Even here in the Curbside Elysian Fields, Hyundai Excels have finally become quite rare (Update: and maybe valuable, like a Civic Si?). So when this three door hatch slipped by us the other night, I was quick on the draw. I only got one shot off before it pulled away (yes, it’s still running), but that’s enough to remind us of Hyundai’s very painful early days in the US.
After a roaring start with prices starting at $4995, setting an all-time record of 169k sales for a first year import in 1985, sales soon drooped due to serious reliability issues. By the early 90s, it looked like Hyundai might follow Yugo’s footsteps and bail from the US market. But they dig in their heels, worked on their quality, and eventually prospered. For the full story, head on over to my CC on the Excel, titled “Hyundai’s Near-Deadly Sin“.
I knew a guy who had one in the late nineties and it was a laughably shitty old car even then. Today I’m it even sure if it would have any ironic hipster value.
haha – so true!
And the one you’ve found is a 2nd gen–are there any 1st gens left running? I’m sure, somewhere.
For ultimate rare points we’d need the Mitsubishi Precis version. Why Mitsu felt the need to produce a badge-engineered version of a car this bad, especially considering the Mirage was about the same size, I’ll never know.
I remember those. Not only was it redundant because of the Mirage being around the same size, the Excel was also Colt/Mirage based on top of that.
I Currently Drive One!!! She is my baby and gers all the chick!!!
I vividly recall this car’s debut, and that it was undercut only by the Yugo, which stickered at $3995. For some perspective, my 1985 VW GTI stickered at about $12K, and it was hard to buy anything decent for under about $8-9K. Mom’s 85 Crown Vic had a sticker of about $14K, which I considered positively obscene for a big Ford.
The original Hyundai Excel imported to the US is intriguing in that it was 25% more expensive than the Yugo, which was widely regarded as one of the worst cars, ever. So, was the Hyundai actually 25% better than one of the worst cars, ever? Most accounts would seem to indicate a resounding, “No”. I suspect the biggest difference between the Yugo and Excel was that the Yugo fell apart simply sitting on the dealers’ lots. Excels took a month or two before they started self-destructing.
OTOH, Hyundai being able to rise from the rock-bottom depths of the Excel disaster to get to where they are today is nothing short of an automotive industry miracle. You really have to hand it to Hyundai in being able to not only survive the Excel debacle but ‘excel’ after it.
Plenty of those still on the road here too probably slightly more common than that Honda but they aren’t rare yet and they’ve been cheap beaters since forever.
How about the Malaysian version rare enough for you guys?
And from the front, The Proton.
Better keep that car very far away from one of these!
HA! Good one, Mike.
A Fairthorpe Electron, for those who didn’t recognise it.
I’m confused… that looks like a Mitsubishi Mirage, sold in the US as a Dodge Colt. There’s even a Mitsu badge on it. ???
Imported by Mitsubishi based on the Mirage the same as The Excel was
So the Dodge Colt and the Hyundai Excel were the same car? I’ll never figure out this family tree.
The Excel was essentially a re-bodied Colt/Mirage, but built totally by Hyundai. And the quality of Hyundai’s parts and assembly apparently fell well short of Mitsubishi’s.
The Mirage/Colt was considered one of the best of its class; and the Excel the worst. It just goes to show that attention to detail makes a huge difference.
But it does mean there’s plenty of opportunity for parts swapping.
“The Mirage/Colt was considered one of the best of its class; and the Excel the worst.”
This is a big part of what had me so confused. Thanks, Paul, for the clarification.
Speaking of early Hyundai quality, I had a friend with an Excel who totaled it in a 5mph parking lot incident. The force was sufficient to displace the driveline and make repair infeasible.
If I remember correctly what I have read, these were based on the Mitsubishi Mirage of that era, not on the Excel. The only thing that might be similar is the engine. If I remember correctly, Hyundai used a Mitsubishi derived engine in the Excel.
This is what I also am thinking… because otherwise this would mean, if I’m keeping track and per my comment to Bryce above, that the Dodge Colt and the Hyundai Excel were the same car, which doesn’t seem right.
See my comment directly above.
Wow, what a find. The paint looks chalky and dull and there are a few cosmetic blemishes, but other than that it looks good. Wonder how its mechanical bits are though and what the owner’s opinion on their Hyundai is because for all we know it could be teetering on the edge of become junkyard fodder. The license plate is from within the past ten years (plates stay with the vehicle not the owner in Oregon), all the brake lights work, and it looks like the owner is using a jersey as a seat cover. My guess is they are not as apathetic a car owner is some I have met.
You know, matching jerseys wouldn’t be a bad idea for seat covers, especially if you can find floor mats that match the team.
I drove one last year. It was a CA car, fewer than 70k miles. It had the Mitsu engine. The car had the sense that it was all used up, even though it had lived a relatively pampered life in lovely Marin County, CA. My battered Pinto engendered more confidence! I admire the gumption the Hyundai showed by offering the 100k mile/10 year warranty. The took Lee Iacocca’s 7/70 and ramped it up. Good for Hyundai–they have earned the success. The question is, will they be able to maintain it…?
These showed up on my college campus in ’85, and had a crappy reputation by ’86. (We were fast learners at my school, at least when it came to this car!) I drove a couple of late model used cars and a couple of CCs, which were much nicer and more interesting than these, all for a lower cost of entry, lower taxes and lower insurance, and a few profits on sales. That left plenty of money to buy cheap gas that was running about $0.70 to $0.75 a gallon. My 307, 350, 390 and 455 equipped cars were the true economy cars of my college days.
My wife had good college friends that became a couple and eventually had an Excel and a Fiesta at the same time. I didn’t drink anywhere near enough in college to face that situation every day!
I will also give Hyundai its due – they turned themselves into something since those dark early days.
These were reasonably dependable once the carb was ditched, weren’t they?
Rust buckets that I believe were panned badly by sources like Consumer reports. Quite crude compared to most of its Asian competition.
I remember when CR tested the Excel, they said it was based on a few year old Mitsu design, and for the money a buyer would be better off buying a few year old Mirage or pretty much any recent used Japanese car.
I took a road trip in a 2nd gen Excel with a few buddies from SF to, wait for it,…Eugene, Oregon! This would have been in 1992. We got two speeding tickets but had no mechanical issues whatsoever. Overall the car did feel like a turd compared to the ’86 GTI that I was driving at the time, though.
Last time I saw a first-gen Excel here in Eugene was going down West 11th and it had an eastern state license plate. One of the, uh, bravest souls I’ve ever seen on the road.
Popular here when new, but I can’t say I’ve seen one running for years! The rounded ones that replaced these are automotive cockroaches, still everywhere with faded tropical blossom stickers on the rear window….
Hey Paul –
I just ran a CARFAX on that Hyundai using the Oregon tag number – the car you photographed is a 1994, the last year of the unheralded Excel. Even then, they were still garbage – a friend of mine in high school had a ’93 sedan and it was one of the worst penalty boxes I ever rode in, way worse than what I had at the time, my dad’s ’87 Toyota Corolla.
You might want to add said year in the article caption. 🙂
Done. Thanks!
Im no fan of Hyundai’s cars but they have definitely come a LONG way. I remember when these were very common, now they’ve all but disappeared. FWIW, my buddy has a ’04 Elantra that he bought new. Granted, he’s not much of a gearhead and only does what maintenance is necessary to keep a car plodding along but while its reliable enough, its definitely a crude, non-performance oriented product. Perfect for those who see a car as an appliance, I suppose.
That’s actually a good illustration of the arc they took. Their early cars, like this Excel, were pretty much junk. (Though the 1st-gen Sonata was at least attractive in an understated way.) By the late 90’s they had progressed to “disposable car” status but they at least would be pretty stable early on. By the time your buddy bought his ’04, they’d gotten the dependable part down, just not the refinement. Appliance cars as you say, but ones that would keep rolling with minimal service even after the 10/100 warranty is up. And their current cars are every bit as good as the competition with compelling choices across the lineup. A long way indeed in less than 30 years!
(My wife drives a 2012 Forte Koup, Kias being a division of Hyundai these days. The only thing it gets wrong is that the interior is monochrome and some of the materials aren’t great, and the engine is a bit buzzy. But it looks great, drives well, is easy on gas, and the seats are quite comfortable even for long trips. As I understand it in the new version of the car, they’ve heavily upgraded the interior and the base engine is a new design.)
Nice little car! Nice if it was to become a fully restored antique. A car like that is important in automotive history, and needs to be preserved as is.
The curbside Classic effect strikes again. On the way home from work I came off of 295 onto RT32(near Ft Meade for those that don’t know. Going on the on ramp to 32 gives you a good look at the National Cryptology Museum and in the parking lot was a red 2nd gen 2 door hatch Excel with faded paint. I would have taken pics but alas, a person has to be very stupid to be taking pics around that area with NSA HQ next door.
It was the first I have seen in years. Kudos to Hyundai for rising up after that turd. The current flock of Hyundais are very very well made.
A friend of mine had a new first generation Excel as a delivery car. It went through 3 catalytic converters in 6 months – covered under warranty.
When the car arrived, the smell of the plastics on the inside was so strong it caused headaches.
The one saving grace, I was able to put the backseat down and transport a loveseat to my apartment with it – it hung out the back, but I couldn’t believe how wide a space the hatch opened to.
When the car arrived, the smell of the plastics on the inside was so strong it caused headaches.
But wait, there’s more! When new the car’s undersides were sprayed with cosmoline at the plant as extra rust protection during the trip to the US. Some of the cosmoline got on the exhaust system. When it burned off during the first several miles of driving it smelled like burning tennis shoes. I got a good whiff when I was looking at a new 99 Accent.
Even a 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe I sat in at the Portland Auto Show has an interior that smells like spray paint and I felt nauseous.
I rented a brand new Elantra a few months ago and couldn’t believe how bad it smelled. I thought the brakes were burning. After cruising around with the windows down for a day it dissipated.
Meh, you guys had it easy. You didn’t get the Pony.
Although I must say I haven’t seen either an Excel OR a Pony in a long time..
Just saw a Pony for sale in Quebec…first one in years…now THAT was a bad car…my ex-wife had one as her first car, I had to keep reminding her to turn off the manual choke!
Theres a tidy Pony that appears every day down the street from me, somebodies daily heap.
Wow, haven’t seen a Pony here in a long time, that’s a great find Bryce!
Up until maybe five years ago a red Pony wandered the streets in east Hamilton. Spotless and still wearing its original paint. Probably an estate hand me down that got driven until it finally broke something major.
I see an Excel quite regularly in the local Best Buy parking lot. Another well cared for estate hand me down perhaps based on condition and the original paint still holding a shine.
Hamilton Australia or Canada? There’s a considerable difference in environmental conditions..
That would be the Great White North.
Hmm, we’re neighbours then.
What about Hamilton, New Zealand?! It’s our 5th largest city and is just 24km from me – I went to university there and worked there for a decade. So it’s the Hamilton that counts for me! 😉
A coworker of mine in the late 90s had a gen 1 (late 80s) Excel. Not horrendously rusted for the Detroit area, but then I didn’t look at the floor. It expired from a broken (apparently original) timing belt around 180,000 miles….and this at a time when VW had trouble getting belts to the recommended replacement interval. Billy was so satisfied with the car that he ran right out and bought a new Sonata.
Around 04-05, a friend was in town so we went out for lunch. He had never seen a Hyundai up close, so we stopped at the dealer for a look see. The next time he was in town, his wife gave me a dirty look “you the one talking to him about a Hyundai?” About a year later Mike needed a new ride and the price of a new Elantra couldn’t be beat. He didn’t get to use it much though. His wife liked the Elantra better than her Grand Prix, so she usually drove the Elantra to work, while Mike took the Pontiac to the dealer to get something fixed…again.
In about 1994, neighbors across the street from our house had one of these, in this same color–but it was an even rarer Mitsubishi Precis! I remember thinking “That’s a Hyundai, what’s the deal with this?!”
Sadly it was about seventeen years before I started taking pictures for CC. 😉
As the saying goes, the disappearance of the Excel can be termed, “…and that’s a good thing.” I had a colleague I regularly carpooled with who owned a Excel and a dreadful Aerostar that croaked before getting out of 1st gear. “Which one shall we take?” I was asked.
“The Aerostar,” I replied.
My Aunt had a sedan of these 2nd gens that lasted to well over 150k miles until someone rear ended it last year. Still was in nice shape, never gave her any issues. I actually took my drivers test in that car due to its automatic transmission (only one in the family) . It struck me as small and underpowered, but was a very honest and simple car. Before that she had a gray first gen Excel that was only replaced when it was wrecked too.
She always was lucky with Hyundai’s, even when they weren’t great cars, so when she asked my advice on what to replace the 1994 with, I had no problem helping her find a 2013 Elantra. She’s still in love with it.
The second generations get a bad reputation because of the first generation. They really weren’t all that bad at this point.
While pretty ho-hum cars out of the factory, they do have a cult following. Several people have swapped 4G63t (Think Lancer Evolution) motors into them in place of the original Mitsubishi engine (4G15) that it came with from the factory. That has to be the ultimate sleeper. Also, they were designed by none other than Giorgetto Giugiaro and weren’t bad looking, at least in my opinion. There’s at least two in my area, and one of them is the rarer second generation sedan. I remember it being there since at least ’95 and it’s still in great shape, so there’s at least one person out there who loves their Excel. I need to take a few shots of it the next time that I’m around.
I thought the gen1 was quite an attractive design – Giugiaro wasn’t it? It had character anyway, which was whittled away for gen2.
It really was, and looked so much better than the Yugo, which appeared to have been (and maybe was) assembled in somebody’s barn. For just $1k more, it seemed like a lot more car, even if it didn’t exactly live up to the image. No wonder they sold so well initially. I remember seeing them EVERYWHERE.
When you mentioned the Yugo JohnC, it reminded me that a late cousin of my Dad’s bought a 5-door Excel new here in New Zealand back in 1987. He didn’t want anything flash as it was just an around-town runaround to spare his immaculate pride and joy Triumph 2500 MkII sedan. You mentioning the Yugo reminded me that Dad’s cousin’s Excel replaced a Lada Samara he’d bought brand new only 3 months earlier. Despite him ditching the Lada after only 3 months, I remember it well, and the Excel seemed like a high quality piece of machinery by comparison! Dad’s cousin certainly thought so as he kept it until he died.
A coworker bought a first generation Excel and offered to drive the car pool even though she didn’t like driving long distance or highway driving. The incentive was the extra pay so she would recruit a driver. I drove it on one of the northern exposure runs of about 300km round trip. It was summer with four adults in the car and the a/c blasting and it took a while to get up to speed but seemed to hold its own. Until the first uphill grade which shed our speed down from 80 to 50 Km/hr. I had to downshift the auto trans to keep it from hunting up and down. From then on as we approached an incline the a/c was turned off, all four windows rolled down and cheers and celebrations would break out if we maintained any sort of decent speed over the crest of the hills. Windows up, a/c on and on to the next one.
In 1994 mom was looking for a car for herself and one of the stops was the local Hyundai dealer. Mom had a Pony for a few years and loved it even though she complained it was slow. There was a creepy late middle aged Russian sales-woman there with frighteningly long fingernails pushing us toward a second generation Excel which mom wanted to try. It was a busy morning so the saleswoman couldn’t ride along. We spent the entire test drive laughing at how slow and terribly awful the car was even compared to the Pony. Back at the dealer we got the “While you were gone a nice couple showed up wanting to buy the car you are looking at so you better decide quickly if you want it because they are still in showroom” pressure pitch in a thick Russian accent. We were still sore from laughing at all the jokes during the test drive but that one really put us over the top. Twenty years on whenever we pass a Hyundai dealership someone always says “Remember the fingernail lady?” and the laughing continues.
You guys are lucky – back then in Israel Hyundais were the QUALITY Korean cars, we also got the real junk: Daewoos, Ssangyongs and Kias…But there was (hard to believe) an even lower level: Romania’s Dacia/Delta, another manufacturer which has turned its image by 180°. Back then however it was appalingly bad, on a lower level than a Yugo. But it was very cheap.
I saw one of these parked nearby for a while recently. I never bothered to read the VIN to see what year it was, but it was in amazing cosmetic shape — not showroom perfect, but undented and clean in a way that suggested it was both garaged much of the time and washed regularly from new. That’s unusual for cheap cars. If I see it again, I might try to take a picture of it because I think it might well be the cleanest Excel of that vintage still extant, unless Hyundai has one stashed in a museum somewhere.
My first new car was an ’86 Excel. Blue 4 door sedan, must have been the upmarket model as it had colour-keyed bumpers and a cloth interior. The automatic strangled what was already an underpowered car. My parents borrowed it for some reason to take themselves and my aunt and uncle from Vancouver over to the West Coast of Vancoiver Island, I can;t imagine how it handled mountain roads with 4 adults onboard! Now I can’t think of why I didn’t buy a used Seventies Monte Carlo for the same price!
I still see a few of these around, but the earlier models are more plentiful. Like everywhere else in the world, they were cheaper than their Nissan, Toyota and Mitsubishi contemporaries (most of which have disappeared too, especially the Mitsus) and that helped to drive sales. The higher grade GLS models have held up better and I don’t know the last day I saw a three-door. Hyundai has really come a long way since then.
For extra obscurity, how about finding a Mitsubishi Precis? This was a re-badged Excel Mitsubishi sold in the US as a sub Mirage level price leader.
I never drove or rode in one of these but I did spend a day in a UK spec Pony automatic and it was so bad that it made a Metro City X look awesome.
You mean like this one I found a couple of years ago?
Amazing there is (or very possibly was, considering the condtion) one left.
The logic of selling a badge-engineered version of a cut-rate copy of an older version of your own car makes my head hurt, even if it did get price-conscious buyers in the door. That would be like Fiat selling rebadged Yugos.
Memories! I wrote most of the Hyundai showroom brochures from 1990-2002 — in other words, before the cars were any good. I’ll always remember the Excel for two things: A customer response card from an Excel owner down South said that he liked the car because “first gear was great for pulling stumps”; and my first time in an Excel, which belonged to an account executive. After he started the car, I asked him since when the Excel offered a diesel engine. He looked daggers at me and said, “it’s not a diesel.”
In 1988 I was given an ’87 Excel as a loaner while our newish Mazda was having a lengthy warranty repair. Must have been the biggest dog on the dealer’s used lot. I remember it being the most awful motoring experience of my life. After one ride, my wife flat refused to drive it. I was stuck with that sucker for a month.
Been a couple years since I’ve seen a first gen, but I’ll see the occasional second gen here. I recall some girl at my high school was in an accident in the late 90 in an 86, the entire right side of the car was caved in, she survived but was confined to a wheelchair.
So many ‘suckers’ bought Excels and Yugos thinking “A new import for so cheap!” and that any brand new car must be good!
When Yugos made the news, new owners were bragging “I could get a junk used car for $4000, but I got a new car!” Well, they got Junk after all!
I recently had one for a little while, a 1990 sedan that I got used for real cheap. The poor thing was like 50% bondo. Somebody smashed the passenger window and replacements were made of unobtainium so I went to Menards, bought a sheet of plastic and made a new one using the opposite side window as a template (it actually worked perfectly, rolled up and down) . It was slow, even with a 5 speed it was at like 3,000 RPMS at 60mph. BUT it got insane gas mileage, somewhere around 30s delivering pizza around town with traffic.
My sister bought one just before moving to CO. Getting it away from the MN road salt was a good idea. She called it Fred because she wanted to cut holes in the floorboard to run over the passes. Put about 180k on it. As I recall the last straw was when the replacement windshield cost as much as a different car did.
Based on her good luck we bought an Elantra GT in 02. Fortunately the leather interior didn’t smell nearly as bad as the plastic. Got 130k before the rust ate it (including having a front wheel fall off in traffic due to rusted sub frame-fixed as a recall. VERY glad it happened pulling out of a parking space, not at speed). Other then that, eating an inordinate number of wheel bearings (5 rear, 2 front), and that it should have gotten better mileage for it’s lack of power it was a pretty good deal for us. We’d have gotten another Hyundai the last time around but they weren’t making any hatchbacks other then the accent, the the only way to get cruise on the wagon was as an automatic, and again for how little power it had on tap it should have been getting better mileage.
I think one of the reasons these later Excels were rarer than their earlier counterparts was the arrival of the first generation Elantra in 1991; it was bigger, better looking and better equipped, so people traded up to these rather than getting another Excel.