The Chevrolet Cavalier is making its comeback as a 'cultural phenomenon'

Somewhere out there is the very last Chevrolet Cavalier - a tin-can testament to American mediocrity - that was ever built. Maybe it's in the back of a rental-car lot in Pittsburgh, sitting there like a lost dog in the rain, hoping a little old lady will pick it up and take it home. We just don't know.

This is because when the last one rolled off the line at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in 2005, the good people who'd been paid $18 or $20 an hour to build 5 million of them over the past two decades didn't really care. It came off the line and went off to die at some dealer's lot. It was one of the most mundane cars ever built.

Now, for reasons that defy the Divine Order of the Universe, there is a subculture of guys who adore it. Who create Cavalier websites and Cavalier car clubs and Cavalier chat rooms. It's like starting a fan club for a lawn mower.

"A cultural phenomenon," says Edward Loh, a senior editor at Motor Trend.

It was "the car that deservedly got GM in trouble," says Paul Eisenstein, publisher of the Car Connection, a popular automotive website.

"The drive is memorable because it was the worst we've experienced in recent memory," according to Edmunds, one of the most respected auto magazines, in an online review. Edmunds said the Cavvy was "homely." The engine shook "like a caffeine addict going through withdrawal." And: "Road noise is present at all times." And: "The seats are uncomfortable for any length of time."

'Look at me'

Something is going on here, something on the darker edge of American possibility, something scary in the back aisles of AutoZone. Why would teen-agers, young men, all in search of hipness, devote themselves to such mediocrity? Surely they are strange young men, which makes them sort of just like us, so we like them right away. We think maybe they are a particular type of American antihero: young men in search of Available Glory. This is a sense of unique identity, of art, of self-expression, that might be found within the bounds of your paycheck.

You know what?

Cavalier guys love this. Go ahead, yuk it up. They'll take a used Cavvy for five grand and get in the garage and turn it into something that'll shame your 20 grand store-bought Civic, or anything else you saw in The Fast and the Furious.

"When I drive by, I want people to look at me and say, 'Wow, that's a Cavalier,' " Josh Detorie is saying.

Detorie's got a cleaning rag, and he is working it over his maxed-out Cavvy. He's tall and lanky and soft-spoken and has reddish hair cut short and a wispy beard and is 23 and is smoking a cigarette. The evening light is going in the apartment parking lot in Towson, Md. He and the car have been together since 2004; he and Anna Hutson, his fiancée, have been together about that long, too. They have a daughter, Zoe, who will be 2 this summer. Zoe, she's toodling around on the sidewalk. Detorie and Hutson and Zoe and Detorie's mom and her lady friend who drives an Orkin truck all live in an apartment one floor up. It's a garden apartment complex with a pool.

"Most of the people who drive muscle cars, yeah, they say stuff about the Cavalier. I say that muscle cars are built the way they need to be. This is something to get new power out of. It's fun in the process. You do it all yourself."

He won something like a dozen trophies at car shows last year, but mostly minor stuff. He wants to get "to the next level," where you can be like in the top 10 and win $300 or something. The car shows are great. You talk cars all day, get ideas from other rides, then go back to the hotel. A guy in his car club, his girlfriend has a stripper pole. They set that up and see if you can hold your body out sideways. Beer pong is popular.

Detorie works maintenance at Sunbelt Rentals, a place where you can rent backhoes and tractors and things. He wears a work shirt with his name stitched on the right pocket, putting in six days a week. He's at work at 7 a.m. He never knew his dad and was raised by his mom and her parents. He packs his lunch.

Slight modifications

The car is candy-blue and silver. It's gorgeous.

"I have a couple thousand pictures of my car from what it looked like when I bought it until now. It wasn't blue and silver originally. It was black and silver, but the black got to be so much to keep up with. Oxidation kicks in a lot faster. I was working so much I wasn't able to keep up with it."

He produces several hundred pictures of the car on his iPod Touch.

He's reworked just about everything but the taillights. His webpage lists more than 50 modifications. Tires upgraded four sizes. New suspension. A GM performance supercharger under the hood. A 1,200-watt Sony amplifier. Flat-screen television in the trunk, television monitors mounted in the visors. Racing seats. Custom-made sliders. Triple engine gauges, like eyeballs, on the driver's side of the dash. Neon blue lights under the car and inside, too; it lights up like the control room of an aircraft carrier.

Of course it has remote start.

The outer suburbs

It's Sunday afternoon, a day off. Detorie's in the garage at his grandparents' house. It's overcast and windy and bleak, and the cars are hissing past on the multi-lane roadway out front.

It's his dream space. A hydraulic jack. Spare bumpers, boxes, parts, a 60-gallon air compressor in the corner. Meguiar's detailing sprays and polishes.

Joe Salzman tells you this without bitterness. He left school in the sixth grade to work, pumping gas in Upstate New York, helping the family pay the bills. He's standing in the living room, lots of pictures of the kids on the walls. He's in his 70s and still works six days a week, 2 in the afternoon till 10 at night, at the post office, overseeing the vehicle maintenance unit.

"When I was coming up, it was just work, work, work. Nowadays, all these kids are so far into drugs and alcohol. The car, it keeps him out of all that. He works, and he works steady. He doesn't have that drug and alcohol problem, and that means all the world to me."

It's Salzman who has bankrolled almost all the modifications on the car.

He and his wife, Ruth, like having the boy close. Ruth lost her daughter, Belinda, in 1973.

She was fine, just fine, then started to get really tired. Leukemia. She was 17, and her hair started falling out with the chemo. She was in the ground the next year.

Guts. Work. The kids. The roadway out front of the house. Here is what has been earned, or what God has allowed. A sense of Sunday afternoon, the quiet.

Detorie pulls out a few minutes later, candy-blue Cavalier rumbling, the body four inches off the asphalt. His car club meeting is outside I-695, the Baltimore Beltway, in the parking lot of Lucas Brothers Flooring. It's right behind a Dunkin' Donuts. By the time darkness falls, maybe 20 cars and guys are standing around, hands in pockets against the chill, shadows on the pavement, it's all about Available Glory and the American car.

Detorie has his blue neon lights on the Cav, the doors open, talking, laughing, smoking. Sunday night, work looming tomorrow morning, the outer suburbs, a place in America where everything seems so real and so little seems possible.