19th Aug 2006, 15:58

I think the word we are looking for here is GOOD! Good GSIs are getting very rare indeed as I found out whilst looking for a red top variant. I looked at several so called "professional" wheelarch repairs and eventually decided that I would settle for a 16V SRI instead. Even finding a good SRI red top was a challenge and I spent three months looking at the usual rusty wheelarches and "modified" trash before I found a really mint one. So... The fella is right in that "GOOD" red top Cavaliers are rare. GSIs or SRIs in general can be found relatively easily, but these will be the eight valvers or mercilessly thrashed and modded 16valve variety. Ecotec Cavaliers are still all over the place, but tend to be shunned by a lot of Cavalier enthusiasts.

For the record I do think that the GSIs are very much overrated. These do look nicer than the SRI, but are in fact very slightly slower than the SRIs and also tend to have suffered more from body rot. Some of the cars I looked at in my search had quite severe body rot underneath compared to the SRIs I started to look at later. Really the only major difference is the fact that the GSIs have a boot and some fancy decals stuck to it. Inside you get a few extras like the walnut trim, but hey... walnut in a sporty car???