When Badges go bad: Daewoo LeMans out of box

[Craig Irwin]

I just find it interesting that when badged as an Opel the car was European Car of the Year and when badged as a Daewoo/Pontiac it became a POS.

Just like the FIAT 128 Sport, rebadged and built in Yugoslavia as the dreaded Yugo. The buff mags loved the FIAT, the Yugo not so much. 

[ZTony8]

Knowing that the engine family of this car is the same as the U.S. J car I had the wild hair idea of putting a Sunfire or Skyhawk turbo 1.8 engine and bigger brakes in one of those cars and picking off a few Camaros and Mustangs.Never did follow through but I still think it's a cool idea.

[stavanzer]

Well, the Fiat 128 was a marginal car, made by decently skilled workers with adequate Quality Control.

The Yugo was a modified copy of an older version of the Fiat, made by indifferent workers in a plant that had a history of shoddy builds and poor QC. The whole Yugo story was made worse, by extraordinarily bad QC on the first cars shipped. Consumer Repots had the engine fall out of their sample, because the Transaxle to engine block bolts were never installed. Similar reports of unbelievably bad QC fails were legion. The Quote I remember from the CU article was "The Shifter moved with all the smoothness of a Baseball Bat in a barrel of Coconuts"

The Fiat was never a Great Car. The Xerox Copy Yugo was much worse, and hobbled from the start by Awful QC and Shoddy Workmanship. Yet When you managed to get a good one, they did do reasonably well. Buddy of Mine used his a commuter car, 125 miles one way every day for five years. He changed oil and tires. Put over 85K miles on it, before it was totaled. So there were a few good ones.

[Tom Geiger]

 

The Fiat was never a Great Car. The Xerox Copy Yugo was much worse, and hobbled from the start by Awful QC and Shoddy Workmanship. Yet When you managed to get a good one, they did do reasonably well. Buddy of Mine used his a commuter car, 125 miles one way every day for five years. He changed oil and tires. Put over 85K miles on it, before it was totaled. So there were a few good ones.

My neighbor had the same luck with his.  He had co-signed a five year lease for his daughter's boyfriend (the big advertisement was a $99 a month lease), because the clown promised he'd get a job if he had a car.  Dude did neither and my neighbor took the car from him and decided to use it as his daily commuter for the duration of the lease. In the hands of a grown up, it ran well and did it's duty for the five years.

At the end of the lease, the leasing company offered to sell it to him. He declined and asked them to pick up the car. The response was to sell it for half the original amount requested. He still declined.  Next letter asked him if he wanted the car for free.  

Edited January 6, 2016 by Tom Geiger

[Craig Irwin]

Well, the Fiat 128 was a marginal car, made by decently skilled workers with adequate Quality Control.

Very true, FIAT left the US market because US drivers expected cars to actually run and drive! But the buff mags did sing praises when the 128 first came out.

 

[SfanGoch]

Speaking of Yugos, in the late '80s, there were dealerships in NYC giving away free Yugos with the purchase of a new car.

[ZTony8]

Tom,did your neighbor end up keeping the Yugo for free?

[stavanzer]

Joe, I remember a story that floated around the dealerships I worked at in the 1990's about some Yugos.

It was probably JUST a story, but it sounded real at the time. Supposedly a Dealer in the Pacific Northwest was left with a dozen or so Yugo's on his lot after Yugo America Folded. By then they were almost impossible to sell, despite having marginally better Quality. So he ordered the In-House Body Shop to have the Gas Tanks filled and bondo over the fuel door, and spot paint the cars.

He listed them as "Disposable Commuter Cars", priced them for $999.99 and sold them all in a week. "Just drive it until it's empty, and scrap it"

Probably just an Urban Legend, but we got a huge laugh out of it at the time.

Edited January 7, 2016 by alexis
spelling errors

[Atmobil]

So what was wrong with that Yugo again?

The Opel Kadett E, it was never a pretty car but neither was any of it's competition. The GSi version was a hot hatch in the same market as the Golf GTI and I don't think it was any worse.

But someone always have to change the looks of the car to their own taste (or maybe lack of taste)

I do wish that we could get a reissue of this kit and maybe some resincaster would provide a hatchback body for it or at least a Opel conversion kit.

 

Edited January 8, 2016 by Atmobil

[New #11]

When I had my CRX-Si I was talking to some kid at a yard party about how much he wanted a CRX and on and on then he said "That or a LeMans...they're about the same".  Yeeeeaaahhhh...nice talkin' to ya.

 

 

[Atmobil]

Haha, I can see the similarity in shape (sort of) but the same? A Honda and a GM product has probably never been the same and probably never will.

[fumi]

Maybe it's a relative thing, Silvester? I find it hard to believe that a car like that could compete and win against things like Audis, nicer Renaults and even VWs for "car of the year"! Huh. I remember them being something of a laughing stock here. It may have a lot to do with the name, though. That car is NOT what people expected a "LeMans" to be. 

The Opel Kadett/Vauxhall Astra was in the same class as the VW Golf, Peugeot 205 and the European Ford Escort.  It was actually a decent car, and the GSi version had a 2.0 DOHC 16V engine with a Cosworth designed head.

As an aside, it had always baffled me why GM did not just use the C20XE in the North American market instead off reinventing the wheels with the Quad 4.  They were already using the OHC version in the Sunbird at that time, it would probably cost them less to manufacture the new head in NA instead of all the development cost for a brand new engine.  And the C20XE was good enough for Caterham to replace the Cosworth BDR with in the Super Seven HPC.

Just like the FIAT 128 Sport, rebadged and built in Yugoslavia as the dreaded Yugo. The buff mags loved the FIAT, the Yugo not so much. 

Another example: take a rock solid 1986 Acura Legend that everyone raved about, throw some cosmetic tweaks to the body and some wood bits to the interior, and build it in the UK.  You got yourself a Sterling 825, a car that literally falls apart after a year.

Edited January 8, 2016 by fumi

[Mike999]

There are still thousands of Fiat 128s running around in Egypt.  At least there were when I lived there, from 2005-09.  Heck, at one time, the words "Fiat" and "car" were almost interchangeable in that country.  The state-owned Egyptian car company, Nasr, license-built them as the Nasr 128 for several years.   

Many 128s were still used as taxis when I lived in Egypt. I lived in Alexandria, right on the sea, so the poor old 128s often had Flintstone floorboards and parts literally rusting off.  But even the Fiats weren't as much fun as the other popular taxi, the Russian Lada.  Those came equipped with giant, cast-iron Russian taxi meters under the dashboard, which cracked your knee if you got into the front seat.  And none of those meters had worked since the Brezhnev Era.

As for the Yugo, this book is a great read and you can find it cheap.  Don't remember who said it, but my favorite comment on the Yugo was:  "The UN air forces did humanity a great service when they bombed the Zastava arms factory. Since that factory also produced the Yugo..."

"The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History"  by Jason Vuic (2011)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Yugo-Rise-Worst-History/dp/0809098954