Pity the pretty and poised Opel Kadett E, a crude facsimile of it years later having conditioned consumers the world over to wretch at the mere sight of it. At least GM spared Australian consumers the indignity of seeing a heritage nameplate crudely affixed to a cut-rate Korean rehash, although the insultingly inappropriate Pontiac LeMans name was used in New Zealand. Instead, Australian buyers had to wait even longer for the dubious pleasure of being able to purchase a new, Korean-built Opel Kadett E. By the time it arrived in Australia, the Daewoo 1.5i – as it was unimaginatively titled here – was based on a ten-year old design. As you can imagine, it was even less impressive than the LeMans had been in North America six years earlier.
More’s the pity as the Kadett E, also known as the Vauxhall Astra, was quite a looker in its day. Subtly aerodynamic, the Kadett E was the height of style in the European C-segment of the mid-1980s even if it wasn’t the absolute class leader. At least the hatchbacks were – the sedan and wagon were boxy and unadorned to the point of being austere. There was even a convertible plus rorty GTE and GSi hot hatches powered by 1.8 and 2.0 four-cylinder engines, as well as the Combo/Astramax van.
Daewoo commenced production of the Kadett E in 1986, although it didn’t arrive in North America until 1988. It didn’t exactly astound North American consumers with its brilliance then and, when it finally arrived in September 1994 in Australia, it was looking decidedly ancient. The modest facelift bestowed upon the LeMans in 1993 was skipped for Australia for reasons unknown, leaving the Daewoo 1.5i looking much like an ’84 Kadett. And, in a puzzling twist, the 1.5i had a very Pontiac-esque arrowhead badge in its grille.
In Wheels’ 1995 Annual Quality ratings, the 1.5i came 19th out of 20 cars. Scorn was levelled at its inconsistent and broad panel gaps and poor-quality interior. Despite this, sales for the fledgling Korean brand got off to a good start in Australia. There was a memorable ad campaign featuring a trusty Kelpie, an excellent three-year/100,000km warranty, and a low, low drive-away price of $AUD14,000. That wasn’t bad for something that was closer in size to a Toyota Corolla but closer in price to a Suzuki Swift.
It’s a credit to the basic goodness of the Kadett E that, even when it was ten years old and indifferently assembled, the 1.5i wasn’t completely horrid. There was the aforementioned roomy cabin and low price and, reassuringly, a trusty, Holden-produced, fuel-injected 1.5 SOHC four-cylinder engine under the hood. It wasn’t the last word in refinement but it was rather peppy for its class with 77 hp and 93 ft-lbs.
The real Korean hero was the Hyundai Excel (Accent), launched at the same time, which soared up the sales charts and was even briefly the best-selling car in Australia. It had fresher styling inside and out and, like the also Korean and almost as hot-selling Ford Festiva (Aspire), it better appealed to young buyers. The defunct Which Car? magazine put the three Koreans to the test, throwing in a Seat Ibiza and Suzuki Swift for good measure. This was actually the first car magazine issue I ever bought – Which Car? became a treasure of my childhood – and this is the only issue I ever drew in, so ignore the doodles!
Volkswagen introduced the Seat brand to Australia in 1995 as a budget counterpart to Volkswagen, and tried with little success to sell these Spanish cars here before giving up in 1999. Owing to its European production, VW couldn’t get prices down low enough to make a dent in the market. The German-engineered Ibiza naturally stood above its rivals but, with a $2k price premium over them, that was to be expected.
As Which Car? was marketed as more of a buyer’s guide for Australian consumers, covering both new and used cars, comparison tests often featured sections on safety…
…and ergonomics. Not everything is 0-60 times and slaloms!
While North American buyers had a new Suzuki Swift for 1995, buyers in other markets were left with the 1988-vintage model. And, having driven one, I can attest the Swift Cino with its manual steering was a rather miserable thing to drive. Like the testers, I was loathe to take it onto the highway.
At the same price as smaller, tinnier cars like the Swift, you can somewhat see the appeal of a larger, seemingly more substantial car like the 1.5i.
That is, if you ignore the much more impressive Excel. It, too, was a bit bigger than most its rivals and it was even more powerful than the 1.5i, already quite sprightly for its class. The Hyundai also came with the option of a driver’s airbag.
The Excel completely shaded the Festiva in every respect, too. The Korean Ford was also bog slow with a 0-100 km/h time of 16.6 seconds, lineball with the breathless Ibiza. At least the Ibiza felt well-composed to drive, the Ford managing the trifecta of tippy handling, unsettled ride and gutless performance.
It’s no surprise, then, that Which Car? found the Hyundai to be the victor of this comparison. Rival magazine Wheels put the exact same cars to the test the same year – with a Mazda 121 thrown in for good measure – and had the exact same order of results. They praised the 1.5i for its engaging value and for being a “big and solid lump”.
Both Aussie magazines, however, found the 1.5i to be deficient in quality, refinement and style. A similar verdict was rendered by Consumer Guide just two years prior when the 1.5i’s counterpart, the Pontiac LeMans, was exiting the North American market. Curiously, the Pontiac’s engine was also a Family I unit with almost identical power and torque figures but which displaced 1.6 liters.
The lines between the B and C-segment were more blurred in the US and Canada than in Australia. Down here, the 1.5i was a good $5k cheaper than a base C-segment offering like a Nissan Pulsar or Mitsubishi Lancer (Mirage). In the US, however, the LeMans’ value proposition evaporated. It may have offered the lowest sticker price in the Pontiac showroom but a base ’93 LeMans was only $200 cheaper than the more modern, powerful and refined Ford Escort; there was a similar price difference between it and the Plymouth Sundance. The redesigned 1993 Dodge and Plymouth Colt even undercut the Korean Pontiac and if you truly wanted a dirt-cheap hatchback, the Ford Festiva cost just $6914.
Ignore the modest facelift for 1993 and the LeMans was looking old and tired, which was ironic as it had yet to even be introduced to Australia at that point. So, how did it fare with critics earlier in its run?
In 1989, Consumer Guide reviewed the LeMans and… well, the story was much the same. This was an Opel that had the Germanic goodness sucked out of it and yet its Korean build couldn’t even get the price low enough to make it a good buy. North America may have gotten a sprightly 2.0 in the top-line GSE but the LeMans made even less sense at that end of the model range.
At least the base ’89 LeMans – the Value Leader Aerocoupe – undercut almost everything except the Hyundai Excel and the wretched Yugo. You had to forego power steering but it was the same story on the base Dodge Colt which cost $300 more and had the indignity of vinyl seats. Even the aged Plymouth Horizon was more expensive than a LeMans. Alas, that value advantage eroded during the LeMans’ run even as it became older and less desirable. Even as Hyundai Excel sales plummeted from their initial heights (260,000 annually from 1987-1988 to just 40k in 1992), Hyundai still managed to outsell the LeMans by 2-to-1. Sure, the Hyundai had no showroom competition (yet) but that was still a poor showing for the Pontiac. Their best year was 1988 with 64k units, sliding each year before crashing at just under 8k units in 1993.
Just a year after its launch in Australia, the old lump 1.5i was replaced with the Cielo. Don’t be fooled by its revised and more era-appropriate styling—underneath, this was still the same old car. There was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it interior freshening and an optional 1.6 twin-cam four with 88 hp but the Cielo still looked mighty old. At least Daewoo had the sense to hire Porsche to try and tidy up the ride quality.
The stodgy Daewoo looked like a car for cheapskates. And Daewoo sold it as such, even dropping the four-speed auto for a three-speed unit halfway through the car’s run and making power steering an option.
Daewoo’s sales performance was nothing to scoff at, though. In 1996, just over a year after its Australian launch, the brand posted 12,750 sales. While only a quarter of Hyundai’s number, it was only 2-4,000 units off of Honda and Nissan’s figures. Never underestimate a low price and a long warranty, no matter how old your product is.
And if you want to talk old product, consider this: the Cielo was discontinued in Australia in 1998, a whopping 14 years after its forebear was first introduced, but it continued to be produced elsewhere in the world. The last market the Cielo was sold in was Uzbekistan, where it was offered until 2016 as the Nexia. That was one of the more common names for this reclothed Kadett, known in other markets as the Racer, Fantasy, Pointer and Heaven.
While the LeMans’ lifespan was mercifully cut short in North America, GM went as far as developing clay models of a replacement model that would have continued using the aged platform.
The sedan’s styling is fairly innocuous and 1990s-generic but the hatch borders on cute with its fresh and curvaceous styling. GM evidently decided the Sunfire was sufficient as an entry-level product for the Pontiac brand and the car never reached production. These photos are from GM via the wonderfully informative Vauxpedia.
While the 1.5i/Cielo’s lifespan was short in Australia, Daewoo managed to use this old hand-me-down platform as a diving board here as it had throughout the world. It may have been thoroughly outdated and built to a low, low price but it still had some glimmer of competence hidden under its ageing sheetmetal and plasticky interior. And without the 1.5i/Cielo/LeMans/etc, Daewoo wouldn’t have become the thriving Korean automaker… that financially imploded and had to be bailed out by General Motors.
Cielo photographed in Brisbane CBD in November 2015. 1.5i photographed in Toombul, QLD in June 2018.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1987 Hyundai Excel – The Damn Near Deadly Sin
Curbside Classic: 1995-99 Hyundai Accent/Excel – A Strong Foundation
Curbside Classic: 1996 Ford Aspire – OMG, I Found Another One
I think a big factor against this car in the US was that folks (probably) knew it was Korean built and had an unknown reputation. Pretty much every other small car on the American market had an established reputation, be it good or bad.
The styling appealed to me, but I guess I must have read or figured out that just like the “Opel by Isuzu”, this was another car with German roots that had had all the best German engineering penny pinched out of it.
In 1989, I would throw away my anti-Asian bias and buy a Honda Civic. I think I would have been tempted by the LeMans GSE, but it wasn’t available in 1989.
I have recently seen a few examples of the 80s Mazda 121/Ford Festiva, but I haven’t seen one of these LeMans outside of a junkyard in over 10 years.
This generation of Opel Kadett seemed to get good reviews, so I don’t quite get how so much got lost in the Opel to Daewoo to Pontiac translation. I looked at one when they were new and found much to like – several unusual features for its class like height-adjustable seats, a dashboard that mimicked the look of a BMW’s complete with orange-red backlighting, and a huge trunk in the 4 door sedan model. I never drove one, which likely would have hurt my impression of the car. But sitting in the showroom it seemed modestly attractive.
The Opel Kadett E was a terrible, terrible car.
At speeds of 150 km/h the dashboard would rattle & shake itself to self destruction.
The materials they used on the interior gave a new meaning to the word “cheap”.
Compared to its main contender, the bullet proof VW Golf 2, this iteration of the Kadett was a complete joke.
Rust and the fading grey color of the plastic bumpers made it look old and used-up after only a couple of years.
It was tentatively aerodynamic though and in GSi trim as quick as lightning.
+1. Rented one of these in Frankfurt for our honeymoon in ’80. Horrible car- made my wife’s Honda Accord seem like a Mercedes by comparison when we got home. I’ve never driven the Korean version, but if the German version was that bad… I can only imagine.
The Kadett E was introduced in 1984…
My mistake- but that little Red kadett hatchback was a dead ringer for the pics here.
…which makes me wonder, what did you drive in Frankfurt in 1980?
The Kadett D (below, introduced in 1979), which felt like a Benz compared to its flimsy successor, the Kadett E.
Or the older Kadett C? (the German Chevette)
Until 1992, my brother had a Kadett D, bought used. A very well built and durable car. Not even the slightest sign of rust.
As a one-time owner of a late model D-type Kadett, I always considered the E-type to be hideous.I hated the exterior and I hated the interior. The hatch-back looked bad, the sedan looked worse.
Daewoo has been tied to GM for decades, GMH got the front sheetmetal for the first six cylinder Torana from Daewoo in the late 60s, The Pontiac Lemans was sold in NZ I saw one when I came back a mates daughter had bought one for $300 as her first car, My sister who wrote her Mirage off the week before they left for a European holiday test drove one new having had a Astra rental in England she liked it so much she bought a new Corolla the next day, I havent seen one in a long time though no doubt some are still about.
My first car! Sort of, my first car in Korea anyway. After no driving for 3 years, I was happy to have it. The depreciation on these was that I could buy a ’92 model in ’97 for 700,000 won, around $1000 US at the time. I did test drive an Excel and found the LeMans to have vastly superior dynamics. It was quicker, and held right on in the curves too. The interior was also nicer, although that’s not saying much. It was no contest to me, although reliability was another story. Mine was top-of-the line GTE, which in KDM form, was well equipped, with alloys, AC , rather slow power steering, power windows, locks, antenna and deck release, and sundry other little items. The aforementioned height-adjustable drivers seat was nice too. It was a actually a high piece with a crank & worm gear setup.
I never felt bad about it’s reliability issues because of how little I paid for it, and I had a fun time driving the crap out of it.
This was the car most likely to be found abandoned in the country in those days. I did in fact find one abandoned at a construction site at my own place of employment, a university campus. It was there so long It had been ring-fenced into construction area. I went over to and spent an afternoon harvesting parts, and had spares for the whole time I had it.
I find the white and gold hatchbacks a little confusing looking. The original Euro-market 5-door looked like this, as shown in the second pic. They didn’t dramatically change the cabin part of the sedan or 3-door bodies.
I never realised it until I read this, but now I’m wondering about that too. Maybe they figured since the 5 door would have been the volume seller in Asian markets it needed refreshing? The original C-pillar treatment was definitive early-eighties Opel, but design had moved on to a rounder, glassier look.
Actually, in the KDM the sedans vastly outsold the hatchback models, both 2 and 4 door. 2 door cars still fare poorly in this market. The Genesis Coupe is about the only one left, the Kia Forte Koop having been dropped.
Given that, it was a smart move to have hatchbacks share a common door tooling with the sedan.
Also in Canada after being sold as a Pontiac, it became an Asuna that is featured in this posting: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/passport-to-badge-engineering-hell-gm-messes-with-our-heads/
Yes I thought these were sold here in Canuckistan in the early ’90s under the Passport name. Didn’t last long.
Yes, first Passport and then they switched to Asuna for the brand name for the Sunfire and Tracker and this car.
Afaik this Opel Kadet is the most rebadged car ever. It was even basis for that weird Asüna badge (=GM Canada). Back then I worked for a large auto supplier and I recall 8 or so different badges for this particular Opel.
Either it or the Suzuki Swift.
Never underestimate the value of an Australian blue cattle dog and a snappy advertising campaign to sell some pretty average cars. Kane the dog featured heavily in nearly all the earlier Australian Daewoo car ads and became quite a minor celebrity in the 90’s. Without doubt he single-handedly helped Daewoo shift quite a few units. Even my car-phobic mother was happy to consider a Daewoo Nubira at the time because she loved ‘the dog ads’. I do wonder how Daewoo would have sold in Australia if not for Kane. The ad where he directs a blind man around a makeshift racecourse in a Nubira is a bit of a classic car ad of it’s time.
I’d never heard of a Kelpie so I looked them up on Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Kelpie
Very, very cool dogs. Part Dingo, part sheep dog, and part?
I especially like the “Kelpie signature move” of walking on the backs of a herd of sheep.
Also tied in with the period Don Spencer kids’ song “Bob the Kelpie”. A lot of Aussie kids (country kids especially) grew up with the Don Spencer CD. Brilliant marketing, whoever thought of it!
The Kadett E got a better reputation in Brazil, unlike the Daewoo Racer it was make with a better sheet metal and didn’t suffer with rust and corrosion, there are many of them still running around, with 1.8 and 2.0, the main issue is one is more gas guzzling than other.
The original design was almost all unchanged from the Opel version unlike the bigger bumpers and reverse light in both tail lights in the Brazilian version. GMB brought the Astra F in 1995 from GM-Belgium in attempt to replace the Kadett, but as the Brazilian money depreciated in 1996, it became too expensive and GMB ended it’s importation in favor to invest in the old Kadett again until the next generation of the Astra come to light, which had been developed by Opel in partner with Holden and Chevrolet-Brazil. So in 1998 the Astra G replaced the Kadett. For unknown reasons Daewoo never imported officially the Racer and Cielo to Brazil as it did in our neighborhood.
A LeMans GSE, exactly as pictured above in white was ruled out as a contender in my brief search for a new car in the Spring of ’89. I was looking to trade in my ’85 Conquest for a more practical economy car with front wheel drive, as I had started my first “real job”, complete with a 30 mile commute. The target price at the time was $7000ish. The Sentra coupe was a top choice, followed by the VW Fox. I’d ruled out a Subaru Justy despite its 4WD, as it was just too cheapo feeling and underpowered. The Fox would have been an also-ran, as I’d really been interested in a Jetta until sticker shock ruled it out. Toyota offered nothing inspiring in my price range. The hot hatch FX had caught my attention, but price-wise I’d have had to settle with its also-ran stripper step sister, so no Toyota for me. My Dad’s good friend “Uncle Jack” at the Chrysler dealership showed me a Plymouth Sundance, which was a little too conservative for me, and he only had automatics on the lot at the time, so no go. He did give me a Colt hatchback with upgraded cloth interior, stereo, a/c and 5 speed to take for the afternoon, and within an hour it became my top choice.
The LeMans? I took one look at it and declined even an opportunity to sit in it, let alone drive it. Mind you, I was looking for a economy car, but had hoped to find something with a bit of style, preferably with some degree of “performance” cred (such as it was in the late 80’s), and the LeMans GS-whatever had the biggest engine, was equipped better and was decked out with more then-popular cladding, spoilers and “euro” gewgaws than any of the other contenders, but no. Just no. And as a 22 year old supposedly upwardly mobile young professional at the time, I was exactly its target customer.
In the end I sat down with the finance guy and got fairly viable finance terms on the Colt, but the cost of insurance shut the whole idea down. A few years of lead-footing around in that Conquest had my driving record crying the blues, so I stuck with the paid-for Conquest for a while longer, since I didn’t have to pay for Collision insurance on it. So in the final analysis the practical choice turned out to be the least practical car. C’est la Vie.
That not-Pontiac badge is nuts. Anyone have a better zoomed in pic of it?
That’s it, a blend of the Pontiac logo with the crown emblem of the Opel Senator’s based Daewoo Royale.
And it seems that the Daewoo Racer is still made in China as Guangdong GTQ 5010X:
http://chinacarhistory.com/2018/02/21/crazy-car-production-days-of-guangdong-guangdong-guangtong/
Does anyone know where I can get these badges? I think I have the only surviving 1989 Daewoo Lemans in the states and im trying to replace these.
The LeMans earned it’s vile reputation in the US in very short order. I remember a coworker mentioning he was shopping for a car for his son, around 91-92, and looking at a LeMans. I suggested the Festiva instead. They got the Festiva and were delighted with it.
The last time I saw a LeMans on the road was around 2000-2001, and it was looking very ratty, while two coworkers at the place I worked in 98-99 had had Festivas that still looked reasonably fresh.
The temptation is to lay the LeMans’ durability and reliability shortcomings on locally sourced Korean parts, but the Kia built Festiva, by all accounts, was excellent. I even had a coworker that squeezed 180,000 miles out of a late 80s Excel by 1999. The only reason the Excel expired then was he had never replaced the timing belt, which had had a 60,000 mile replacement interval. Billy’s satisfaction with the Excel was such that he went straight to the Hyundai store and bought a new Sonata. Meanwhile, Daewoo products pedaled in the US carried on their tradition of shoddy, unpleasant cars. GM Korea nearly went toes up a few months ago, but received last minute bailouts from the Korean government and GMUS.
I remember when these came out as the Pontiac LeMans in the US. Nothing could have been less relevant to me at that time. Almost every small car on the market presented better than this one did. And where it cost somewhere north of $7k at the time (I believe) I had spent about a third of that on a near-new condition 66 Fury III. I would not have traded that old Plymouth for a new LeMans even with money back.
I admit to being very biased against the Daewoo Cielo because one embarrassed me with a pretty girl. I was living outside of the U.S. at the time these were introduced and not paying much attention to cars as life was pretty busy. Anyhow, I flew into the U.S. on business and, arriving late at night, went to pick up my rental car. The girl at the counter said, “And we have a brand-new Pontiac LeMans for you tonight!” Naively I responded, “Oh, good!” thinking I’d been upgraded. The girl actually stopped what she was doing and gave me a long look, head tilted at a quizzical angle – I noticed because I thought it quite odd.
Anyhow, I took my keys and my bag and went out to the parking lot where I wandered for 10 minutes absolutely unable to find my car (not remote locks so I couldn’t do that trick) and finally had to give up and go back into the office. The girl, now convinced that I was some sort of moron, quickly took me over to……this can on wheels. I got in and started the car, and pulled the knob on the dash to turn on the headlights – the knob came off in my hand.
Suffice to say, having expected a real Pontiac LeMans, or at least a real car I was less than impressed by the thing. Should I ever learn the name of the GM executive cynical enough to call this car a “Pontiac LeMans” I will make a pilgrimage to
pijump up and down on his grave. A pointless gesture though as I am certain that he is already in one of the deeper circles of Hell.As to the objective merits of the car, I leave it to others to search for them, as I couldn’t find any. It was the flimsiest, noisiest, piece of poorly assembled tin I ever drove.*
* A rented 2005 Chevy Aveo came close though. I never decided if it had a transmission problem, a stuck parking brake, or just had no power. Still, at least GM didn’t call it a Grand Prix.
No, there was nothing technically wrong with your rental Aveo. The Daewoo-built Chevy Aveo has the unenviable reputation of being one of the worst cars sold in the US within the last ten years. It was a car that did absolutely nothing even remotely well, other than being sold at a rock-bottom price. A true ‘seats-and-a-steering wheel’ car and the epitome of the logic of an off-lease, two-year-old Corolla or Civic being a much better buy than a brand-new Aveo for the same price. Even upon the rare sighting of an Aveo still in operation on the road, it’s usually belching great clouds of smoke from its tailpipe. A truly dreadful car that was difficult to imagine being sold in this day and age. If anyone wanted to know what it was like driving a new car in the seventies, the Aveo was your car.
Oddly enough, it’s replacement, the Sonic, which was mostly Daewoo engineered (but built at the Lordstown, OH GM plant which was also the place that built the Vega), enjoys a solid reputation virtually 180 degrees from the Aveo.
Speaking of the Daewoo LeMans, the basic styling and shape always struck me as being the inspiration for the much lamented Pontiac Aztek. In fact, one of the (many) Aztek jokes was that it looked like the unholy offspring of a mating between a Daewoo LeMans and a garbage truck.
Even _I_, as cheap as I am, shied away from the Aveo and I’m on my third Versa 🙂 Aveos are already thin on the ground and they were selling pretty well a decade ago, which is a bad sign. Cobalts are also getting scarce.
My only experience with the Daewoo brand itself is the Lanos hatch, which was rather fun to test drive with a stick and was a worthy contender for my monthly payment book. I don’t remember why I didn’t pull the trigger on one now.
Another answer to the question, “Why didn’t GM send Opel designs to the US?”
Point is that even if GM had “brought over” an Opel design as the ’71 Vega, it would’ve likely been as “German” as Chevette and Daewoo LeMans
Seeing Chevrolet Corsica vs Opel Omega, Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Lumina vs Opel Senator, Holden VN Commodore, Chevrolet Cavalier vs Opel Vectra A or Suzuki Swift – Geo Metro vs Opel Corsa B, I wonder why they didn’t come from the same design studio, it seems that many people was doing the same thing in different plants of GM.
Well I guess you could say that it kept locals in employment, and provided a national identity to the product.
“Designed in Australia” was very important once. Holden still claims its cars (some of them – you have to be careful) are engineered for Australian conditions, as though that’s a worthwhile selling point. But our roads have improved vastly since the days when Opel prototypes broke at the firewall during testing, and people going onto the rough stuff nowadays will take an SUV rather than expect a family sedan to cope. But compared to some of the Daewoos they’ve slapped Holden badges on in the past, they may be onto something.
Yes, I agree with you, moreover regional engineering is essential to offer good and reliable products, however I wonder if it really was necessary for GM to spend so much money in different bodies with the same size and purpose, like the Senator and Corsica or Geo Metro and Corsa B. GM spend so much money in the Opel Vectra A, but they keep improving the J-cars in US, if they spent money developing the Vectra A, they should have used it to replace all the J-cars in US changing just the external design style like Holden used to do. They build the Corsa B even already having the Swift, which has a style even closer to the Opel cars of that time. Both cars was available in South America under the Chevrolet brand, Chevrolet Corsa and Forsa, why not use only one project instead of spend money building two cars with exactly the same size and purpose? GM always looked like a group of different manufacturers which worked separated each other, sometimes doing the same thing for the same market, but not knowing about that. It led them to spend money in areas that never made any difference in the final products.
That was an interesting comparison test. As I would have said on this forum before, a 1995 Daewoo Cielo sedan was my dad’s last car, and the 1.5i hatchback shown here looks like the base version of its Racer predecessor, which we got primarily in sedan form and with misleading “GTi” badging. However, the body colored bumpers and grille made it look less cheap. The automatic did seem to “hunt” a lot in trying to find the correct gears, but that worked itself out after the initial break in period (I drove in a Proton sedan a few years later that was awful in that respect) and everything about the build quality and materials shouted “cheap”, with the rubber around the doors coming loose after only one year (and we had a 14-year-old Cressida at the time whose rubbers were still firmly in place). I also remember the gas gauge falling precipitously when the A/C was turned on. However, it was very roomy and had a good stereo system. Very few left now.
Another thing. SEATs were sold very briefly in Barbados, the original Ibiza and the Fiat Regata based Malaga sedan between 1986 and 1989. They never really caught on for whatever reason and they have all disappeared now.
Got a LeMans for a rental on a Colorado Rocky Mountain vacation. Not exactly a stellar car, but it survived everything I subjected it to, including some fairly serious off-roading.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1990-pontiac-lemans-the-lows-and-rocky-mountain-highs-of-gms-deadly-sin-12/
Paul, my friends daughter got a good run out of her LeMans, she drove it for several years until she bought my friends partners Toyota diesel Liteace van, he is currently regretting selling her his 406 HDI Peugeot, that girl has a way with cast offs.
First picture above:
now I see where they got the styling for the Pontiac Aztec
I owned (was cursed with) a 1989 Pontiac LeMans LE Aerocoupe. At the time I kind of liked the way it looked. It’s looks kind of reminded me of a CRX, though I struggle to see a resemblance now. And given the fact that I was a poor working college student there was nothing else I could afford. The other el cheapo car I priced at the time was the Volkswagen Fox but I was able to get the Pontiac for less than the Fox by buying it through Sam’s Club which sold it with no dealer costs, a reduction of $500 off of MSRP.
I mean sure, in retrospect people will talk about the higher quality of Japanese subcompacts (I agree) and what a piece of junk the LeMans was (also in agreement), but the truth is Toyotas and Hondas were a lot more expensive at the time. As I recall a new, bottom-of-the-line Corolla listed for $1,700 more than the LeMans. And I was poor. But I digress.
The LeMans. Ah, the LeMans. I owned a Chevette prior to owning the LeMans and, hands down, the Chevette was more reliable and better screwed together. Sure, the Chevette was an unpleasant car to drive but it seldom broke down and when it did it was typically something I could fix by looking in a Chilton’s manual and visiting a Western Auto. But the LeMans was in a whole different league.
The first portent of doom for the LeMans was when, a week after I got it, the Pontiac emblem on the rear hatch came off in my hand as I was trying to unlock the hatch. No, problem, nothing a little Krazy Glue couldn’t fix.
About a year after getting the LeMans, I had it packed full of stuff, ready to go home for Christmas break from college. I started the engine and said bye to a friend for about 2 minutes. In that short time, the car had magically shut itself off and wouldn’t restart. I took it to the dealer (thank you, warranty) and was informed that the engine block had cracked and I’d need a new engine.
A year later, the engine block cracked again but this time the dealer refused to replace it under warranty. By that point I was done with the car and my father helped me get rid of (sell not incinerate) the Pontiac LeMon, er, LeMans.
In Korea, there were a lot of recriminations and finger pointing between GM and Daewoo over who was to blame for this fiasco. GM blamed Korean suppliers for shoddy components, and Daewoo blamed GM for the basic engineering. Having owned one, I’d say the former was true. Many of the constant electrical issues, for example, was traced down to poor quality wire winding in the harnesses. Sometimes the door locks wouldn’t work, remedied by wiggling the wiring where it passed from the drivers door into the body. A more serious issue that I experienced: The car would give a lurch, the Check Engine light would come on, and it would start pinging like crazy, with no power. The only remedy on the fly was to cut the engine and re-start it.
What was more confounding, it would only happen after the car was fully warm, and only while making slow sharp right hand turns in second gear!
Eventually it got so bad that it barely ran. My trusty Korean mechanic managed to duplicate the problem by grabbing the underhood harness and pulling it, stalling the engine.
Problem found. A replacement harness was sourced and I never had that issue again. The TBI unit also went hawwire, requiring replacement. It was too bad, because the car had some good points. It was peppy, handled well, and was stable at speed.
In the days before speed cameras on the freeways, I would routinely floor it up to 160 kmh and hold it there for extended periods no problem. Also, these had a rep with Koreans as being safer than an Excel in a crash, due it’s more solid body.
This car had far reaching ramifications for Daewoo. The effect it had on the company was similar to the X-car. So popular at first, so many people pissed off after.
It cost Daewoo-cum-Chevy sales leadership in the upscale near luxury field in Korea. Up to this time, the Daewoo Royale & Prince (locally built Opel Senator and Rekord)
had been the car of choice for the up and coming “salary man”. After this fiasco, these buyers switched to the Hyundai Grandeur, and it’s descendants.
And Daewoo, despite trying, never was a player in the near luxury field ever again, despite repeated attempts. Even a locally-assembled Acura Legend (Daewoo Arcadia) couldn’t cut it. This was followed by the Holden-sourced Daewoo Statesman
in the mid-2000s. It failed. Then the Veritas, also Statesman based. It failed. Then the
Buick Lacrosse-based Alpheon, also a failure. Finally, recently, an attempt was made with the Impala, another sales flop.
I replaced the LeMans with a Daewoo Prince, an amalgam of Opel Senator and Holden Commodore, with styling by IAD of the UK, which Daewoo had purchased.
Although a much better car than the LeMans, it still had its issues. Severely underpowered with a 1.8 Family 2 engine to keep road taxes reasonable, it was a gas hog because of it. Required constant firewalling to get it to move. It also suffered from the same old wiggle the door wires to make the locks work trick.
Dear Lord,
back in the late 90s GM was launching the DAEWOO brand in Germany.
For weeks on end they showed a commercial on TV which only featured a painted mouth singing “Daewooooooo…Daewoo und Du….Daewoo und Du eine Freundschaft beginnt” (singer was American 80s popstar Jennifer Rush….she wrote “The Power of Love”…anyone remember her?)
Then, after a couple weeks, they dropped the bomb….the first Daewoo Car for Germany was a…ta-daa….horrible Opel Kadett from the 80s….
This was an awful car.
Five of us coworkers got our first real jobs during this time so we all got new cars.
Among the new cars bought:
Ford Festiva LX
Hyundai Excel
Pontiac LeMans
Chevy Corsica
Yugo
The first to fail was the Pontiac LeMans. Poor quality car. Overpriced. It fell apart.
The next to fail was the Yugo. Same problems as the LeMans, but it did hang in there a few months more.
The Corsica got totaled.
The Hyundai Excel failed when it’s engine took a dump. It was always as slow as the Yugo, but being slightly larger, it seemed like a better bargain. Back then Hyundai had a drive train warranty, but getting them to fix their cars required too much extra work for the owner. She got rid of it after a year.
The Festiva LX never failed. I got 240,000 on it by 2000 and it was still on the road here in town in 2010. I haven’t seen it since its last sale.
No question, the Festivas were the best of the bunch back in the day. Excellent little cars. Too bad it’s replacement, the Aspire was a turd.
Which was worse? Aspire or LeMans?
LeMans
The Aspire was a Festiva with a heavier rounded body, dual air bags and new dash. The original Festiva has not designed to carry the extra weight, nor designed to handle an automatic transmission well.
So the Aspire was slow and miserable – but still better made than the LeMans.
Fun fact: as well as selling the LeMans new here, GM New Zealand also sold the Opel Kadett E new in 1985-86. We also received the Opel-badged Monza GSE, Omega and Senator in 1986-7. No I don’t know why we got right-hand-drive Opels. We also got the Daewoo Cielo for a number of years, so we must be one of the few markets to receive the Opel original and its Pontiac and Daewoo descendants.
I had no idea! That’s a fascinating tidbit… I’m on my way down a research rabbithole now…
When the VW/Pontiac dealership I worked for received the new LeMans, the parts manager got one of these things for a demo. Something was always going wrong with it, and parts were often on back order and slow to arrive. The car was automatic and pretty underpowered as well.
They disappeared quickly.
The Daewoo Pontiac Le Mans of North-America with a/t is a 3-speed. Absolutely obsolete and not matched the autobahn speed requirement. 90 kph at 3000 rpm paired with 13″ wheels. It’s only good for city commuting. The Cielo-Nexia has 4-speed a/t paired with 14″ wheels. It can be driven on autobahn. Technically all the models are reliable. Had driven previously all of these models.
Parts for the 1988-1993 Pontiac Le Mans had been sourced from Daewoo Motor of Korea and then passed to GM’s dealerships in the North-Americas. This model also reached some Eastern-European countries via Daewoo Motor networks by itself as well as by private imports mostly used. During the ’90s in Europe, original and aftermarket parts for the Le Mans had been sourced easily by the Opel Kadett-E codes as well as only original parts by Daewoo Motor dealership networks. Unfortunatelly the big US/CDN-spec bumpers as well as the rear end plastic moulding and rear taillights, nameplates and badges were unavailable in Europe. For limited and very short time, these had to be bought and imported from N.-Americas.
Back in the day Opel Kadett-E had been quoted well all around Europe. Especially in South-Eastern and Eastern-Europe. It was a kinda dreamcar among Ladas, Yugos, Wartburgs, etc. Appearance of the Daewoo/Pontiac Le Mans appearance when Kadett-E still ruled was instead received and treated by the drivers public as an “upscaled” Opel Kadett-E! While Kadett in most cases lacked the airconditioning system and automatic transmission, the Le Mans had provided it. From the outside the visual appearance of the Le Mans was more stylish with the bigger Pontiac designed bumpers with integrated rectangular turn lights built inside. Grille, rear black plastic moulding and tail lights with the related DOT-spec all red as well as red amber tail lights were the main treat. 6 or 4 red tail lights gave the Le Mans a mightier appearance in the night instead of the Kadett’s two only E-spec. Sometimes the Le Mans 13″ tyres wore white stripes which also gave an additional plus in its overall “luxury” appearance. The automatic seatbelts for instance should be counted in as wel. The Le Mans (LE, SE) nameplates on the front side doors credited this car as an upscale model in comparison with the original german too. All these little features were missing from the Kadett-E. I had been more than happy when I purchased my first 1990 Le Mans LE 4-door a/t. Later I purchased a 1988. Simultaneously with this a Daewoo Nexia a/t 4-door. Summa summarum these were reliable and attractive little cars from my point of view.