack up miles.

  15. That cts probably comes with a full complement of rodents and cockroaches. The cavalier merely had the reputation as one. Unenthusiastic vote for it.

  16. I had an 03 CTS with a 5 speed and I loved that car. This one is ROUGH though. Just tow that thing to Copart and put it out of its misery. I gotta go Cavalier.

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