Never let it be said that I dislike a car, any car. I can generally find something to appreciate about any of them once I really take into consideration their point of being. And then think about it. Sometimes for a long time. But this one may be the exception. I never liked this poor thing that the storied LeMans name was affixed to, and I never even liked this generation when it was the eternal #2 German compact, the Opel Kadett. Older Kadetts? Sure. Newer ones (or Astras as they were called)? Yup, me likey. But this? Nein.
As far as I can tell, we’ve never featured this car here before except for one story that was technically a reprint from the “other site”. At that point it was labeled Deadly Sin #12. The short story is that the car started life as an Opel Kadett and did pretty well on the Continent, then after the end of the run the tooling was either sold to Daewoo or just put on the curb for recycling and someone shipped it to South Korea.
They started to produce them there and somebody got the wild and crazy idea that this is exactly what the Pontiac division would love to have to fill out their showroom. I suppose the goal was to replace the T-1000 (Chevette) with the 3-door hatchback version (okay), and compete with the Sunbird in 4-door sedan guise (why?). On the face of it, since the T-1000 is more or less related (kissing cousins?) to the prior Kadett, on paper in a boardroom filled with people that never had to drive either one this perhaps did make some sense. And since GM had been hopping in and out of bed with the Korean Daewoo over the years before finally tying the knot it was all one big, happy, incestuous family anyway.
But the cars were generally wretched, slow, low quality, with poor materials and out of date to anyone that was capable of looking beyond the fact that it replaced the T-1000 and also somehow thought that Pontiac was the only showroom on earth. Remember though that Hyundai had launched in the U.S. a couple of years prior to initial acclaim that quickly turned sour but still had sown some Korean seeds on our shores and prairies which may help to explain it a little. That this one managed to survive this long in the wilds of Wyoming is surprising though.
What we have here is obviously a 3-door, which most of them seemed to be and while there is no obvious body damage someone decided it had to go for whatever reason (the bent trunk is likely due to the yard staff wanting it open). This is an LE version as opposed to the bottom of the line Value Leader or the top GSE. The sporty red bumper/trim stripe goes a lot further here than I would have thought and the red cherry bomb exhaust at least adds some noise to the rest of the pizzazz such as the pinstripe and what used to be a red arrowhead logo.
Underhood sits the Korean-made Daewoo L73 engine, a 1.6l OHC 4-cylinder squeezing out 74hp and 90lb-ft of torque. That may sound like it translates to glacial pace here in 6000-foot elevation southern Wyoming, and it probably does, especially equipped with the 3-speed automatic as this one is. The driver’s foot was either off the gas pedal entirely or trying to push it through the floorboard, a handy toggle switch on the dash would have provided an equivalent on/off solution with less effort and physical strain.
Around back there isn’t too much of that vaunted Pontiac “Excitement” but at least it’s a hatchback so something to rejoice over. The four-door sedan though, I just can’t fathom that. The dealer sticker isn’t readable anymore and I can’t recognize the shape, perhaps one of our Wyoming based readers knows. The other sticker (in the window) supports the sheriff’s association.
Opening the hatch and propping a handy broomstick in place reveals a decently roomy cargo area. I had pulled out a piece of bent carpet and board that I didn’t think belonged in the car to show this better and only belatedly realized it was likely the mangled cargo cover. The 5-quart jug of O’Reilly 5W-30 doesn’t bode well here. Let’s move around to the cockpit area!
Ooh, that’s dreary. While the LeMans was based on the Kadett, which competed heavily with the VW Golf, I find the VW interior to be miles (kilometers?) ahead of this one. This could just not be more gray with nothing to liven it up. Somebody wanted out of this so bad they even left their slippers behind in the footwell. And there’s another oil bottle in the rear footwell.
I know it’s South Korean but this looks more like a North Korean holding cell. I suppose at least there is an armrest and the foldout (rotating I think) ashtray is actually a clever touch that mimics some European trains if I am remembering correctly.
That 71,579 mile number, that’s no good. Here in Wyoming the average car has probably twice the miles on it than a car in most any other state due to the distances involved in everyday life. On the plus side there is almost zero traffic at any time, anywhere. So besides the elevation and the cold temperatures part of the year, driving here is not that taxing on a car. So this just plain sucks.
I’ll toss in the one caveat that the instrumentation looks similar to VDO gauges, and could be either genuine VDO or a South Korean knockoff, either one leaving open the distinct possibility that the odometer broke as it did in many VDO-supplied VW and Audi products of the era. The trip odometer being zeroed is another subtle hint to that possibility, nobody ever zeroes that unless starting a trip. But the overall body condition does support the lower mileage.
Those look like tears running down the bodywork, not mine though. Perhaps the Lord is sad about the use of the name.
While it certainly didn’t do much to ever get me to like it, I suppose I can still respect the fact that this one made it thirty years. Many of the surrounding vehicles are significantly younger than that. With whatever issue the oil containers perhaps allude to, at least it hopefully didn’t leave someone completely stranded, likely there was notice that things were not going well. Hmm, perhaps I am able to rationalize a little something positive after all.
As of 2011, GM Daewoo was renamed GM Korea and no longer produced any vehicles badged Daewoo. The Daewoo name did outlast Pontiac, which ended a year earlier. Of course Opel, the original manufacturer of this car, was sold to PSA in 2017. And if I understand it correctly, this basic car was still produced in Uzbekistan until just a couple of years ago by the Uzbek arm of GM, making it a very long run indeed for the Kadett “E”
Related Reading:
PN’s GM’s Deadly Sin #12 – Pontiac LeMans
Look at the bright side. At least GM didn’t offer a “sporty” version called the GTO.
I recall a short skit, commercial, performance, whatever it was, of a LeMans of this vintage being slung around a skid pad doing precision stunts and such…on top of a skyscraper.. Filmed sometime around 1990. It was amazing, and I’m pretty sure wasn’t fake. I’ve searched for it on YouTube but cannot find it. Anyone else remember it?
You might be thinking of the zany ads they created for the Isuzu Gemini (which was another strange GM rebadge job) around the same time frame.
As someone in sales, this is a good example of how Detroit does not understand the concept of a loss leader.
Loss leaders are the items companies sell at a loss to get you into the store to buy other things. Grocery stores are notorious for this. In their low margin market, they willingly give up profit on one item, just to get you into their store to buy it and hope you buy other things while you are there.
The car companies thought that might work, but forgot one thing. Loss leaders only work when other items are purchased to make up for the loss on the one item. Nobody bought one cheap and then picked up another car at full price at the dealership.And dealer or brand loyalty did not mean that you might buy a nice car for you and a not as nice one for the kids, or wife, or whoever, like was common back in the 1950s. It did sort of work, with the automotive companies using stripper models, mainly large cars without any options. Poverty spec, or fleet spec, depending on how you view it, with as many blanking plates telling you that you went cheap and don’t have what others do. Some loss leaders were just delivered to dealers to allow them to advertise legally a very low price car, only to have buyers realize they could get a nicer car for just a few bucks more. This worked as long as strippers were few and far between, and more people ordered a car rather than taking a car out of dealer stock. However, as things changed, whole model lines were pushed as the low cost option. It wasn’t the Chevette Scooter that was a loss leader, it was that entire line of that model that became the loss leader. And guess what? Cheap car with little to no margin sold, and no other sale to make up the difference.
It seems that around the time of this car, American OEMs were enamored with Korean cars as the source for the cheapest car on the lot. Ford’s Aspire was from Kia, this from Daewoo, and all because Hyundai had broken in the market with their cheap product.I guess some executive thought that a Korean made loss leader would increase sales, but in the end, it did not help.
Loss leaders in the car business are very different from other industries. Cheap cars added sales volume in cars with high gas mileage. Under CAFE rules, increased sales of cars with high gas mileage allowed more sales of vehicles with lower fuel mileage (i.e. Corvettes and trucks) with greater profit potential. Here is a good description on how CAFE works.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a14531654/cafe-a-brief-guide-to-the-corporate-average-fuel-economy-law/
Captive imports like the Festiva and the LeMans helped make up for GM and Ford’s lack of product in this category. Numerically, achieving CAFE numbers with Cavaliers and Sunbirds would have been a tough task since these cars weren’t close to state-of-the-art for the late 80s.
Also remember that GMAC would have made quite a decent profit providing financing on cars like this for people with little or poor credit histories.
But weren’t the CAFE figures for captive imports separated from domestically-produced cars?
The idea was that a customer who bought one would come back for something bigger and plusher in a few years when they had more money. Unfortunately, they tended to be so indifferent-to-junky that those customers never came back to GM.
Yes, the original idea was to get you onboard in their brand and you’d stick with them as you bought successive larger and more profitable cars.
However, this clashed with the Detroit ideology that small cars were grudgingly-made penalty boxes intended to shame and punish the owner for their low income and/or frugality. In their arrogant solipsism they assumed of course you’d buy a bigger car from the same brand after a miserable experience with your Pinto/Vega/Escort/Cavalier/Omni/LeMans.
The one thing that your ‘Junkyard Classic’ finds have in common, is careful owners. This excellent series has been a testament to dedicated ownership. As every example you’ve published have been in generally remarkable condition. We can lament that these cars don’t deserve to be scrapped, but it’s pretty amazing cars like this Daewoo made it this far.
I have to admit getting a chuckle out of the tremendous tact Jim always shows. Something he, Jason and JP all share. Even towards a car he doesn’t especially like, he still shows compassion.
The mistake GM made was burdening this lowly competitor for the likes of the Excel, with the LeMans name. To me, the LeMans wasn’t anything special by the mid to late late 70s, with too much in common with the Malibu. But it generally adorned cars more credibly able to wear the LeMans badge. Too much baggage for this car.
Right there with ya, JK. I could not understand these when they came out, and could not understand how anyone else could possibly understand them either.
There is a very small universe of cars I would turn down if the condition and the price were in the sweet spot. This might be one of them.
As the owner of a “D” type Kadett in the early 90s, I never cared for the “E” type, either from the outside or from the drivers’ seat. Strangely enough it won European Car of the Year in the 80s, but the judges had a habit of picking lemons…..
Car of the Year awards are usually sops to whoever favors the magazine with the most advertising.
When the execrable Renault Alliance won C&D’s award it pretty much jumped the shark. The magazine discontinued the award a year or two afterward, possibly out of shame.
COTY was Motor Trend, not C&D, and they continued the award for years and years after that.
I greatly enjoy this series. A classic car archeological expedition in a way.
Eerily familiar feeling here: while finding something to live in every car I ever saw or rode it, the Kadett E just didn’t do it for me. Knew this was a bad car ever since my friend’s mum took us to ping pong practice in 1994 when I was 9 years old.
Sold here as the Vauxhall Astra Mk2, from 1984 to 1991 (I think). The 2 litre 16V GT/E in all over white was the car to have for while, with 120mph and digital instruments.
Then the magazines put it up against the Golf GTi
Held its own against an Escort XR3 and had a big boot, though.
205 GTI 1.9 was the leader of the pack.
The Kadett (Astra) had an indestructable boiled sprouts, suburban, white underpants, dull common image for us Dutch kids.
Kids who had no friends drove a Kadett.
So a Kadett GTI was not-done.
One guy in the row of lock ups where we worked on our cars had one.
But he always apologized, saying he got it at a discount from GM, his employer.
I was living in Michigan at the time, and these things were all over. As with base Escorts and etc. they were bought with Employee Pricing deals, because everyone knew somebody. Base price on the strippo VL model was $6400, and I’m betting “employees” could get one for $5500 or less. Perfect car for the middle manager’s kid.
Four years later, they were selling for $1500. Six years, you could pick them up all day long for $500. After 8 years, they were all gone.
When I worked at a large automotive supplier 20 yrs ago we had a database of rebadged cars (better:parts) and this GM thing was always the winner. No other car in the world was built by so many brands and CKDers. It’s a great pity that it was so rust prone plus had some other minor trifles. GM could have ruled the world with this little Opel.
Fun facts:
-> Even the alternator did work as a replacement on some BMW motorcycles.
-> One producer somewhere in Russia was even bought off by GM because they wanted them to stop making this car forever.
I was trying to think of something good to say about this car and the only thing I could come up with was that the tire in the passenger’s seat looks pretty good, at least it has quite a bit of tread. I don’t think this tire would have been the spare, most cars by then, especially small cars, used the mini-tire as the spare.
Good eye, that tire still had remnants of the tire sticker on the tread. Brand new. I’m not positive though if it actually belonged to this car (right rear) or if someone was “storing” it there before coming back to buy it.
The spare tire in the Pontiac Le Mans was actually a full size tire. I recall the sales person pointing this out to me in 1988. And yes…I still have that full size spare tire in the back of my rare 1989 Le Mans…
David Saunders found the Asuna GT in the Alberta junkyard that was alos offered under the Passport range offered in Canada.
I worked with a young lady who had her first job and her first new car. She lived in a small town 35 miles from work that had a Pontiac dealership. She bought, or was buying. a Korean LeMans. About the only part available off the shelf was an oil filter. The alternator quit while still under warranty and it took 2 weeks or so to get a replacement.She paid for a rental while the car sat.
I think the rear styling is rather cute. I see some LeMans in the rear of the second gen Prius too.
I ran one of these at a recent 24 Hours of Lemons race with the theme being a badge and costume from every name and country…it took me months to track down all the badges and body parts from as far as Australia and the Philippines.
The most egregious besmirchment of an automobile model name ever.
Except the fwd new yorker and fwd cougar
Knew a kid in high school that had a red aerocoupe. Not sure how reliable it was, but it was soon replaced by a Mercury mystique.
These were well regarded in Europe as the kadett/Astra, but then they were launched in 1985. 76 bhp is poor for the 1.6, the euro 1.3 version made that much while our 1.6 was quite peppy with 90 bhp. The gt/e was a rocket ship by the standards of the time, in the same category as the golf gti, Peugeot 205 gti etc
Even as a diehard Opel fan, these didn’t impress me in any way. Utter regurgitated crap. I’ll stick with my B, thank you very much.
These were sold in RHD form in New Zealand from 1989-91. Bizarrely, considering Holden was NZ’s GM-badge-de-jour, GM NZ kept the Pontiac Le Mans badging and name, and had pictures of ’60s Le Mans in the brochure. We only got the sedan and 5-door hatch, not the 3-door hatch – although when the Kadett E was launched here in 1986 (RHD and badged solely as Opel) it was only available in 3-door form. When the Astra F replaced the Kadett E, it was sold finally sold as a Holden. GM sure knew how to confuse potential customers…
We had a minor infestation of these from ’94-on, and, despite this machine being so desperate for love that it has adopted more names in more places than there are languages, it was meekly entitled the Daewoo here. Presumably, this was to establish the brand – but because of this stinker established it only as a byword for cars no-one ever bought other than grudgingly. I believe the mileage of the Le Mans in this post: their nameless bretheren here all took up smoking early, and died prematurely. There were no mourners.
I don’t imagine Hyundai were ecstatic about their arrival. They had recovered from the original Excel (an awful car) to a point where they were selling the next-gen – an ok car of its type – in boatloads by ’94. The direness of the Daewoo spread muck about Korean cars in general, which was unfair to the later Excel, as it turned out to be a pretty robust thing.
We had an absurd and cringeworthy original ad campaign for Hyundai (pron. “hi-yun-die” here) with some inanely grinning mustachioed cheeseball saying “Say hi to Hyundai.” I’ve long thought that, in honour of the quality, Daewoo deserved “Say poo to Daewoo” for its slogan. At least folk would’ve then been clear what they were buying.
Daewoo. We Do Dire.
After I guess pleasant experiences with Astra rental cars on holiday in Europe my sister test drove one of these Le mans, she went to the Toyota store next and bought a Corolla, the Daewoo version only resembled the Astra visually.
Replying 3yrs late. This thing was not an Astra and didn’t resemble those visually – it was based on the previous generation Opel Kadett. I drove the Daewoo version badged as Optima in Canada and the Euro Kadett – both were turds but the Daewoo had FI so was less of one than the Opel.
The Opel Kadett was sold as the Vauxhall Astra in European markets that sold Vauxhall (UK).
This isn’t just a rebadge; it’s a rebadge of a rebadge….
I really tried to like this car when it was new. It was a bit off the beaten path, a European design in a sea of similar-feeling Asian designs. The dashboard looked straight out of a 1980s BMW 5 series, right down to the orange glow of the nighttime illumination. The trunk of the 4 door sedan was huge. There were some rare-at-this-price features, like height adjustment for both front seats. But something about it just seemed off – every part felt cheap, and felt unusual. Few of the trim and switchgear parts, much less major mechanical bits, looked like standard-issue American GM which I sensed would make parts and service hard to find (correctly, based on what I can read above). So instead in 1989 i bought a Mercury Tracer – yet another double rebadge, this time of an Australian market Ford Laser which itself was a minor revision of a Mazda 323. If that caused parts/service problems at a Lincoln/Mercury dealer, at least I knew most of its parts were shared with another car sold in the US.
I get a little nauseous calling that thing a LeMans.
Therefore, I need a better LeMans from a better time….
LT Dan, this LeMans (yours) looks *just right*, as far as I’m concerned.
I remember being disappointed to find out about this car’s sub-par quality when reading the original CC article a few years back. When they were new, I had always assumed that because of their original pedigree, they were competitive and decent small cars. I’m not sure if I knew about the Opel-by-way-of-Daewoo-ness about them.
I would see these around town when new, and I had two friends who had them in high school and neither seemed to complain about them. I do remember being irked by the use of the “LeMans” name on these subcompacts. (What else would have worked by the late ’80s? “Astre” was probably too fresh in peoples’ minds as a Vega clone.)
T-2000? Seoul? LeMons? Soolaimon (Neil Diamond Edition)?
Haha!! Jim, these are all great. “Little star” in Latin appears to translate as “paulo stella”, so I would add “Stella” to that list…though perhaps too close to Hyundai’s “Stellar”.
I’m with Jim Klein on this one. There’s a difference between bad cars, and that’s personality and/or character. Think of old Fiats, British Leyland products, even stuff like the hoary old Yugo, Geo (Suzuki Swift) Metro, or even the Chevy Chevette. They all had at least had ‘some’ personality or redeeming trait, and that made them somewhat enduring, if only from afar.
But there’s nothing fun or interesting about the Daewoo Lemans (and another equally bad Daewoo GM rebadge, the Chevy Aveo). It has zero character and its banality makes it one of the absolute worst. It’s rather like how some bad movies are so bad, they’re actually good and fun to watch (think Ed Wood). But there are others that simply aren’t watchable or funny. They’re just a big pile of ‘meh’. IOW, you can’t even make fun of the Daewoo Lemans.
I had a 4 door version of this when I needed a cheap used car in Korea.
Having test driven a 5 year old Excel first, the LeMans won hands down. It was quicker
and handled better, and the body felt more solid. It only cost me the equivalent of a grand US, and was fun to thrash around. The Korean-spec ones were better equipped.
Mine had power windows,locks, deck release and antenna, plus AC and larger alloy wheels. When it no longer suited my purposes, I dumped it and got a Daewoo Prince,
which despite being underpowered, was a very solid car.
When these were new I remember one of the car mags saying something like:
“Styling a small car is like tailoring a dwarf. It never looks quite right.”
While that is certainly not PC or polite it does kinda describe the styling of this car.
This car had a quite different history in Brazil, the Chevrolet Kadett is one of those ever living junkies used by painters, electricians and other professionals which looks for a cheap, robust and useful car to beat mercilessly. GMB started its production in 1989, replacing it by the Astra G in 1998. The Brazilian Kadett used the same 1.8 and 2.0 from the Ascona and its GSI version is one of the most beloved GM this side of the Equator. The GSI convertible were the most expensive car in Brazil for a while. I couldn’t imagined that the Kadett made by Daewoo were that bad!
These blew spark plugs out of the head – more than other cars?
Amusing that the license plate is still on it. Thanks for writing this sad Pontiac up and dang, that sure is some low mileage, especially for Wyoming. I can think of numerous more comfy vehicles I’d rather drive around that state.
I own still it’s a 1989 Pontiac Lemans 1.6L Value leader simple 4spd heater and a key. I bought January 2007 and it still gets around 48mpg in town. I’m not easy on either I changed the clutch twice. I’d sure like to know the bone yard where this one is because I need the ash tray from it.
I do not understand all the hatred spewed towards this car! It’s 2022…and I still have my 1989 Pontiac Le Mans LE model that I bought new in October, 1988! 256,000 miles at the present time! Original motor, transmission and radiator….I did replace the head gasket at 227,000 miles….and some other minor repairs over the years. The car is energetic and doesn’t burn any oil! I still love driving the thing and it will probably outlast me! The picture is from last summer….