I have been doing quite a bit of travel for work this year. A couple of months ago, while on one of my business trips I came up behind this flatbed tow truck that was hauling this Hyundai Pony. I had to chuckle when I read the plate, because it very well could be true. I can’t even remember the last time I saw Hyundai Pony.
1975 Hyundai Pony, which in my opinion was much cleaner than the second generation Pony.
The Pony was Hyundai’s first attempt at building its own car, with production beginning in 1975. Shortly after its introduction, Hyundai began to export the car to other countries, beginning in South America, and eventually making its way into Europe. By 1983, the Pony received a mild update, which marked the beginning of the second generation cars.
The Canadian market 1984 Hyundai Pony
When the second generation Pony hit the streets, Hyundai decided to tackle the North American market. However, because of its relatively primitive engine (which still used a point ignition), it could not pass the US emission standards. At that time Canada had much less stringent emission levels than the US. So, with a few minor modifications it was introduced to the Canadian Market in 1983 for the 1984 model year. The car’s biggest selling point was its price, with the modest price of $5900 CDN. It was thousands less the Japanese competitors and this resulted in it being a massive sales success. The Pony may have been antiquated by 1984, but was an improvement on the Eastern Bloc cars that were in the same price range also being sold in Canada at that time. Just think, all those Canadian’s buying Lada’s and Skoda’s could now upgrade to a Pony!
Here is a Canadian Ad for the 1987 Pony
It wasn’t long before the Pony earned a reputation of low quality and being very prone to severe rust. In my native Ontario, it was common to see them full of holes even when relatively new. They were pretty well all gone after 10 years. So, seeing one of these cars in Ontario 30 years after the last one was sold is a rare sight indeed. The subject car in my photo was pretty badly rusted along the lower body as I passed the truck. I had to wonder, was the really the last Pony and was it on its final trip to the junkyard?
Further Reading:
The Pony was a huge sales success. I remember in mid-1985 looking’ out my 7th floor office window and realizing 1 in 5 cars in the parking lot was a Pony. I wondered what the world was coming to.
The cars had a reassuring vaguely-Japanese aura that offset buyer concerns surrounding the bargain basement price. Sales did very well for about 2 years. But I recall sales dropped like a stone once word got out about their poor quality and short lifespan. In a few short years, they were all gone. The Pony harmed Hyundai’s reputation for years to come.
I drove one for a day. I found it to be an honest and humble car. It was a 1400cc/auto trans combo, their slowest model. The ride was a bit rough due to the live axle, but the handling was fine, albeit a bit heavy and sullen. But the interior was roomy and well equipped for the price. I never had to work on it but the mechanicals were simple and easy to access.
Overall, I’ve driven worse cars…… not much worse, though. If the car was introduced 10 years earlier, and was factory rustproofed, it would have done much better.
The excel after the pony was also just as bad. Its incredible how far they’ve come to today being one if the more reliable cars in the road. KIA… Same thing.
Wow, there has been a lot of advancement at Hyundai in the last 40 years, a company now able to to toe to toe with some of the best.
Like most in the US, I had never heard of Hyundai until the Excel came out in the 80s. What great luck for them, that Yugo would come to market at the same time and cost $1k less. It made the Excel look like the quality alternative for an inexpensive car. 🙂
First one I saw was in ’85 at Cornell University. A Pony. Car was from Ontario IIRC.
Against all odds, I have seen a Pony in person, also in a university parking lot. Around 1996 or 97, there was one with Canadian plates in the dorm parking at Tennessee Tech, in tiny Cookeville. That’s a long trip from the border for an iffy 10+ year old car. I was interested, though, and I remember the HD logo on the steering wheel. 20 years later, I drive a Hyundai, but my ’16 Elantra requires and makes no apologies.
I saw a Pony in rough condition with Quebec plates in California around 1995. To see a non-US-available car with such a nasty unreliability reputation so far from home, really stuck in my mind. I knew people who had bad experiences with the Excel so I could hardly imagine how poor its predecessor must have been.
Has Top Gear ever reviewed the Pony? I’d love to hear how Clarkson would have eviscerated it…
The 1st gen Pony was briefly sold in Uruguay, around 1980 / 81. It had a very reasonable price, was said to have “Mitsubishi mechanicals”, and had a finish level a step below of Japanese cars (at the time just arriving to our country). Some people with a little bit more understanding would say that the car was either a Ford Cortina or a Hillman Avenger…one of the teams was wrong, and CC has shown which one. The main model was the 4 door sedan, GLS 1400, equipped with a rear plastic shade, trim and A/C (no idea how well it worked). Then there were a wagon and 3 door hatchback. The only model to really sell was the sedan. They quickly fell to the rust worm and to not having a support network. But I feel they were good enough for their time.
There was a Hyundai Pony sitting in a garage out of commission in my neighborhood when I moved there two years ago, but that has since made its way to a junkyard as well, or so it seems. Haven’t seen one actually running in years! Whenever I see stories like this, or see a Stellar on the road (there are still a few of those left) I am always reminded of how far Hyundai has come in the last 35 years.
~20 years ago I used to see a Pony, with Washington state plates, parked a few blocks from North Seattle Community College. I assume it was a private import from Canada. It would have been a great CC if the site had existed at the time.
I’ve seen a few Vermont-plated ones back in the day, also private imports across the border. I guess at some point it got EPA certified, as this was well before it was eligible under the 25-year rule!
For a brief period of time, the Pony was prolific on Canadian roads. When they were new, and before the rust and quality control issues became known, I would suggest it was actually considered more desirable to be seen driving a Pony than say a Chevette. As there was popularity (and a buzz) with the Pony for first time, or young buyers. Where everyone knew the Chevette was an ancient, and tired design, not many realized the Pony was a mid seventies design as well. I remember Canadian road tests at the time highlighting the great value of the Pony, without being able to address its lack of long term durability.
Being new to the Canadian market, plus having fresher styling than the Chevette, lent the impression for many the Pony was a better buy. When in reality the Chevette had basic ruggedness the Pony lacked.
It seemed the buying experience for many Canadians mirrored those in the US who bought the Yugo.
I would agree the Pony and the Yugo are analogous from a marketing point of view. But the Pony at least gave a few years of reasonable service. The Yugos were sold at a lower price, but were much worse; so poorly built they constituted a fraud instead of a reasonable attempt at transportation.
You’re correct. The Pony was a significantly better built car than the Yugo. Though broadly speaking, they both ultimately ended up being short term transportation for those that could least afford it. A red flag for both cars being the very low initial price, dangling a carrot to buyers that normally could only afford second hand.
As new cars, both the Pony and Stellar received plenty of positive attention for their value. Publicity that soured quickly. I would suggest the last previous cars in Canada to experience such a Jekyll and Hyde reputation with buyers being the front drive GM X-cars, the Aspen/Volare, and the British-built Vauxhall Firenza. Maybe the most maligned car on the Canadian market in modern times.
Wow, I can’t believe you saw a Pony in Ontario in 2017.
As I recall the Hyundai body & interior was very cheap, but the mechanicals were either Mitsubishi sourced or derived, and were relatively robust.
In the late 80’s I had an idea to buy a good running rusty Pony and make a Lotus Eleven replica using the drivetrain.
You are right. Under the skin, the Pony is all Mitsubishi. Hyundai license-built the Saturn family engines and transmissions, and put it all atop the Japanese A70 Lancer platform. Besides that interior and body, it’s basically the same car as the North American 1977-1979 Dodge/Plymouth Colt.
I can’t say for sure, but back in the mid 80s I was passed on the interstate just outside of Jacksonville, Florida by either a Pony or a Stellar…but I think it was a Stellar. I seem to remember the styling as being a bit of a mash-up. From the windshield back it was kind of rounded, sort of similar to a 1st generation Excel, while from the windshield forward it was fairly well creased and boxy. It also seemed bigger/longer than an Excel, but then again the Excel was just about to hit the American market and the 1st couple of years there were only 3 and 5 door hatchback cars.
I finally got to drive a Hyundai a few months ago, an Excel rental. Not a bad car, but for some reason I preferred the Dodge Dart I was given when my car repairs took longer than expected. The Dart was like a mongrel puppy that wanted to run and play while the Excel was a pedigree puppy that acted like play was something “beneath it”.
That’s BC the dodge dart is actually an Alfa Romeo in gap clothing. Its a great car.
…with the reliability of a 1985 Pony after 36,000 miles (if you’re lucky). Ironically just traded in my Dart for a Hyundai Sonata LoL.
These seemed to be everywhere in the mid ’80s when I lived in a suburb of Vancouver. Very popular with young people on a tight budget, and it didn’t end well for most of them. They rusted as noted above, though not quite as quickly out west here, and started self destructing pretty much coincidental with the expiration of the warranty. Carburators and alternators were common failures and both were ridiculously expensive from the dealer and hard to source alternatives for.
Dead Ponys in back yards were fairly common by 1990 or so. I still marvel at how well Hyundia recovered from that, though it took a long time and there are still people out there who won’t touch one. Most of the young women in our family seem to own one now, and no problems of note, but I have to admit I shuddered a bit when the first purchase was made.
I’d forgotten about those weird criss-cross wheelcovers….
That’s another point in favor of the above-mentioned Chevette – in the early ’90s you could almost get parts for one at McDonald’s. As RCR pointed out, they deliberately used the same starter as a V8 SBC – and I think at some point they put in a conventional air cleaner (his early tester had an aftermarket one, and the owner still has the original all-disposable one).
A friend of mine had matching red Hyundai Ponys. Neither lasted many years, although one’s downfall was that it succumbed to an engine fire, if I am to believe his story. Apparently he owed a few bucks to some shady characters who wanted to get paid more quickly.
I’ve never seen a Pony, ever. But I did work with a woman who was daily driving a Mitsubishi Precis [Excel] well into 2014.
I remember these well, living in Vancouver Canada, they were very popular. Besides young folk, a lot of seniors bought them, and were very disappointed after a year or so. My father came to me one day and asked what I thought of the new Hyundai Stellar. He was shopping for a new car, comparing it to a Mazda 626. I laughed, told him about the antiquated engineering that Hyundai used. He bought the 626 and his neighbour bought the Stellar. The chrome on the Stellar’s wire wheel covers started to rust within a year. This is the west coast, where rust is unusual. Dad was happy with his 626. He also remarked about how many dead Ponys he saw on the side of the road in hot weather.
Wasn’t it Road and Track who did a group test of oddball Canada market cars in the mid 80’s? As I recall, it included the Pony, an Innocenti, and a Lada. Loved that article and that was the first time I’d heard of Hyundai. When I went to Vancouver B.C. in the mid 90’s, I spotted a few Ponies, but none since!
Road & Track 1985 – you can see a copy that (and a few others) here – http://skodacanada.ca/SkodaReviewsAndPress.html
Another similar article that I noticed used a few of my photos. I’ve actually owned three on their list (Micra, Niva, Stellar) http://autoweek.com/article/classic-cars/8-imports-canada-got-america-did-not
I know of one Pony left here in town but its been off the road for a few years. I’ve been casually looking for one for about a decade but they never seen to go up for sale. Straight to the wreckers.
Thanks for the links!
+1 good R&T article.
I’ve driven both a Dacia and a Lada and can confirm they were a much worse driving experience than a Pony.
Thanks for sharing that David. You could probably do a great write-up on that article, since these cars are much more in your wheelhouse than mine. I enjoyed your old Pony write-up that I linked to at the bottom of my write-up.
Innoccenti – now that was one truly cool car. Esp the turbo.
I remember the Pony far too clearly. Where I grew up, just outside of Glasgow there were a lot of cost-conscious (cheap) folks who bought them. Even then I knew they weren’t desirable or robust as most of them had oxidised paint, or were rusty within a few years as the Scottish weather is not kind to cars at all. We always had a good laugh at them too as there’s the cockney rhyming slang “pony and trap” meaning crap ?
My friend’s dad actually had a Yugo 311 that was a horrific, noisy deathtrap even though it was only a few years old. God, how I hated going anywhere in that car. Even getting the bus was preferable or at a pinch, getting a lift in my sister’s orange tan-coloured Vauxhall Chevette that was missing part of the floor. Good times!!
Good catch and here is another rare Hyundai I found outside of Saint Helens. I think it is an Excel.
That is indeed an Excel. I wrote the dealership sales catalog for them.
Coincidentally just this morning, a co worker showed me his new car, a 2017 Hyundai Sonata with all options. The car had a panoramic sunroof, heated and cooled leather seats with 2 position memory, Navigation with Android and Apple integration, adaptive cruise control, forward collision and blind spot warning, push button start, 6 speed automatic with paddle shifters.
Before this, the last Hyundai I’ve spent substantial time with ws a friend’s Hyundai Excel back in the 90’s…Hyundai has come a long way!
I had one experience with a Hyundai Pony as a rental in England in 1986. It was a 1.2 automatic and roughly comparable to an 87 Chevette. The Metro City X we got from the rental company the following day blew it into the weeds with a 1275 and a 4 speed.
The thing is you have to crawl before you walk and this was a necessary first step on the path to to day’s Hyundai cars.
There’s one Pony still alive in Ontario, at least as of last year. This one appears in excellent condition. Runs well too.
I am sure there a a few more kicking around in garages, backyards and such. It’s just amazing how these Pony’s disappeared so quickly when they were so common. Than again, so did most of those low priced econo cars. I remember a ton of Lada Signets too, but they all disappeared. This one does appear to be fairly nice, and is actually the same colour as the one I spotted. The owner did make a comment below the video that it was repainted. I also noticed that it had some rust on the firewall area of the car. I hope it had a decent body before the repaint.
The first gen was penned by the legendary Giugiaro.
The first gen looked better than the second gen in the same way the first gen VW Scirocco looked much better than all subsequent gens.
Last time I was in greater metropolitan Toronto (i.e., Mississauga) was about 1990, and these Ponys were absolutely everywhere. I’d never seen one before and I was deeply curious. The friend I was visiting said, “Those? They’re just shitboxes.” Well, she didn’t say shitbox exactly, but that’s what she meant.
The Canadians had the Pony, we had the Excel. Lots of them were sold for $5,999.
I remember those Excel ads well, how they loudly trumpeted the price above all else. Of course, price was the only reason to buy one (and in most cases the buyer probably would have been better off with a 2 year old Honda or Toyota). A friend’s mother bought one, a 4-door sedan. The five-door hatchbacks like in your photo were, as I recall, quite uncommon.
I cannot remember the last time I saw a 1st-gen Excel on the road. And I’ve never seen a Pony, but I’m nowhere near the Canadian border so that’s to be expected.
My 1st Korean tour was 81-82. The Pony was the universal taxi. Towards the end of my tour it was being replaced by the Pony II. Perhaps because this was a Korean car in its home environment, these cars were generally considered pretty reliable by the drivers. At the very least, they could be easily fixed by almost any garage in the country as they were so common.
Korean taxis of the time all had manual transmissions. I noted drivers always short shifted and tried to avoid higher revs. Various drivers told me different stories. Most common were:
1) The engines didn’t give passengers a smooth ride when revved.
2) They were under company orders to shift early to save fuel.
By the time the Pony II was introduced, many of them ran on LPG. I doubt those models were ever exported. Drivers still shifted early though.
While the original Pony totally dominated the Korean taxi trade and hence the Korean roads, the Pony II arrived to more competition. The Saehan Maepsy was a serious early contender for the taxi trade. Maepsy taxis also used LPG fuel, but they had a Mazda clone engine rather than the Mitsubishi clone engine of the Pony. That engine seemed happier to rev – or at least the Maepsy cab drivers seemed more willing to wind it up than the Pony cab drivers.
By the time my next tour in Korea started in 1988, it seemed all the original Pony taxis had been replaced by a mixture of Pony IIs and other makes.
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Vietnamese taxi drivers still drive around the city at 25 mph in 5th gear and will only downshift once the whole car is shuddering to the point your fillings are rattling in your teeth.
What a find, and great post.
This makes me sad! I rode in many Ponys that were taxi cabs in Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia, just a year after the gen-2 versions (like your featured car) had been introduced. The newer ones all looked so shiny, then… I just had a flashback of getting into the shiny, black-vinyl back seat of an older model and being disappointed it wasn’t one of the newer ones, but intrigued by this foreign car I had never heard of before, back in “The States”…
Theres still a few Ponys on the road around here, the good ones seem to last ok the bad ones are long gone, I sent my parts Xsara for its second trailer ride since I bought it a couple of days ago, the only way I’ll see it again is as rebar
The first Pony I saw was owned by a young guy who wanted something cheap on gas to replace his then 15yr old Electra 225. My Dad bought the Electra. Wanna guess which one hit the wreckers first??
https://vancouver.craigslist.ca/van/cto/d/1985-hyundai-pony/6238597676.html
…..I like this ad because the seller is delusional….but some trust fund hipster might buy it to be ironic…
The Pony is not fully Mitsubishi. Only the engine is. I think other mechanicals come from the Ford Cortina, which was built under license by Hyundai back then. The exterior design is Italdesign and the overall concept is said to be related to the Morris Marina, as George Turnbull from British Leyland was brought by Hyundai to oversee the development of the Pony, built at an all new factory and their first car outside license jobs.
That’s pretty much the way I’ve always understood the background to the Pony design.
A coworker had one of these in the mid ninties in Calgary. He could not kill it. Although it had a cookie sheet covering up a hole in the floor, the exhaust was held on by coat hangers and door cards had long since disintegrated. It had a blue haze wherever it went even after warm up. I don’t think he ever changed the oil. The tin worm finally did it in. It made my other friends second gen accord sedan seem like a Cadillac by comparison.
It took me many years to give up my bias against Hyundia. I have since gotten rides in some late model Hyundia’s and they seem pretty well put together and the local dealer has a good rep.
My niece had one as her first car in Ontario, in the early ’90’s. Bright red, 5 speed (4 speed??). They were probably unaware of the lineage, but her mom (my sister) had a newer Colt Vista. The Pony seemed to deal with winter Ontario temperatures better than this visiting Californian did. Last I checked, my niece still drives a Hyundai. … the Pony didn’t turn her off.
A friend’s wife had a Pony in the late ’80’s and kept it for several years. He said the drivetrain was relatively reliable and easy to work on. That said, I haven’t seen one here in Ontario for many years – our salted roads took care of that. Another fellow I used to work with had an ’86 Stellar that he bought new and kept for 10 years. By the time he got rid of it, the body was pretty well rusted out and one of the headlights was held in place with electrical tape. He bought a new Corolla and for all I know he’s still driving it. Hyundai has come a long way, though – their newer models are much better, but I still find the Accent to be a bit of a penalty box.
A friend of my mother had one of the original Ponys back in the day. I’ll always remember having to bite my lip when she compared its reliability favourably to her previous car, which was a Fiat Spyder!