Image by S. Forrest from the Cohort
This homely red sedan, once a familiar sight in the USA, is a rare remnant from one of GM’s more bizarre marketing adventures in the Great White North. Looking quite reasonable for a twenty-one year old Ontario car, not even the most charitable observer could have expected it to last this long when new.
As Dave Saunders pointed out in his excellent article, Asüna was part of the General’s constantly changing plans to woo the folks driving Hondas and Toyotas into their showrooms. The outlay for this ultimately short-lived adventure was minor since the perpetually-recycled 1987 Daewoo/Pontiac LeMans was already being marketed in Canada along with a twin named the Passport Optima, which was sold at its own dedicated dealerships alongside Isuzus and Saabs. While Geo and Saturn replaced that import-themed sales channel in 1992, the poor LeMans clone still hung around, since Buick/Pontiac/GMC dealers wanted a rival to Chevrolet’s Geo lineup. Corporate HQ found it easier to oblige them and with a simple swapping of decals, the Asüna lineup was born. As Pontiac already sold a version of the Geo Metro as the Firefly, the former Optima served as the entry level placeholder and went without a model name, selling as the Asüna SE and GT.
I can just imagine the poor salesman trying to pass one off on a customer: “Hey, buddy, You didn’t like that Passport Optima? Well, take a seat in this Asüna. It’s basically an Opel, so it has fine German engineering. Just look at the funny dots over the ‘U.’ Would some Hyundai have those? There’s even two different models to choose from: SE and GT. Give me your keys and we’ll get your trade assessed while we take this Asüna out for a test drive.” The whole exercise gave “generic” a whole new name and as much as we like to highlight the damage it did to GM’s reputation, I’d wager it was even more destructive for the likes of Isuzu and Suzuki, whose cars were forever associated with the bottom-rung image of these cheapest of captive imports.
The experiment was a blissfully short one, with the Asüna SE/GT leaving North America after 1993, along with the Pontiac LeMans. Lest one think the 1992 facelift which coincided with the introduction of the Asüna model line was a failed enterprise, it firmly established the former Opel Kadett E as a Daewoo staple, with enough markets to pay off the investment made for the new tooling. Another facelift followed in 1994 and the car enjoyed success under such names as Daewoo Fantasy and Daewoo Heaven until being slowly phased out over the previous decade, except in Uzbekistan, where it is still produced and sold as under the appropriately nondescript Nexia moniker.
Related reading: 1990 Pontiac LeMans – The Lows And Rocky Mountain Highs Of GM’s Deadly Sin #12
A what?!?!?
Der Opel Kadett E Stufenheck.
Well said sir, a true Familienlimousine nach deutschem Schnitt. What’s not to like?
…also sold in Europe and Israel as the Racer (yes). Few came and most left the scene early. People here knew them for what they were and did not bite, not even in Poland where Daewoo took over the old Polonez factory I believe.
A fantastically rare car in sedan form. Seems like most of the Asünas SE/GTs sold were the 3dr hatchbacks.
Car.
That is all.
When I was in highschool there was some senior kid driving a blue 2 door Asuna Sunfire in Ontario, Canada ofcourse. That must have been 18 years ago and I really didn’t know anything about these cars then. I just thought that it had an odd name and he might have gotten it cheap. I remember when Pontiac later introduced a “new” car called the Sunfire. I still remember many of the other cars mentioned above- Daewoo/Pontiac LeMans, Firefly, Passport Optima.
I just find it disappointing when a car company takes a name from a cool classic car such as the LeMans and slaps it on something modern, boring and less attractive.
“since Buick/Pontiac/GMC dealers wanted a rival to Chevrolet’s Geo lineup. Corporate HQ found it easier to oblige them and with a simple swapping of decals, the Asüna lineup was born.”
Did GM’s top brass attend economic courses in USSR’s schools back then ?
VW is positioned and about to overtake GM as world’s #2 auto company. Not like GM, somehow whatever VW touched turned out ok, Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini, SEAT, Skoda, etc., On GM’s side, we had Saab, Lotus, Daewoo, Fiat (ok, they paid Fiat $1bil just so to back out of merge), Isuzu, Holden,
Today, Ford is ranked lower than Hyundai ….
Unfortunately, GM wanted woo us away from Toyota and Honda with cars that were total junk.
Sold in NZ as a Daewoo Cielo and of course Pontiac Lemans its a Korean built Vauxhall Astra from 84, there are quite a few still on the roads locally but not under Asuna badging I’m only surprised they werent badged as Holdens everything else GM built was good or bad.
Technically a Vauxhall Belmont (in the UK at least), as it was the aspirational saloon version of the Astra.
Later sold as an Astra. See Ford Orion for further details
My BIL and sister test flew a Lemans after returning from a European holiday Euro car built in Asia what could go wrong, Sister bought a Toyota 3 times as a result even new they were awful.
I remember these cars and the whole Asuna fiasco. As stated, it was created to throw a bone to Pontiac/Buick/GMC dealers. I’ve read that salespeople were horrified to discover that when the brand name was painted across the windshield, from the inside it looked like “Anus…”
Haha – that is a great one. Reminds me of a some t-shirts that have
I
LOVE
CANADA
on them. Throw a sweater/hoodie over top but unzipped and the sides get cut off giving
I
LOVE
ANAI
which makes the last letter look like a L
The other interesting thing besides this was the Chevrolet Corisca sold as Pontiac Tempest in Canada.
GM did a lot of this type of thing globally. They still do. Look at Buick and Opel. They are always interesting to see as well as read about.
I’m one of the few people who can say they have fond memories of a Daewoo-built LeMans. My ex-wife had a ’93 LeMans sedan. It was her first new car which she owned for nearly ten years and well over 100K. It was painfully slow (60 hp, automatic and a/c…you do the math!), cheaply made and a prodigious consumer of a/c components, but with her religiously taking it in for oil changes and scheduled maintenance it was seemingly unkillable.
Among the HVAC components that had gone bad over the years (nearly all of them) was the fan relay. The local shop where we had always it serviced was at a loss on where to find one since GM had stopped carrying most LeMans parts not long after they were discontinued in ’93. Finally one of the techs looked it up in a Hollander manual and discovered that it was a Korean copy of a Bosch relay used in several BMWs and still readily available. One was located in stock at a local BMW dealer and the Jellybean (it was that typical early ’90s light teal green) was soon back on the road.
I remember at the time thinking, GM had no problem whatsoever throwing the LeMans brand under the bus. Even considering the previous versions weren’t especially unique amongst GM intermediates. Like the 1985 Nova, I think they needed a unique name for these econoboxes.
Wow, I never knew this even existed. I had a neighbor with a Lemans hatchback when I was a kid. I always thought that car was awkward looking. Haven’t seen a Lemans on the road in decades.
I saw this ad clip from 1992 of the Pontiac LeMans who was sold in Canada in 1992 as Pontiac and not as Asuna SE for the next year or Passport Optima in the previous years.
http://youtu.be/-21-Y9Ku9kA
I miss those Opel based cars with streeeeetched nose, the 90’s GM identity.