(first posted in 2010 at TTAC; 8/13/2013 at CC) Between the years 1988 and 1993, GM decided to use Americans in a mass experiment, in which I found myself an unwitting participant. Seemingly unable to determine on its own whether Korean-made cars would pass muster here, GM just sent boatloads of them over and slapped on the storied Pontiac LeMans name, no less. Then it looked for suckers/participants, both long and short term. Oddly enough, one actually had to pay to play. I ponied up for a week’s worth in the summer of 1990, and put it through the most difficult torture possible to try to kill it, in revenge for having been drafted by Hertz to do GM’s work. I hereby submit my results, in the hopes of getting my money back. Oh wait; that was the old GM. Well, someone’s going to hear my evaluation, twenty-some years late or not.
I’m assuming the overall experiment didn’t go so well even without my input, because GM and Daewoo broke up in 1992, right about when the US-LeMans experiment was ending. It wasn’t the first time Daewoo got kicked out of bed for a poor performance, having previously shared sheets with both Toyota and Datsun. Daewoo then went through its brief independent single era, which ended in tears and bankruptcy, and was soon back in the General’s loving arms in about 2002 or so, despite the LeMans experiment, or maybe because of it. They were obviously meant for each other, given how things have turned out.
It was a particularly rude choice of GM to inflict the LeMans onto Americans via Pontiac, since historically the once-proud Indian brand occupied a notch above Chevrolet in the corporate pecking order. And Chevy/Geo was selling some quite decent Japanese cars at the time, both the Corolla-clone Prizm, as well as the Isuzu-built Spectrum. Saturn was also still in its heyday. So why dump this on poor Pontiac?
I suppose one could argue that Pontiac was already the GM cesspool of small cars at the time. Its Chevette-clone 1000 began rotting before it was introduced almost ten years earlier, and the Sunbird was no gem. And there was the not-so Grand Am. How’s another piece of crap dumped on Pontiac going to hurt it? It’s not like it’s going to go under or anything like that.
The Daewoo LeMans actually had some pedigree. It was heavily based on the Opel Kadett E, the lead member of GM’s global T-Platform that found its way around the world. But something got lost in the translation into Korean, because the real McCoy Kadett/Astra was generally able to give the Golf a reasonable run for its money on its home turf.
In the summer of 1990, my younger brother and I both needed a break from our jobs and young families. My parents were heading to the mountains of Colorado for a vacation, a long-time favorite Niedermeyer vacation destination, so we played hookie and joined them for a week. My rental was a 1990 LeMans four door; although fairly new, it seemed like it had already spent a lifetime being abused: the steering was sloppy, the suspension felt like all the bushings and shocks were worn, the engine moaned like it was about to die. And the interior was deadly. “Use Me – Abuse Me” was etched all over its thin paint.
With a 74 hp 1.6 L four hooked to a three-speed automatic, the LeMans was feeble enough at Denver’s altitude; but we were heading to Leadville, the highest town in the continental US. Taking the Hwy 6 bypass at the Eisenhower Tunnel to Loveland Pass took us to 12,000 feet, and the Daewoo was already wheezing and staggering with altitude sickness. But that was just the warm up act.
We came here to climb the fourteen-thousanders of the Collegiate Range, but my seventy-year old father needed a one day break after the big climbs, including this ascent of 14,400 ft. Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in the Rockies. And since my mother couldn’t make any serious climbs at all, on alternate days I took them mountain climbing in the LeMans. There are numerous old wagon and mining roads all over that part of the Rockies; I can’t remember exactly which ones we took, but if they were headed up, so did we.
These rough rock and gravel “Jeep roads” that sometimes reach 13,000 feet or so are normally the exclusive domain of genuine four wheel drives. In the old days, tall and rugged two-wheel drive trucks were adequate, and I had conquered a few with my old VW Beetle. But a rear-engined high-clearance 15″ wheeled VW is not a low-squatting, FWD LeMans. Just for the record, a light FWD car with four adults aboard on a very steep grade is the worst drive train configuration possible, except perhaps a rear-engined car with front wheel drive, which I don’t remember ever being built, except for the Dymaxion.
But we gave the LeMans the spurs, and it scrabbled its way up most everything we could find, although I seem to remember backing down one at some point when the wheels just couldn’t find traction anymore. I might have tried going up backwards; if necessary; that’s the way to go up a too-steep hill in a FWD car. We got high enough as it was, and the boulders we scraped on its bottom were fortunately well inside of the rocker panels.
My mother took and sent me this picture, which was taken on one of our “climbing expeditions”. On the back, she wrote: “this was taken on one of the lower peaks we reached. A triumph for the car and your driving, Paul!” Aw shucks, Mom! I was just doing my job for GM! But I’ll pass on the compliments belatedly. Although I doubt anybody there would care anymore.
Since I’ve already hijacked the main LeMans thread, I’ll share another brief story from that trip. My father, a medic in the Wehrmacht, was captured by the Allies near Normandy during WWII, and felt that he owed his life to being one of a fairly small number of lucky German POWs to be sent to the US, where he was very well-fed. In one of the large POW camps in France, he saw his weight and health decline precipitously, and attended to many malnourished and starving POWs. Since the war was as good as over by then, his group was sent to various military camps in the US to tear them down. One of them was here at Camp Hale, also near Leadville, where the famous 10th Mountain Division trained before heading to Italy. Here my father stands at the foundations of the very buildings he helped dismantle forty-five years earlier. And we got there courtesy of the LeMans.
OK, so the LeMans never gave up regardless of what I dished out. Getting there is one thing, how it feels getting there is what makes the car. And what really put the LeMans into perspective was that my father’s rental was the all-new Mazda 323-based gen2 Ford Escort. The difference between the two was huge. The Escort felt so solid, tight, and buttoned down on the (paved) winding roads; it was an impressive small car for the times; certainly the best to wear a Big Three logo, even if Ford couldn’t take all the credit for it. Of course, he wouldn’t dare let us compare its climbing abilities to the Daewoo, so that aspect will be forever unknown. But then Ford wasn’t asking us to be their guinea pigs.
Even if Americans didn’t end up embracing the Korean LeMans, it has found a more loving home elsewhere. And a more enduring one too. They’re still being made today as the UzDaewoo Nexia in Uzbekistan (insert Borat joke here).
A car usually seen as a Daewoo or Vauxhall Astra/Opel Kaddett in the UK.Yet again we see the de basing of a once great name,a Deadly Sin many car makers were guilty of
Complete background and detailed history of this model described in this link. Can read about the Opel/Vauxhall roots, Daewoo and Pontiac related sequels till 1995 (!!!) as the Le Mans had been developed toward until the existing Sunfire! Very very interesting. http://vauxpedianet.uk2sitebuilder.com/vauxhall-t85—pontiac-lemans
I remember these cars. I haven’t seen one one the road in about 7-8 years. It was a light blue 2-door (or should I say 3-door?) driven by a construction worker when they were tearing down my town’s old high school. Such ugly cars in my opinion. I can’t explain why, but the front and rear fascias just look hideous. And this was one of the first cars to sport the “taller-than-wider” look (think Chevy Aveo sedan).
On a brighter note, I always enjoy your personal memoirs of family and career events. They are always interesting to read about.
I also remember these cars because I was shopping for this kind of vehicle after getting my first job. A lot of us new college grads got our first cars during this time. One, bought a new Lemans, just like this one – in red. Another co-worker got a Corsica, another a Civic, another a Excel, another a Tercel – and I got a Festiva. We all went out to lunch together regularly during break.
The worse of the bunch was the Lemans. It had electrical problems, build quality issues and problems under the hood. It still looked pretty cute, but it was clearly a bad car. The Excel was the next bad car – it was cheap, but had a lot of problems pushing itself fast enough on the expressway. Then the Corsica. It just started snapping apart inside. It was full of cheap plastic and bad fabric. The interior started going. The drawer-style glove box jammed and no longer opened.
The Civic, Tercel and the Festiva were the best of the bunch. The Civic was expensive, but an excellent car. The Tercel outlasted it’s owner’s love. My Festiva ran without any problems for 240,000 miles, 12 years and got $1000 of it’s $6999 back in trade in. Then the Festiva lasted another 10 years around town. The last time I saw it, the Festiva was on a car lot selling for $800, which it was not worth.
So Kia could build a Mazda 121 and do that incredibly well, but Daewoo couldn’t build an Open Kadett. While Kia went on to infamy with their own line of cheaply made tin cans, the Festiva they assembled for Ford for five years showed they could do an excellent job with the right engineering.
The Lemans was, indeed, a GM Deadly Sin. It really hurt the Pontiac brand. During the Yugo years, this car and the Excel got lumped together as bad cars, hurting GM. GM couldn’t get a decent machine made out of Daewoo and Daewoo wasn’t a good partner. GM lost billions in their deal with Daewoo, further embarrassing GM.
Deadly Sin indeed!
Main issue of the Daewoo manufactured Pontiac LeMans might be the THM-125 (3-T40) 3-speed automatic transmission with the small 13″ wheels. 55MPH at ca. 3000 rpm. Far too slow far too noisy. The sibling Daewoo Nexia got the GM 4-T40-E 4-speed automatic transmission and 14″ wheels. The result shows significant difference. 55MPH at around 2200 rpm. All in all it gives a much much better performance mainly on highway with a lower fuel consumption! The 1988-1993 Pontiac LeMans (Passport Optima ~ Asüna SE/GT) would have been a bit more successful IF it had been equipped with the 4-speed a/t if this would have been available then.
We had a 1990 2 door Lemans. It was a piece of junk. The head gasket blew, it was slow and noisy on the highway due to having a 3 speed transmission. The auto seat belts would malfunction from time to time and try to crush you into the seat. A recall fixed that problem. Yet, the hatchback was helpful for hauling stuff and it was still faster than a 1984 Bronco II I had previously owned.
This car WAS a deadly sin. Should have never worn the Pontiac badge.
If GM HAD to import this car, they should made it a derivative (?) of a Chevy in the lineup somewhere.
Anyway, as the big 3 were all doing this, some cars were just better than others in this segment.
A “classic”? Ummm… no – unless one’s ownership experience says otherwise. After all, I loved my old 2004 Impala for over 8 years. That was a “CC” to me, for sure!
I am not sure, but I always thought GM dropped the Daewoo name in favor of Chevrolet for their Korean grown offspring sold in Europe.
Daewoo always gave me the refrigirator – washing machine link instead of a decent car.
’bout Daewoo Motor’s decency: pls check Maepsy, Lemans, Racer, Fantasy, Pointer, Royale, Duke, Prince, Supersalon, Brougham, Imperial, Chairman, nameplates! You may surprise in a good manner!?
I’m going to agree with a deadly sin article…hell hath frozen over!
Maybe a picture of a Lemans in better shape with the better engine would have been nice?
Still a turd, but kind of an interesting looking turd in a very 80’s kind of Pontiac way.
It would have been a blast if the optional 2.0 was the turbo version.
All my Curbside Classics are cars that I have found on the street. I’m not sure I ever saw a GSE, even back when they were new.
CC most of all is a site dedicated to “found cars”. To work up a lather about a LeMans GSE, which was an extremely uncommon car in its day, is just not our schtick here. We’d have to change the site to “MM Classics”.
Yes Sir, I understand how you run the site.
I also see others puting factory pictures or brochure images in their stories, like say your Caravan entry, or Corvair articles, Mercedes articles, VW articles…
If you happen to not like the car it gets the worst pictures available. If you like it it gets some better photos so it isn’t judged on the years of abuse and neglect it got from owners.
I’m only critical because I’m an ass…but you knew that.
I’d forgotten that they made that GSE version; it just wasn’t on my radar at the time, and as I said, it was extremely rare. These cars almost instantly developed a rep as a low-cost shit-box, and It’s a bit hard to imagine someone ponying up for the GSE. At least it was in the part of the world where I was living at the time.
Also, my CCs come in decidedly different flavors. Sometimes I take a more objective, historical approach. Other times, it’s more personal and subjective. Guess which camp this one falls into?
The sign on the back makes we think we need our own version of Nice Price or Crack Pipe, inspired by one of those “other” sites. $1200, hee hee. I didn’t even pay that much for a 5 year old one in Korea years ago,and mine was loaded, AC, alloys, all power.
5-door of New Zealand
Funny how that’s a completely different 5 door body from this one. I think they do share front doors.
It didn’t attach.
Agree that this made a wretched Pontiac, and was a particularly bad use of the LeMans name. Maybe this could have been a Sunfire instead (barf). As for the car, my only experience was actually with the Vauxhall Astra version, which I drove once in England in 1987. I was really concentrating on my driving more than the car (not used to the “wrong” side of the road), but I remember it being reasonably good, at least in the context of its European competition at the time. I also recall there were “hot” versions of the Astra (I think badged GTE), which might have been a bit more legit for the remnants of Pontiac’s “performance” image.
By the time this car came to the U.S., the design was getting pretty old, and I’m sure being made by Daewoo did not help at all. I never understood why GM didn’t offer the Gen. 1 Astra/Opel Kadett from 1980 in the U.S. It was their first FWD car in that segment, and it seems like it would have been a good replacement for the Chevette/T1000. I assume they felt they couldn’t competitively build small cars in the U.S., but it’s a shame that they didn’t turn over the Chevette factories to make a more modern car. I think it would have been a better match for the Omni/Horizon as well as the emerging Japanese FWD designs at that time. And it might have saved them from needing all the “bastardized” small car offerings that they foisted on Americans in the late 80s/early 90s.
We we’re supposed to get the FWD Kadett T-body as a replacement for the RWD T-body Chevette, all the magazines from the early 80’s predicted it would happen “next year” every year, but it never came, somewhere along the way Chevrolet decided to replace the Chevette with the Suzuki made Sprint instead, when we did get the FWD Kadett, it was a bit past it’s “sell by” date and made in a country with a still dubious reputation for car making.
In reality the Kadett/LeMans deal was another one of those situations where the recipe was there to make a tasty cake, but what we ended up with was burned dough that tasted like crap.
If they would have gotten it right, the LeMans(terrible naming choice aside) could have been like a Golf/Jetta for Pontiac, as small European bred FWD hatch/sedan with good road manners and tight construction, instead we asked the Koreans to cook it, and we ended up with soggy cabbage and hot dogs when should have had sauerkraut and sausages.
A wonderful tale that makes me feel a little more kindly towards these cars. I have heard so many horror stories about them, but it is nice to know that the little scrap-pile was up to the task of some mountain climbing. Of course, we may later hear from someone who bought a LeMans from a Hertz and suffered through its horrible, drawn-out death. But I guess that is what you get when you buy an automotive experiment instead of just renting one.
I have BOTH of them. A Kadett-E Series and the Le Mans. Both with the 3-speed Hydramatic. The Le Mans has far more stronger chassis and bumpers regarding to the “Buckle Up America” era. No differences between the interiors. The exterior design features gives the Le Mans an exclusive appearance in comparison with the Kadett-E. The engines are the same as well. 1.6 Litre TBI. The younger Kadett-E has rust. The Le Mans does not. So, in euro-terms where the Kadett-E was an epithome, the korean Le Mans is beating its original german made Kadett-E sibling from every aspect. If You americans would both had the Kadett-E and Le Mans side by side at the same time, you would probably have the more or less same opinion. To compare the Kadett-E / Le Mans with the genuine Le Mans of the ’70s and early ’80s was the wrong approach. GM’s sin was the wrongly chosen nameplate only for the ’88-93′ model years.
Dad bought the facelifted Daewoo version of that car, a Racer ETi, circa ’96. Car wasn’t too bad, but nothing remarkable either. Had Pontiac arrows in the grille and steering wheel. Sold it 2 years later to get the Fiat (that is still with the family in YV).
The following facelift, the Cielo, was bought in big numbers for taxi duty in Venezuela. I saw a couple with over 500K kms, at which point it was a tired POS with at least an engine rebuild. Parts are still cheap and plentiful although the size of the fleet has reduced considerably.
I think the platform lived on in the Lanos for some years before the Kalos (Aveo) arrived.
The whatever Racer never had the Pontiac Arrow on the grille. It has the combination of the Pontiac’s Arrow with the Daewoo Royals design. Because the same car had to fit worldwide markets, the manufacturer had decided to retool / restyle A BIT only the badges and the nameplates till 1992. The 1993 Pontiac Le Mans model was refreshed with “genuine” face- and taillifts. Daewoo for LEMANS/Racer had its own style then Pontiac had its “own” as well also chosen from Daewoo’s 2 variants… Differences between the grilles and tail lights+rear plastic moldings. 1993 models were the design inaugurators of the upcoming 1995 Cielo/Nexia range.
Daewoo LEMANS ; Pontiac Le Mans
Daewoo LEMANS / Racer grille from ’93 till its end…
Picking on GM in he bad old days is definitely the journalistic equivalent of both shooting fish in a (very tightly packed) barrel, and beating a dead horse. I often wonder how many automotive blogs would have survived all these years without GM to pick on, over and over and over.
But the readers love it. And love to complain about that car that screwed them royally twenty and thirty years ago.
I often wonder: Do they remember what a bitch the ex-spouse was in equal detail?
It is an interesting way of looking at it. I will give Paul props in this one, at least he has driven it.
I get the best laugh out of those who shoot first and don’t ask questions. Its usually pretty easy to tell when a journalist is just jumping on the train and hasn’t even driven the car they are writing about, yet know how bad it was.
I’m kind of surprized that “ugly Pontiac Cladding” hasn’t been mentioned yet since that seems to be the goto statement when talking Pontiacs.
Syke: Since I’ve been happily married for over 35 years (to my first wife), I’m afraid I’m not qualified to answer your question.
But you’re 100% right: the only reason I write endless GM-bashing articles like this is so that you will keep coming back here, making me rich off of your presence and comments. TTAC and CC would have long died and gone under if you weren’t such a consistent patron of my GM DS articles. Thank you for falling for my ruse. And thank GM for making it possible, otherwise I’d have to take off my PJs, and go out and get a real job.
Nothing’s worth having to take a real job.
Sorry if I sounded overly critical, but the “GM sucked (sucks?)” thread has become so ubiquitous over the past five or so years, over multiple web sites, that I invariably stifle a yawn anymore when an article comes up.
I have no problem with GM bashing. Being one of the biggest business failures in history, they deserve what they get in the way of criticism.
And that IS a bastardization of the LeMans nameplate.
Heres a happier memory of better times for the LeMans
+1
Hopefully You can add +3 years in 2016. Congrats anyway! I’m happy that some folks are still posting to this Le Mans article after all…
No….its like beating already dead fish a barrel, with dead horse……..
I’m obviously a necrophiliac. But it’s making me rich!!!! Keep the comments coming!
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Consider these as necessary reminders to GM.
How far back in the past does it go? That can be a dangerous phrase that can be used against you also.
I love old cars, but I am not “married” to any car company, so any and all bashing of crummy models is fine by me. GM’s problem is just that they produced so many of them — of course they get the lion’s share of the abuse. But that was OLD GM, right? NEW GM is different…
Yes my friend, we most certainly do.
I often wonder: Do they remember what a bitch the ex-spouse was in equal detail?
Yes.
My nephew bought a new red 3-door Lemans in 1990. He brought it over and let me drive it. All I could do is smile and say ” nice car”. What a turd. Of course, he traded in an ’87 Renault Encore, so…
I have been to Leadville a few times, and had never heard about the training camps or seen these remains. Very interesting.
My brother owned one of these, a ’90 two-door in red, with a stick. I drove it a couple times and always thought it felt thin and cheap. But a lot of entry-level cars felt that way to me then and I didn’t think that ill of his little Korean car for it.
Some quirks of his car: the turn signal ran very fast and the noise inside sounded like the amplified heartbeat of a squirrel on speed. And I think I remember that first gear was essentially useless, you shifted out of it so quickly after starting.
By 1996-7, though, the LeMans was an albatross around my brother’s neck. It didn’t always start, and when it did he had to work hard to keep it running. He’s a very determined man, bent on not having a car payment, so he stuck with that car well past the point when it was an unredeemable crapbox. With a turn in his fortunes, the first thing he did was replace it with a used ’98 Civic. He’s driven Civics ever since with no regrets.
At the same time my brother owned his LeMans, my dad owned a 2-gen Escort five-door hatch, with an automatic. The Escort was a really good little car. Dad owned it longer than any other car ever, because it was fun to drive, powerful enough for the time, and remarkably durable. He sold it only because he needed a larger vehicle to haul lumber and finished pieces for his furniture business. I drove it a handful of times and you’re right, Paul, it made the LeMans look positively crude.
Being a big iron American car kind of guy, I saw the use of the LeMans name on these cars as a travesty. A college buddy of mine had the 2 door version of this in a bright blue color. He could turn it around inside a 2 car garage with probably a 3 point turn, and it could hold a lot of cargo when the seats were folded down. Occasionally, I could see the efficiency of something designed differently then a traditional American mid size or full size.
If it was a piece of crap, I wouldn’t know it. Never drove it, and he traded cars every few years. Still does!
I actually thought it was halfway decent looking. As suggested, had it been a T-1000 replacement, the name might have been more palatable. Actually, Tempest might have been a good name. Not as storied as LeMans / GTO and it had a history as Pontiac’s entry level car “small” car.
Ironic then GM in Canada re-used the Tempest name for a Pontiac counterpart of the Corsica. For the first years, the “Daewoo LeMans” as sold as Passport/Asuna.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/07/celebrate-canada-day-with-quirky-canadian-cars/ Another name then Pontiac could had tried is Ventura since the name used for the X-body was replaced by Phoenix. It wasn’t storied as LeMans as well.
Funny how this was a deadly sin, yet Hyundai and Kia survived making equally terrible cars for quite some time.
The first Excel almost killed Hyundai in the US. But the Koreans are a determined folk.
The difference is that those of us over 50 remember a time when GM was capable of so, so much more. I don’t blame Paul one bit. If my first exposure to U.S. Cars in 1960 had been the beautiful, powerful, well built and durable 1960 Pontiac, I too would have a very bad taste in my mouth over this LeMans. These cars were notoriously bad, yet GM brought buyers in on the strength of its reputation and sold these awful things that would make a Sunbird feel like a Toyota. Why they did not import and sell these under the Daewoo name and sell them at Pontiac dealers is a very good question.
I think that the over 50 crowd here is looking through rose tinted glasses.
When you look back on GM cars you praise you most likely remember those that you loved as a kid, maybe a family member had one, who knows.
When the so called “crap” was made (I am not defending this Lemans in the least) you were older, more mature, and usually in the buying instead of dreaming stage of your life so you didn’t have the rose tinted glasses on.
I have a feeling that a 64 Tempest wasn’t build as well or as reliable as a 2006 G6, but because it was that time in your life you’d like to think they were the better car.
I grew up in a GM family. Our 64 Cutlass was one of the best cars my mother ever owned. Other than tires brakes and tune ups, that car made it to the age of 7 when it finally whammed her with the need for both a muffler and a battery in the same year. I am sure that GM made some bad cars back then, but I don’t think GM made as many as other companies did. (Cheap stuff like their strange fascination with 2 speed transmissions and lack of guages notwithstanding, but those are design issues). Our 61 F-85 had issues with an overheating aluminum engine, but I don’t recall any other member of our extended family that had a lemon of a GM car. By and large, we all kept cars for 5-10 years, which was not done if the car was a bad one.
I agree that a 2006 G6 may have been a better car than what was built in the 50s and 60s, but we could not buy a 2006 G6 in 1964. We could only buy Fords or MoPars or VWs instead of GM cars. As a Mopar fan, I am well aware that some shitty cars were built back in the day. But GM was as close as anyone back then got to Toyota, namely an attractive, reliable car for normal people. At some point in time, though, that went away.
The rose-colored glasses effect plays a role, no doubt. But I don’t think it’s that hard to be able to discern in any given piece. There’s always two sides of every story, and I’ve criticized GM decisions going back to the 1940s, as well as sang the praises in y many GM’s Greatest Hits.
It’s very difficult to give a consistent, simplistic approach to GM (or any car company). They were all in it to make money, and they did it by trying to seduce us. That’s the game, and it has never ended, right? So sure, it’s easy to write about the cars that still seduced us successfully in our more virginal days. As well as the ones that popped the bubble.
It’s one of the reasons I encourage younger writers here: so that we can hear how they were seduced by the cars that failed to do so for us jaded oldsters.
The story of GM and every car maker is no different than biographies of famous people: there are going to be positive and negative stories that make up the sum of people’s many varied experiences with them. They were a consumer company, so our experiences as consumers are all valid, good or bad. We just need to embrace that combination of black and white, which paints a more complete multi-dimensional picture; is that so hard?
I spent my formative years in a Firestone shop. I cannot sate that GM car of the 1980-2000 era were the best of quality…
There will always be old guys who see GM’s epic belly-upism as some sort of a conspiracy. In their eyes, it wasn’t about product and service.
Im in my 30s and grew up in the 80s.
If there was ever a car linked to pop culture in my generation, it was the Trans Am. The 80s, Trans Ams, and Van Halen. Sammy Hagar wrote songs about them for petes sake, and do I even need to mention the movie? Or the talking car? Then when it time for us to get drivers licenses, if your parents wouldn’t let you get a Firemaro, you got a Grand Cutlass Carlo Regal, because they looked cool and had a big back seat. The good looking, well to do girls had daddys that bought them cute new Grand Ams.
Pontiac built excitement for my generation, and the Wide Track Tigers for those that came before us. They were good looking, well-built cars that you wanted to own and be seen in. A 1980 LeMans was a cool car. A 1990 ‘LeMans’ is a bastard.
What GM did to the marque (and ultimately, themselves) is unforgiveable.
This review of a then-new 1966 Impala suggests that the good old days weren’t all that great.
http://www.55-57chevys.com/coccc/articles/646/66asty1.html
By modern standards, the car described in that review would have been a lemon. Yet the author (who owned it) essentially took it in stride, accepting the car’s numerous issues, presumably because this sort of thing wasn’t that unusual.
Cars have become far more reliable thanks to Toyota and Honda raising the bar with lean production.
GM had some attractive designs and provided a lot of horsepower to those who would pay for it, but the engineering and assembly oversight weren’t exactly stellar. The emphasis was on style and acceleration, not design integrity.
I’ve read the Art Evans review before (it appears in the Brooklands Impala 1958-1972 volume) and it’s pretty clear that it’s not that he takes the car’s problems in stride, but that he’s being deliberately sardonic. His conclusion, after all, is that he’s happy to know that his lease will expire before the warranty!
Shoulda’ ordered it with the HD suspension.
Someone involved with sports cars and who drove a MB wasn’t very likely to be too happy with something like this.
Lemon? What went wrong with it other than some light bulbs and a broken vacuum gauge? Did I skip the part about any serious mechanical failures?
Not to be an apologist, but the couple of niggling problems he had were par for the course, and perhaps he’d have been lucky to get a away with only those on some foreign cars of the time.
I’d be pretty annoyed if I picked up a brand new car with a gauge that not only malfunctions but also can’t be repaired.
And I would have to have been one of those customers who bought a car that had served as someone else’s parts car.
The article provides a fair reminder of why Detroit would later take a nose dive. Multiply those sorts of issues by millions of customers, and the result was a market that could be receptive to other producers that could do it better. The Brits, French and Italians didn’t fit that bill — if anything, they were probably even worse — but the Japanese were able to create improvements that customers would eventually pay for.
Though I am closer to 50 than I want to be, I am still in my 40s. My prime exposure to GM as an impressionable youngster was in the 1970s, when many would argue that they were churning out nothing but crap. Be that as it may, in the context of the times EVERYONE was turning out crap, and GM’s didn’t stink any worse than anyone else’s–and in many cases was much better, like the downsized RWD cars. We were mostly a GM family, and by and large everyone was happy with the cars. Granted, most everyone in my family traded cars within 2 to 4 years, so no time for really bad failures or poor durability. My father liked a 4 year/50K mile cycle for our family cars–enough to get “value” out of the car by flattening the depreciation curve, but not so old/so many miles as to experience multiple mechanical failures. GM products fit the bill perfectly for that–and it was good business for them. In my opinion, GM completely lost it in the 1980s, and by the 1990s they had lost EVERYONE in my family. That to me is a catastrophic business failure, and is always fascinating to dissect.
My experience was very similar as our family owned several Olds Cutlasses and Toronados throughout the 70s and 80s and never had a problem with any of them, but as you mention, that was a time when more people traded every few years so who knows how good or bad they may have been after 10 years.
10 years for a car then is like 20 now. And many Cutlasses ran fine at that age, at least the RWD Olds V8 powered ones.
This was a good basic design let down by inadequate quality control on the part of the Korean suppliers. At the time, GM and Daewoo were pointing fingers at each other over who was to blame for this fiasco. And I would feel bad for anybody who had to pay 8 or 9 grand, financed at that, for one.
Having said that, I had one of these and didn’t mind it all, despite it’s frequent breakdowns. This was in Korea, where used ones weren’t worth too much.
In my price range, it was either this or a Hyundai Excel. Having driven both, IMHO this was much better than an Excel. Despite Daewoo’s ham handed execution, there was still a lingering ember of Germanic goodness to it. It outran and outhandled the Excel, and had a nicer dash and driving position.
It was a no brainer for me.
Mine was the 1991 high-zoot GTE version with alloy wheels, power windows-locks etc, even a height-adjustment seat. Bought in the summer of ’97 for around 800 bucks, I was happy as a pig in $h!t. I was finally on wheels again after no driving for 2 years!
Not only that, I always wanted an Opel (forbidden fruit effect) and now by gum, I had me one!, or so I thought.
My last car in Canada was an A2 Jetta, and I felt that, had the Daewoo been better assembled, it would have compared well, as noted above..
It handled great, and was perfectly stable at 160 km/h, it’s top speed which I frequently hit on the expressways. The TBI unit failed, along with the exhaust and some other things, plus a recurring CEL that coincided with a detonation death rattle,
fixed by cutting the ignition and restarting it. Ultimately fixed by replacing the underhood wiring harness.
But, it was still fun to drive, and I beat on it relentlessly. My most vivid memory of it was a time when I was whipping along between Incheon and Suwon at about 150km/h when a “Bongo” truck in front of me made an evasive swerve that lifted it’s little left side dual rear wheels into the air.
I was looking wide eyed at that when I should have been looking at the reason he swerved, which was a huge box-shaped piece of sheet metal industrial ducting that had fallen off of a truck (a common occurrence in Korea even now, 15 plus years later).
I plowed straight into this at full tilt, in a spectacular explosion of jagged metal shards, which, looking back, must have been a fan enclosure for a factory ventilation system.
The bulk of it got caught under the front, balled up like a piece of cigarette foil.
I dragged it about another 300 feet down the road, with an ungodly shrieking sound
of metal dragged on pavement. It got so far under that the wheels lost part contact with the road, compromising my steering. When I finally got it stopped and backed off of it, I found had no lights, and it was dusk. The sharp sheetmetal had cut deeply into the rubber bumper cum chin spoiler, and severed a wiring harness.
I managed to get back to my home base of Suwon University. My mechanic, who was well familiar with me,as he was with another LeMans driving compatriot,, repaired the wiring and fixed the spoiler with some large industrial staples to hold it together.
I dumped it when the AC conked out, and got a good deal on a clean ’95 Prince, which was a big step up.
That’s me, filling up my dad’s Opel Kadett E in 1987. He actually bought the same car again (also in white) after this one had run its course. I don’t remember that much of it, except for puking on the rear seat during a holiday 🙂
The genuine Opel Kadett D and the Daewoo are not really the same car; something obviously got lost in the translation from German to Korean.
Just like the difference between a Chevrolet Cavalier and an Opel Ascona. I find it pretty bizarre that there are Americans that defend GM. I guess GM had it right about their US customers. There just weren’t enough of them.
If this helps, I spent a day driving a Vauxhall version of what was sold here as the Chevy Chevette in the UK. (It was a rental that I presume was several years old, as the car has been discontinued many years earlier in the US.) It was just as miserable as the American version.
I’m not surprised, inasmuch as the Chevette was a more faithful interpretation of the original than the LeMans was, for better or for worse.
We spent a few weeks driving around Europe in an ’84 Opel Ascona 1.6S rental. It was pretty comparable to my ’85 Jetta GL and probably no less reliable. Brock Yates’ “Decline and Fall of the US Auto Industry” details the decisions made to produce US J-cars that were objectively inferior to German and Brazilian J-cars. The Vauxhall Chevette left production in 1984 and the US Chevette followed in 1987, so it would have been pretty old when you drove it. I wouldn’t put it past GM to make inferior cars for the UK for as long as the Brits were loyal to their domestic products.
I worked for a small car rental company in Orlando when these first came out. The first one we received had the A/C go out before it could even be rented. It sat for months at the the Pontiac dealer waiting for parts. Those cars were JUNK.
My sister and BIL tested one of these on return from Europe my sisters car having been written off shortly before departure, it was rubbish she just bought a new Toyota instead. Quite rare cars in NZ now very few have survived into oldage.
Geez, Paul, Mom was right to congratulate you! There were long, steep, curvy sections with deep ruts and large rocks, both protruding and/or loose. How you kept from getting hung-up or tearing something of the bottom of the car I don’t know. I would have been concerned in a Jeep. I may have laughed and joked but my butt was puckered most of the way up and down!
Good times! Thanks
Let me guess – you’d have never tried it in anything but a rental?
As I mentioned in the article, I drove quite a few of the Colorado “Jeep roads” years earlier in my VW Beetle. Which got a few looks from the lifted Jeeps along the way. And you should see some of the roads I’ve taken my Chinook on. And all my cars, for that matter.
And not too long ago, I took four of us up a ridiculously steep loose-gravel/dirt road to a trail-head in my Xb. It was just the last 200 yards, past where everyone else (sanely) parked. The wheels kept fighting, and locking up alternating with some spinning. It was the traction control, making things worse, in this situation. I hit the TRAC button to turn it off, and with some steady mild wheel-spin, it made it up. But I really shouldn’t have bothered. I like to test the limits of my cars and trucks.
My dad always said, “Anybody who needs a 4X4 just doesn’t know how to drive!”
I agree with him.
only good for getting you some place you probably shouldn’t be anyway.
My dad used to say “all four wheel drive does is get you 10 feet further into the snowbank”.
But the truth was that he was too frugal to pay for it, and it would have at least got him up the driveway, which his 4×2 Rangers frequently failed to do. Eventually he did end up with a 4×4 and it was always chosen over the Town & Country when the weather was bad.
A couple of years ago I was at the top of the Col de Tende in the Alps. A group of 4x4s, all prepped for aren’t-we-butch off-roading, swaggered up the very rough French side of the pass. I had to raise an eyebrow, since I’d just done the same climb in a rented 3-cylinder VW Golf.
Nothing improves the off-road ability of a vehicle more than the title being in someone else’s name 🙂
Bro: Looking through the pictures from that trip, especially the ones you took, really brought back some sweet memories!
Wow, this might be my favorite article of the several hundred thousand you have put up here. I’ve been to Leadville a few times and know those mountains pretty well. Terrific story and pictures.
And hello Paul’s brother!
Thanks; I’m glad someone liked it 🙂
My brother has been a regular visitor from day one; he doesn’t comment too often. But he does keep me honest, in case folks think I make this shit up, or exaggerate.
i got one of these for a 3 week rental in Arkansas back in 1991. I decided then if I go to hell, my eternal damnation will be driving one of these forever.
The smallest defense I can muster for this car is that at least it openly sucked. If you bought a ’90 LeMans you pretty much knew the score.
I took a business trip to Brazil about 1996 and rode around in the back seat of one of these for a week. I don’t think it was a Pontiac – I think it was a Daweoo. The air conditioning worked fairly well and the car was otherwise unremarkable.
They gave me one of these as a rental once. It’s the only car that has ever hit me in the head in normal driving. Driving diagonally across the hotel’s entrance ramp at a modest speed, its steel upper door frame gave my skull a sharp smack. Unbelievable.
Let us not forget what a sin it was to name these little shitboxes after one of the greatest racetracks in history. Photo from “10 reasons why you should visit Le Mans”.
You mentioned the Chevy Spectrum, a car with which I was intimately familiar, having owned one for almost exactly one year. At the end of said year, we had put 33,000 miles on the car and it was leaking oil and rattling from every joint.
We traded it on a base ’90 Civic three-door hatch (and I do mean base, no radio, no a/c, no pin stripes, please don’t detail it – I’ll clean the cosmolene off the wheels, thank you very much). Went from one of the worst cars we ever owned (and last GM product) to one of the best.
Curious; I’ve generally heard mostly good things about these. But there are always variations.
Blame Isuzu.
I dare add that this car was probably a deadly sin for Opel as well.
Yes, the overall concept of the E-Series Kadett was good and it tested well at the time against all competitors, if not the Golf. However, built quality was atrocious, they fell apart by merely looking at them and rusted away quicker than a Fiat (Q: “why is it forbidden to park a Kadett in a residential areand a at night?” – A: “Because they rust too loud!”. No wonder there are none around anymore while the contemporary Golf 2 is still almost ubiquitous, like a MB W124 (at least in Germany).
The E-series Kadett was one of the first Opel cars to really live out cost-cutting to the max. Gone were the days of “Opel, der Zuverlässige” (“Opel, the reliable” – rightfully, Opels advertisement claim since the 1950s). They sold millions of these, but for many, many people (including a considerable number of my friends and family), it was the last – ever – Opel product for them to buy. That’s the “Lopez-effect”, appropriately named of then CEO and cost-cutting aficionado Ignacio Lopez, which I’d say Opel has never recovered from (and probably never will).
…and the unfortunate Pontiac-Daewoo adventure continued to the bitter end; witness the G3, the shortest model run in Pontiac history -introduced in 2009.
According to carbuzz.com, “…Forbes called it one of the Worst-Built Cars on the Road, Consumer Reports named it Worst in Overall Safety and Worst Fuel Economy in a subcompact.” – See more at: http://www.carbuzz.com/news/2012/11/12/Rebadged-Disasters-Pontiac-G3-Wave-7711560/#sthash.mwuWkk3S.dpuf
Oddly, I’ve never thought that Paul’s DS articles are intended as automotive cannon. I wasn’t especially fond of his take on the ’76 Seville -yet I certainly saw his points (e.g. when the front end design of the 1st generation Seville ends up on an ’82 El Camino, can it be disputed that GM was selling the brand down river?)
And that’s also what was said here: the Excitement Division got Daewoos.
Yes, I’m over fifty; and although I can wax rose-colored-nostalgic about my first Pontiac (a ’68 LeMans, ironically), I’m not misty-eyed about what Pontiac was turning out 35 – 40 years ago: My ’75 Grand Ville has astonishingly bad brakes, poor fit and finish, and the mileage of aircraft carrier -not to mention the cowl shake in this convertible most closely resembles an amusement-park-fun-house walk.
But as Paul also said, sometimes you actually have mountain-climbing experiences in Pontiacs -despite the warts.
The post-script to this is that Daewoo sold this car in Australia in 1994-95 as the 1.5i (so the emphasis would be on the new Daewoo brand, not the name of the car), before it was replaced by the facelifted Cielo. I’m not sure that the extra couple of years improved anything, although my only experience was observing how rapidly they deteriorated.
I knew a couple of people that later bought a Lanos (late-90’s) because they were cheap and slightly larger than competitors, one guy still has his.
It is interesting to have your vehicular yardsticks reset – I used to think the 2007 Corolla I drove had a fairly coarse engine (NVH) until I drove a rental Kia Rio (2007-08).
I still see the occasional 1.5 around. They mostly look even older than they are, were always a good example of the difference between a bargain and just plain cheap!
I had a Lanos in Korea that was very reliable-except for the timing belt, which was my fault as l was putting off getting it done. It was much more reliable than my last car in Canada, an A2 Jetta.
I’ve done some research about New Zealand market. The Aussie Daewoo 1.5 (which was marketed as Daewoo Racer Base in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, ex-Yugoslavia, Bulgaria) was marketed also as Pontiac Le Mans. The only common thing was at least the U.S./Canada type GRILLE. The smaller bumpers were from the Base…and not like the U.S./Canada Spec Pontiac Le Mans / Passport Optima. Basicly the Aussie Daewoo 1.5 and the Kiwi Pontiac Le Mans = Racer Base more or less. The pic showes the Kiwi Poncho Le Mans…
My father had three Opel Kadett Caravan, a blue 1.3i with a – hold Your breath – “Katalysator”! The car was too underpowered to haul us and the little trailer on top of any decent alpine pass (we always managed to get up there, but not very quickly), so he traded his first one for the second one, a red 1.6i. As You see on the second picture, his trailers became quite a bit heavier as time wore on. I remember the third one best, a 2.0i with about 1100 kg curb weight and 115 PS, able to get from 0 to 100 Km/h in under 10 seconds! Those were very important numbers when I was eleven years old…
I am quite sure this is either Grimsel or Susten pass, both lead from about 600m to slightly over 2000m.
These pictures were made in 1987.
1989, with the Heinemann Zeltklappanhänger, I hated this trailer based tent, in fact I still do!
Finally his last Kadett, a red 2.0 i, parked where once the tracks of a French railroad used to be. Can You hear the whistle of the little steam locomotive coming around the bend? We used to spend many a day trying to find those old tracks, bridges and stations.
GM was promoting the fact they were Korean, to compete with then high selling Hyundai Excels. Tag line was “..a little bit of Seoul”. This to get ‘import intenders’.
Also, Pontiac dealers again asking for a “unique” car and getting junk, like Fiero. Better off without it!
Hey…the Lemans might have been junk but the Fiero wasn’t junk.
Until the new ’88 Grand Prix came out, the Fiero was the highlight of the ’80s at Pontiac. My Fiero wasn’t a bad car, just slow with it’s 2.5 and automatic, which is probably why my dad let 17 year old me have one!
I’d argue that Pontiac had a lot of highlights that included the Fiero in the 80’s. The 6000 STE was a buff mag sweetheart, and a good seller for its high price. The 87 Bonneville was a big hit and quite the change in attitude for a full size car at the time. The Firebirds were pretty popular.
From a collector car standpoint (from the 1980s Pontiac stable), I’d go for the old Fiero, but I am prejudice. I also like some of the old Sunbirds just because they usta be everywhere but now you rarely see one. Can’t even remember the last time I saw a J2000 wagon.
I can remember in the summer of 1988, going to the local Pontiac dealer to pick up my new-to-me red 1984 Fiero. My mother looked at a line of new ’88 Lemans and said, “I remember when the Lemans was really something, look at it now…”
Same happened with the Chevy Nova-to-be-Toyota-Corolla in 1985 approx…
I got one Pontiac Le Mans 4 door saloon with automatic transmission for almost 8 years. Either it was built by Daewoo Motor in South-Korea, the finishings were slightly better than the Opel Kadett-E’s. Got IT when it was 7 years old with small dents caused by the previous owner. Those dents never rusted toward during the next 8 years of use. The ECM had to be replaced once…it was Made in Singapore…and the parts lad told me that these parts had some factory made errors. I didn’ had any other electric mulfunctions. Neither mechanical problems. The 3 speed THM-125 automatic transmission ran fine.
I changed few times the distributor cap and the ignition cables and the regular necessary part changes. I think the main problem of the Pontiac Le Mans was the poor quality of the rubber hoses and the gaskets! Sometimes after only few hundred miles some hoses just gave up and teard with leakage of coolant, gear oil… The valve cover gasket was always leaking after ~1500-2000 miles. But I can ensure you…as I also had an GM Opel Kadett-D too…these parts were of poor quality on the Opels too. And the Opels of those times rusted…more than the korean made Le Manses.
In 2015 I have sourced my second Daewoo manufactured 1988 Pontiac Le Mans 4 door Saloon Automatic. Actually this is even older than the pervious one was. Still no rust, no mulfunctions. Runs well! From the aspect of durability and reliability, This Little Car is beating my newer U- and W-Platformed GM vehicles. I am simply enjoying It. Siblings around the World: Opel Kadett-E, Chevrolet Kadett, Chevrolet Ipanema estate wagon, Vauxhall Astra Mk2/Belmont, Daewoo LEMANS/Racer/Penta-5/Fantasy/Heaven/Cielo/Nexia I.-II.-III., Chevrolet Nexia, Passport Optima, Asüna SE and GT. In 2016 IT is still in production by ÜZ-Daewoo as 3rd gen facelifted Daewoo (Chevrolet) Nexia.
As 3rd gen 2012 Chevrolet Nexia…
The tail…
Adding the South-African Opel Monza
Monza with the Dodge-alike (?) factory installed grille…
Top speed could be enhanced by lower engine RPM a bit with 14″ wheels and 185 70 R14 tyres. 13″ standard 175 70 R13 and the 3-speed automatic transmission allows 60 MPH on 3000 RPM which I think makes the engine noisy. The later Cielo/Nexia has 4-speed Aisin-Warner automatic so that’s a better solution for higher speed at lower RPM.
Pontiac-alike Daewoo LEMANS/Racer badge…
To add to this informative article, GM Canada did some interesting things playing the Name Game in badge engineering with this car. This car was sold as the Pontiac LeMans for 1986 & ’87 in Canada. Then, desperate in selling such a mediocre car, GM sold this under the “Passport” brand in Canada (which sold Isuzu’s, SAAB, and this car) as the Passport Optima, from 1988 to 1991. GM then disbanded the Passport franchise and created a Canadian-only sub-brand for Pontiac dealers, called Asüna, in order to sell this and other imported cars for the 1992 model year. It lasted for one year. They called the Daewoo Kadett clone simply as the Asüna SE or GT, without a model name. (sourced from Wikipedia.com) Here are photos of these 2 Canadian variants.
Any idea on where can I source Passport and Optima badges and nameplates?
Yeah I remember these being a little bit popular in 1990-91 here in southern Ontario, sold as the Optima by Passport. They were invariably bought by young girls as their first car. They disappeared in a flash, it seemed and by the late ’90s were all gone. I’m not surprised at all.
🙂 In the early ’90’s I knew a pretty college girl from Tulsa who had mentioned then her car choices… She had been hesitating between the Swift/Metro and the Le Mans… In the meantime I had bought my first Le Mans… She the Suzuki Swift… Few years later when she came back home from Tulsa, I gave Her a ride in my ’90 Le Mans LE sedan… 😉 Good ol’ days…
I remember this version of the Pontiac LeMans. At the time, I found it hideous to look at, and I found the hatchback version even worse looking than the sedan. I would’ve preferred the Opel version any day over the Daewoo.
Here’s one of those rare DS that has a happy ending. GM-branded Daewoo products have a generally miserable reputation, including being one of the worst, recent new cars available (Chevy Aveo). In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the Chevy (Daewoo) Aveo added to those worst cars ever built lists. They were heavily discounted when new, and with good reason. Even at giveaway, lowest-price car rates, they were a hard sell to all but the most indigent; a true penalty box. Some reviews suggested a much better purchase than a new Aveo would be a used, two-year-old Corolla or Civic. Frankly, the Aveo really deserves a DS of its own.
But with the introduction of the Aveo’s replacement, the current Chevy Sonic and Spark, Daewoo seems to have done a complete 180 degree turn around, with both cars getting mostly positive reviews.
I was thinking to import a used G3 Wave from Canada… It surprised me that these as used are priced quite high! 6.000-8.000-9.000 Canadian Dollars for 2009 models in 2016. Confusing… This one is priced CND $ 8.900,-
A co worker had one of these as a demo at the VW/Pontiac dealership in late ’89. Although half the time this brand new car was laid up for repairs. I had the displeasure of driving it a few times. At least Paul’s rental held together while being used and abused.
It was like a cheap woman. Use, abuse, and lose. Quickly. Even it’s name was whored out. Wasn’t long before these disappeared from the street corners.
Interesting that it didn’t come with a bordello interior.
Re Wehrmacht POWs, I heard many were put to work as farmhands Stateside & some settled here afterwards. Tangentially, the most interesting POW story I know is that of Yang Kyoungjong, a hapless Korean who was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army, Soviet Red Army, & Wehrmacht during WW2 until he was finally captured at Normandy by US paratroopers. Talk about a Good Luck/Bad Luck story! After the War he settled in Illinois & died in 1992.
I believe the Afrikakorps POWs came off a bit better, too, since they would have been captured by either Patton or Montgomery’s troops.
I’m also rather intrigued at how some Jewish people managed to end up in the Wehrmacht. Apparently, although obviously not a common occurrence, it did happen occasionally and that, in and of itself, sounds like an interesting story.
I didn’t read through all the comments to see if I had said this before, but: I’d really much rather have a T-1000 over this POS.
Deadly Sin for sure. Especially as a Pontiac.
In contrast, Ford’s Kia import – the Festiva – was far more durable. A co-worker of my wife’s, now in her 60s, loved them and had 2-3 in succession, maybe, ten years ago. She had enough mechanical ability to maintain them, plus a family member mechanic for stuff she couldn’t do. I think the tin worm finally got the best of them but they were all over 20 years old by the time she switched to Jeep.
It’s been probably about a decade since I’ve seen one of these on the road. There’s a blue hatch that’s been sitting in the back of a junkyard near me for years.
In ’89 my 22 year old self shopped to trade in an aging Chrysler Conquest (Starion) for something more practical for post-college commuting. I shopped Sentra, CRX, Golf, Justy (remember that Subaru?), The Dodge (Mitsubishi) Colt, and lastly cruised through the Pontiac lot where I was accosted by a salesman who was hell bent on selling me one of these. It was the only car that I had no desire to drive, even for shits and giggles. It was just to egregiously ugly to warrant consideration, even though it was the lowest priced entry in my search. (I was shopping with the realistic intention of paying about $7200 for a minimally equipped high mileage FWD runner. IIRC I could have driven the LeMans off the lot for about $6000.). Thankfully the pure ugliness of this stinker saved me a lifetime of regret.
In the end I held on to the Conquest for a couple more years, as my unfortunate driving record (in part thanks to the Conquest and its turbocharged goodness, ironically) made it absurdly expensive for me to insure a car for full coverage. Otherwise the Colt would have been the winner, and might have become my third Mopar branded Mitsubishi product. In hindsight I suppose I should thank the good people of the local NJ State Trooper barracks for saving me from being saddled with a car payment until my 30’s, when at least some of the lead had been worked out of my left foot.
A (used) Sunbird would be a better option then eh? Far too late. Only memories…
New Zealand also got thees Le mans my sister freshly returned from a European holiday test drove one and promptly became a Toyota loyalist for her next three cars, theyve been on the free to a good home price bracket pretty much since I returned Australia didnt get any.
The best thing about Daewoo is the name. Its fun to say.
The Kadett has a good career in Brazil, I don’t remember any issue with rust here and even today there are a good amount of them still running. Daewoo sold some Racer and Cielo here between 1995 and 1996, but all of them just disappeared still in the 90’s while it’s still possible to find any version of the Kadett locally produced. It still could survive after the end of importation of the Chevrolet Astra F from Belgium in 1996. Chevrolet produced the Kadett from 1989 to 1998, when the Astra G replaced it. The Brazilian Kadett had basically two engines, 1.8 – 98hp in ethanol or gas; the GSI 2.0 – 121hp in ethanol and 99hp in gas, in 2 door hatch and convertible and the station wagon Kadett Ipanema with 2 doors and 4 doors. Unfortunately we only knew the sedan by Daewoo, GMB never built it here fearing the internal fight with the Monza (Cavalier/Ascona based). The Kadett wasn’t one of the best Chevrolets we had, but it looks like it left good memories only in Brazil 😀
(Opel) Kadett-E 3, 4, 5 door and estate wagon left good memories throughout Europe as well…
Funny story: I had a coworker with a Pontiac LeMans, and when I asked him about it, he said that he also looked at the Hyundai Excel but didn’t want any “crappy Korean car.” When I hit him with a hard dose of reality, he really didn’t want to believe it and thought I was putting him on.
Some other articles talk about how GM should have brought more of its European cars to the US. Well, here is one and it’s being panned. Seems kind of ironic.
I wonder how much of it is attributable to the Koreans. Growing up in Europe this generation Kadett was not a very remarkable car. And certainly nowhere near the quality of the Japanese competition.
I don’t think that bringing a generation-old hand-me-down car is what people were talking about though!
There are people today lamenting the horrible European cars they can’t buy here. It’s just a manifestation of the wanting whatever you can’t have neurosis. At least it isn’t treated with surgery.
Kadett (Vauxhall Belmont) had been a remarkable car while manufactured.
I ran across a GSE model a couple of weeks ago at the gas station. It was a red one and in near perfect condition. In the brief encounter, the man said that he bought it new and that it was approaching 200,000 miles with only routine maintenance. It actually looked good to me being as though I hadn’t seen an actual running example for quite a long time.
Oh goodlord, one of the most terrifying automobile sins to come from OPEL ever, thanks to José López who almost killed of the brand for good…. didn’t even know the US had to suffer from these terrible abominations as well, as a german I am truly sorry ! But let’s not forget the great cars OPEL made during the 60s & 70s and that they are going strong again after being declared dead by many – knock on wood !!!
I had watched “Manta Manta” then actual in a movie theater of Pforzheim in 1991. It was 3 years after the Opel Manta assembly was officially discontinued and the last year of the Kadett-E in production. In that movie Manta (tuned) was compared with Mercedes 190 2.? Litre four cylinder. The audience was laughing out itself on appearing Manta schnitts till they puke. Nowdays both the Manta and the Kadett are becoming cult models. Just take a look on used car ads… Prices of Kadetts and Mantas (mint condition) are up.
So bad it’s good. And good luck finding another one. How could you not want it?
Well at least they put some thick side moulding on it, and gave it a split grille to give it that “Pontiac family” appearance. Gawd what a piece of ___.
A happy ending has occurred, however. In the end GM turned Daewoo into GM South Korea and many showrooms are filled with these cars. Buick and Chevrolet has a couple of them and they are not failing. Notable is the Buick Encore, a GM-SK vehicle. Chevy sells a couple small GM-SK cars as well.
GM stuck with it and should be applauded for the years of heavily investing they did to turn the old Daewoo pig’s ear into today’s silk purse. Right?
Maybe we should included this into the Pontiac’s story now?
Aside from the Dymaxion, there was another rear-engined, front drive planned – the 1947 Gregory. However only one prototype was ever built which is now in the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville.
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/the-1947-gregory
https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/gregory-sedan-1947
Wow $1200 American money, how many do you get? Daewoo have been part of GM for many decades the oldest effort Ive seen was a little station wagon based on a Opel Kadette wearing Australian Torana 6 front sheetmetal calledf Chevy 1700 that was in the late 60s, more recently when they began pushing their own brand the four cylinder engines were built by GMH and exported to Korea now they have moved on to building the Cruz under various brands and a range of not very good SUVs but along the way built large trucks and heavy machinery, but always part of GM.