Your humble author wasn’t charmed by the 2009 Aveo I rented a few years ago, but apparently my opinion was not universal. The Aveo was known as the Daewoo Kalos in its home country of South Korea. “Kalos” sounds too close to “Kodos” for my liking, but apparently the Koreans just animate “The Simpsons”. They don’t watch it. The Kalos/Aveo, known internally at Daewoo as the T200 has been globally replaced by the T300, a vehicle which the tame US media has more or less agreed to describe as a “world car built right here in America” and refer to as the “Chevrolet Sonic”.
Most of us thought we’d never see the Aveo on the news again, save perhaps for random appearances on “16 & Pregnant” and/or “America’s Most Wanted”. We were wrong.
LeftLane’s Drew Johnson reports that the Kalos/Aveo has been resurrected by Murilee Martin’s favorite Ukranian automaker: ZAZ! That’s right! It will be available as a four-door and five-door variant. There’s also apparently a cargo version, seen in the cover photo. It’s all too exciting to consider, really. Not since the nice folks at SIG-Sauer agreed to stop stamping out sheet-steel not-quite-Glocks long enough to resurrect the gorgeous SIG 210 have we seen a re-pop this delightful.
Surely Aveo owners around the world will now go crazy trying to get authentic ZAZ badges and grilles to put on their Daewoos. I can imagine the conversation now:
Owner 1: Hey, nice T200, bro.
Owner 2: Yeah, bro, I decided to take it fully UDM, bro. ZAZ clips, bro. ZAZ steering wheel. Formaldehyde-intensive seat cloth. I basically have $32,700 in this thing, bro, but it looks just like a ZAZ Vida sedan.
Owner 1: That’s awesome, bro. Hey, bro, want to smoke some crystal meth and engage in a long night of ritual cutting and vaguely-remembered sexual activity with complete strangers?
Owner 2: Um… IN!!!!!
You know what they say, one man’s junk… Nice Carole King reference by the way.
The word “Kalos” sounds very close to the word “feces” in Ukrainian. In case you were wondering why they changed the name.
I don’t think I can take all this excitement. I’m going to have to drink some ovaltine and take a rest.
Actually the thing in the picture, while it doesn’t look as good as an original xB, it looks better than a cube. Kind of like one of those old 2cv trucklets.
Looks like a lot of the commercial vehicles down here in Mexico. I have seen Peugeot’s like this and I think a Chevy. Chevrolet also sells a nice little front drive pickup for around $13,500 US. Also, there are more VW beetles than you would believe. All the way from junk on wheels to better than new.
Makes an HHR Sedan Delivery look downright classy.
What?
No screed from Volt230 about GM Daewoo and…
The Kalos also sounds too close to Kolos, which I think would’ve been a rather fitting Greek name for the car. :D
I like it. A few cheap van type vehicles like that would work in the US qite nicely. Surf’s up.
As gasoline goes up I’m sure some service people will decide that a four cylinder Transit or a car like the one above can carry their toolboxes and ladder just as well as a big V-8 cargo van. Why piss away more profits on gasoline than you need to?
Europe was covered in these little vanlets when I lived there 20 years ago.