I find more Porsche 928s, Alfa Romeo Alfettas, Buick Reattas, and Datsun 810s than I do first-gen Hyundai Excels during my travels in high-turnover self-service wrecking yards, in spite of the 1985-89 Excel selling in tremendous quantities in the United States. You saw these things everywhere on the street until about 1992, at which point the import sections of American junkyards became choked with low-mile Excels that crapped out in not-worth-fixing fashion. I believe the first-gen Excel was the worst motor vehicle you could buy new in the United States in the 1980s, and maybe for the entire fourth quarter of the 20th Century. Yes, even worse than the Yugo.
This is the second first-gen Excel I’ve found this year, after this ’87. That’s something of a record; I don’t think I’ve found two of these cars in the same year since Bill Clinton was in the White House.
47,932 miles. This car probably clanked to a halt in a cloud of smoke in about 1990 and then spent the next 22 years forgotten under a tarp in a driveway.
With the world to choose from when shopping for engines, Hyundai went with Mitsubishi as its supplier. The 4G15 wasn’t in the same reliability league as its Toyota, Honda, and Nissan counterparts, but the Excel had many other weak points.
I keep hoping to see an early Excel in a 24 Hours of LeMons race, but so far the teams choosing Korean cars have gone with Kia Sephias, Hyundai Accents, and Ford Festivas.
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Nice proportions, seemingly the right car at the right time, too bad it turned out to be garbage. On a par with the Daewoo/Pontiac LeMans around a year or so later.
I’m very surprised this one even still exists. They went to the crusher faster than a Citation and perhaps a Monza!
That so much of this example is still intact suggests that no one can be bothered to scavenge parts to make its brethren roadworthy. Rightly so.
I recall in college (VA, ca. 1987) a classmate’s late 1970s Peugeot died and he proclaimed he had ~$10k with which to buy a replacement. For $10k in the mid-1980s there were some really nice used Porsches and other fine cars available. This chap showed up next semester with a new Excel. I couldn’t believe he blew the whole wad on such a lame set of wheels, especially having previously driven something so unconventional as a Peugeot.
I wonder if his Hyundai made it past 50,000 miles…
For $10k, he probably bought two of them.
One of the reasons Hyundai went to “10 years/ 100,000 miles warranty”- as i remember, the transmission would blow up- you go to the junkyard- NO TRANSMISSIONS!- because everyone else had the same problem! yes, my daughter owned one, and it went to the junkyard with less than 80,000 miles- my son’s Toyota Corolla (an ’83 wagon) went over 220,000 miles before dying- Hyundai- another brand, which, even though they are lauded nowadays, i just can’t bring myself to buy one- because i remember when they were a POS…
Friend of mine had a first-generation Hyundai Elantra for a while. When it ate its third (!) automatic transmission just shy of the warranty running out, he got it fixed and sold the car.
I have one of these cars in my country with 202.845 miles VERY GOOD CAR!
Within the last year I saw a similar year 2 door hatchback Excel on the road in the Nashville, TN region. It was almost as amazing as if I had been driving and saw a Bugatti But it was much more pedestrian in that it attracted no attention that a Bugatti would have. I couldn’t believe it was still on the road and not rusty either. I could only imagine that it had been parked in someone’s grampa’s garage for the last 25 years until he died and the car was sold off.
And the difference with the Excel and Yugo was that people who bought new Yugo’s kind of knew that it as a cheap POS to start with. The Excel was positioned at a higher level than the Yugo and completely failed the customers at that level. Some argue that it wasn’t until the 2001+ Elantra series did Hyundai redeem its name in the US market…
“And the difference with the Excel and Yugo was that people who bought new Yugo’s kind of knew that it as a cheap POS to start with. The Excel was positioned at a higher level than the Yugo and completely failed the customers at that level.”
+1
I could see “educated” consumers being lured in by the Mitsu underpinnings, expecting Japanese reliability on the cheap a la Dodge Colt. How disappointed they must have felt.
That said, by some accounts (http://www.hyundai-forums.com/734433-post.html) things weren’t all bad with the Mitsubishi Excels. Sometimes owner attitude makes all the difference in whether a car gets maintained or scrapped.
Let’s correct the record – these were not mitsubishi made components -they were made under license by Hyundai – there were differences. I know, I sold these for two months when they first hit the states in the summer of 1986 and they were good vehicles for the money. I found that I hated the car business and I suspect that many of these were sold by the same dishonest salesman (who always sold the most cars) and the sales managers I dealt with were as intelligent as Neanderthals and had no ethics. I hated my job. But I never lied to a customer and I knew the product better than anyone on the sales floor.
I’d own one of those – after about July 1986 there were some quality upgrades that I noticed and those were the ones to get. You could always tell those by the amount of particle board covering the spare tire. The ones with the partial coverings were awful – even the exterior welds on the wheel arches of the four door models were bad – corrected after July based on my recollection.
Sold one to my Mom for around $5k fully loaded. She kept it for 3 years and got $5500 in trade for it for her T-bird. She also had a 1973 Torino wagon she loved and finally parted ways – it never died.
I remember that when these cars came out (I was living in Nashville then, coincidentally), the only two groups I saw buying them were the lousy-credit crowd that eventually moved on to Mitsubishis, and Korean-Americans who bought out of familiarity and loyalty to Korean products. I don’t recall seeing one on the road after about 1992, although in LA you’re likely to see all manner of odd vehicles because the population’s so large and rust is not a problem, so it’s not out of the question here.
Worst car in the 80s. Sterling 825.
How someone could use Honda guts and screw it up was amazing.
It took a bunch of years but at least Hyundai learned from their mistakes.
I don’t have as much experience with the Sterling, but at least it had a comfy leather interior to sit in while you were waiting for the tow truck. The Excel had a nasty Simu-Velour™ interior that smelled like a Porta-Potty disaster in a plastic bag factory.
When they came out, there was a dealer near work. Went to the dealer with a co-worker to see the car. The co-wroker gets behind the wheel close the door and some trim breaks off on the door.
He and his father ended up getting Legends. Drove them forever.
Another co-worker bought a Sterling. You’re correct, comfy leather waiting for the tow truck. That thing must have had a tow about once a month. The guy was always late for work. I remember on the edges of the front end there was a little plastic cap on each end. Here’s a photo with the caps missing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sterling_825.jpg
The guy lost one a couple of months in and was never able to get a replacement. It drove him up the wall. He threw in the towel after a year.
When Mr. Sterling first bought the car, he dumped on the guy who bought the Legend (better car, better interior, etc..). After the Sterling proved to be garbage, Mr. Legend would rag on Mr. Sterling for making a sterling choice. There was one time I thought they were going to get into fist fight.
@dejal1:
When working at a Valvoline Instant Oil Change in the northern metro of MSP in the early 2000’s, we had a guy come in with his Sterling one night near closing time, who was a ‘manager’ at a VIOC in NE Minneapolis seeing what we could do about his passenger headlight (among others) being inoperative as he had just been pulled over by the police for said malfunction.
We took a look at it, and found that the lights were plugged in. We told him to take it to, yes, an Acura and/or other ‘import’ dealership to try to figure it out. He drove away somewhat pissed off, but understanding.
That was the last time I saw a Sterling on the road in the US.
Just saw one this weekend. It was either a Franken-Sterling with parts from various other Sterlings or it had gotten beat up pretty well, because at least one door panel and possibly some other panels didn’t appear to be from the same car. I didn’t get a look at the person driving it, but I wanted to get out and ask them about it.
Hyundai’s turnaround is still one of the most remarkable I’ve ever seen.
When the 2001-2006? series of Elantras (in the RHD version) were listed as the taxi of choice for Chinese taxi drivers during the 2008 Olympics that pretty well sealed to me that Hyundai had worked it out.
I drove a 2005 Elantra GLS hatchback for 5 1/2 years, which is longer than I’ve kept any car. Never had a single problem–not even a squeak or rattle–during that time. I prefer VWs, but I highly recommend Hyundai without hesitation. Think dollar for dollar they surpass Toyota and Honda easily.
Wow. I still have my 92 VW GTI 16v. Hasn’t been any reason really to sell it. Love it. Why trade a car out for another so soon?
I’m not sure I agree what’s so remarkable about the Hyundai turnaround. Hyundai is a huge corporation that produces almost anything you can imagine. I’m not sure how South Korean corporations and anti-trust laws work, but I have to believe that Hyundai has deep, deep pockets and could withstand 20 or so years of less than profitable selling to build marketshare while simultaneously improving the product.
This process has taken 20+ years, at least in the US market. I’d hazard to guess if Malcolm Bricklin had the same kinds of resources maybe the Yugo wouldn’t be a footnote in the annals of the 1980’s econo-car revival.
And, obviously, if GM (and the other domestics that were still around in 1986-ish time period) had a similar amount of resources and vision, they too wouldn’t have gone through the most recent events in the same manner as actually happened.
No, what would have been remarkable is if Hyundai would have achieved the same feat in 15 or even 10 years’ time.
THAT would have been truly remarkable.
When you consider that in the same time that it took for Hyundai to improve, Daewoo still made crap like the Aveo and the jury is still out on Sonic and Spark as well.
The automotive arm of the Hyundai industrial empire was split off into a standalone company in the late ’90s. After that, it had to live or die on its own merits without the subsidies it had previously enjoyed.
GM was its own industrial empire at one time, but bad management, costly purchases, and asset firesales have reduced it to its present diminshed condition.
“No, what would have been remarkable is if Hyundai would have achieved the same feat in 15 or even 10 years’ time.”
+2
Yes, no other car company has ever improved its products so much, so quickly.
During my stint at Ford, I sat through a presentation led by Jim Farley about how Hyundai has gained so much share so quickly.
They sped up their product lifecycle to be quicker than any other company in the industry, with more new and improved models coming out faster than anyone (and then selling them at cutthroat prices).
Apparently their engineers commonly work 60-80 hour weeks and stay in dorms on site during the week, and only go home to see their families for a couple days at a time. So in short, furious work ethic.
Much in the way the early US industry ate the European competitors alive, then the Japanese ate the US competitors alive. Work harder, work smarter, mostly harder.
Danio
You nailed it. My wife worked for another massive Korean conglomerate, one that might have made your TV. Anyway, on the wall as you enter one of their buildings there is a inspirational motto, translated into English it says
“Do … or die trying”
Can you imagine that at a site in the US?
@kvndoom: case in point, Accent/Elantra/Sonata/Genesis/Equus :)
Mehh…should have done a story on the Infiniti Q45 next to it, instead.
I wonder if it is a Q45a (a for active suspension)?
People of gone to the trouble of converting it back to metal springs.
Agreed, Murilee when you go back, do the Q45. Pretty please…
Hell, I can find Q45s in the junkyard all day long. Guess I should shoot one. Some cars just don’t jump out at me.
lol, I still have a VHS recorded (converted to DVD) Q45 ad from circa 1991 with the wannabe British Los Angeles resident D-Bag running through the script, Epic! Please, Mr. Martin, do a Q45 Junkyard Find soon to remind us of how dismal the ’90s were for the automotive culture…:)
How do I find the junkyard find of a Datsun B210 ? I clicked on it once but the page never opened and I’m stymied in finding your other finds…..
A linky please ? .
TIA ,
-Nate
Cut-and-paste this to your browser:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/08/junkyard-find-1978-datsun-b210-coupe/
THANK YOU ! .
I avoided working on these so I wasn’t aware how wretched they are .
-Nate
Google “Datsun B210 1978” After the ads, a link to TTAC will appear.
Thanx but that didn’t seem to work for me. -Nate
Old roommate’s Excel would do 75 all day. It would shake like it was going to fall apart between 65 and 70, but once it hit top speed it had smoothed out again. Christ, what a craphole.
Well, that’s a big step backward for us car guys; having to outrun several Tornados in South Dakota about a month ago, my ’12 Accent did (with the pizza-cutter tires!) 110mph. It didn’t shake much past 90 FWIW :)
Interesting how a car named Excel never really excelled at anything at all. I suppose that’s a common theme in the industry, see: Ford Aspire aka Expire.
I’ve always referred to the Ford EXP as the Ford EXPire.
That they did in short order.
How much did the Oldsmobile Groucho^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAchieva achieve?
@Noisewater:
A good friend of mine’s father got almost 200k out of an ‘Achieveless’ that was a salvage title and a piece of shit. Of course, that was back when GM could build a relatively decent car at a respectable price that could be had for even less if previously crashed…..
That’d be an ‘Assfire’. ‘Expire’ isn’t so far off either, though… somehow they were far worse than the Festiva they replaced.
Agreed. Terrible, terrible car. My wife’s family in Nicaragua (yes, Nicaragua) had one of these up until about 2003 and it failed us every time. The last time we borrowed it, in the span of a week it had an electrical fire in the engine bay, alternator crapped out, and when it did run, we had to pull over every 30 minutes or so because it over-heated.
After the engine bay fire, we rented a car for the rest of the trip. The in-laws still blame me for ruining their car. Ha!
I tried to get them to trade it for a Lada, but they sold it for cash and I think that thing is still puttering around Granada, Nicaragua, toasty hood and all.
No Excels at Lemons? The second-gen can take a 4G63T as a bolt-in. Of course, you’d have to find a 2nd-gen Excel first. Just as junky as the first, and sold in vastly lower numbers.
I’ve been pushing LeMons racers to get a first-gen Excel (or, better still, a Scoupe) for years. It has proven easier to get them to race such gems as the Humber Super Snipe.
It’s not that teams haven’t tried. You’re more likely to find a TC Maserati than one of these in serviceable condition at any price.
God, the Scoupe. There’s a name I haven’t heard in awhile. It’s name made it sound like a mouthwash.
Here’s something that I discussed with an owner of a Scoupe in high school that I never bothered to find out the asnwer to (and will not Google after this either).
Is it an S-Coupe or a Scoop?
Sounds more like a brand of cat litter to me.
Pronounced “scoop”. In some markets, the first-gen Tiburon was billed as the Hyundai Coupe, ostensibly a successor to the Scoupe.
The guy in question definitely called his an “ESS-Coupe” which I figure was an attempt at making it sound somehow cooler. It was definitely a Scoupe of something, and I don’t think the S was for Sport.
Supposedly the Scoupe was pronounced “Scoop” in North America and “Ess Coo-PAY” in Europe.
Hammond had an “Ess-Coo-PAY” in a Top Gear challenge, but then again, the Top Gear crew doesn’t know how to pronounce “Jaguar” or “aluminum,” so I take that with a grain of salt.
Regardless, the Scoupe was rubbish, er, I mean crap.
Funny to see the hatred for the car itself after seeing the praise for the same car’s styling in a Vellum Venom article just a few months ago. I guess they were easy to like, until you turned the key and drove it.
+1.
I owned one of these because it was all I could afford at the time. I often joked (still do) that I was the only white male in the Chicago suburbs to drive one. Never had a problem though, no service needed of any kind. It’s amazing what oil changes could do for their longevity.
Improved finances, many cars later, and I’m driving a Hyundai again… this time by choice:
Had such a great experience with the ’09 Genesis that I’m now in an Equus. And will get a new one in 2014.
To truly appreciate this car, you have to encounter one from the rust belt. I found one in the yard over the summer. It looked like it had been pulled out of the Lusitania’s cargo bay. The CENTER of all the body panels were rusted through.
For fun, call up a salvage yard and request a lap belt from one of these.
There was not a world of engines to choose from. Like other early Korean cars it started as a joint venture with a Japanese company making an usually outdated model that in some cases got some fresh sheet metal. In the case of Hyundai the JV partner was Mitsubishi and the outdated model was what we knew in the US as the FWD Dodge/Plymouth Colt. It even used a version of the Twin Stick 4sp as their 5sp, replacing the second power/economy shifter with a vacuum shifter and a main shifter that put it back in 4th and activated the solenoids controlling the vacuum shifter to put it in economy mode.
It is most likely that the reason it ended up getting parked was not due to the engine expiring but the carb making it so it wouldn’t pass emissions and thus couldn’t be licensed.
It’s true that something like 85% of 1980s cars can’t pass the dyno-based California emissions test on the first try. If the car wasn’t worth much to begin with, there’s no point to spending big money to make it pass.
Back in the day a reman carb for these was $500 ~ $600 wholesale so I could see an easy ~$1000 estimate to attempt to get it to pass with of course no guarantee that it would pass. Now if you went to the dealer I could see at least 50% more on that estimate certainly making it a better bet to spend that money on an old beater.
My to-be mother in law had one of these under a tarp in Bolinas, CA. Next to it, sat a BroncoII with the Cologne V6 that [sort of] ran.
The task was to get the Excel and the Bronco II from Bolinas to San Rafael, to be traded on a new ’95 Pathfinder I recommend her at the time (she still has the Pathfinder – with 65K miles).
It took me 2 days to get the Excel to start. But it did. And it made it over the hills. When I got to the San Rafael Nissan dealer I parked it in the back and walked to the showroom.
On my way out I went to do a last check inside the Excel for tools: There was an employee poring an immense bag of cat litter in front of the car. Coolant, transmission AND brake fluid were all leaking in vast quantities and pooling on top of a freshly painted CUSTOMER PARKING sign on the ground :)
@ cRacK hEaD aLLeY:
How interesting you mention this. In the early 1990’s, I worked at a Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge-Jeep-Eagle dealership whose owner was obsessive about cleanliness. He had issued strict instructions that if a customer came in with a Hyundai, he/she had to be politely asked to park the vehicle outside of the dealership’s grounds because he didn’t want any oil leak spots on his pavement. I kid you not…
Cue Marge Simpson: “Aww, I just mopped that driveway!”
There’s a reason why Hyundai’s reliability starting improving when they stopped using components from Mitsubishi.
@bd2:
Yeah, right? Mitsu sucks, has for years. They would be wise to concentrate on consumer electronics and go the way of Diahatsu or Daewoo and axe their automotive operations.
Except the EVO of course :) That is, and will always be, one bad-ass ride. I have a feeling it will go the way of the DMC-12 or Buick Grand National however…..
Daihatsu was a very good little car. Didn’t catch on here, the purchase price was like that of a stock Civic. But they were built like a tank.
In 1986 a roommate who was a bit , well strange had finally received some money from a bogus lawsuit and decided to go new car shopping . For some reason she was settled on either buying a Hyundai or a Yugo , and as she couldn’t drive a stick I went with her for the test drives for the ultimate Reagan era economy car comparo . Though both cars sucked I preferred the Yugo due to some nostalgia over driving friends’ Fiats in the seventies . I told her to keep shopping but she bought a bottom of the barrel Excel hatchback – 4 -speed stick , no A.C. , rubber floormats . As I recall the car may have made it to 3 years old but pretty low miles at which time the engine was blown and it needed a new clutch and a BF had driven it in a ditch . The styling though I always thought was tasteful and clean for the entire line . But the car was awful , not ready for prime-time .
If it was whole I’d say you should have grabbed that “San Francisco Autocenter” plate insert. Haven’t seen one of them in years.
I think this model will be most famous for the ride that Rodney King took in one in the early 1889s.
Sorry, early 1990s.
“I believe the first-gen Excel was the worst motor vehicle you could buy new in the United States in the 1980s, and maybe for the entire fourth quarter of the 20th Century. Yes, even worse than the Yugo.”
Perhaps true, but in Canada the Excel was a big step up from the Hyundai Pony, sold here from 1984 – 1987…
http://www.autos.ca/classic-cars/motoring-memories-hyundai-pony-1984-1987/?all=1
From wikipedia.org:
‘When Hyundai wanted to develop their own car, they hired George Turnbull, the former Managing Director of Austin Morris at British Leyland in 1974.’ Who headed the design of, yes, the Hyundai Pony. And us Americans thought the not-so-big three Malaise-era rides were bad…?
That’s all us car guys need to know.
Well, that car went further than my Skoda 105, which was scrapped with about 45000 miles on the clock.
Ouch. I’m almost surprised that Skoda still exists, although it was scooped up by VW/Audi/Lambo/SEAT in the 80’s.
‘After a production run of fourteen years, which included a total of 1,961,295 cars (counting just the Škoda 105/120/125 series cars alone), production of the very last rear-engined Škodas was finally brought to an end in 1990.’ They built almost 2 million of these shitboxes? No wonder they almost ceased to exist. And they built these until ’90? Wow. I’m amazed how Socialism works sometimes…
Holy crap, and I do mean, CRAP. Ironically enough, it has the same door post VIN tag as my ’12 Accent.
A harbinger for things to come? My credit certainly hopes not…:)
According to Hyundai’s ads of the time, the Excel was better in every way than a BMW 3-Series, because, although they both had “European” styling; the Excel offered the amazing capabilities of FWD and was cheaper!
Amazing all those stupid ignorant saps that still bought their inferior RWD E30s.
Narrowly beaten to the title of ‘most ironically named car’ by the Mitsubishi Carisma.
What a crock.
This was not the worst car sold in the 1980’s!
The Yugo was far worse – the Chevette was horrific and a slug.
Hyundai to this point was a really limited production company and was very late to the automobile market with North American sales pretty much being limited to Canada. Those models were subpar. With the Excel there was a fair amount of cross pollination with Mitsubishi through license – essentially a reworked Dodge Colt. Engine was made by Hyundai under license from Mitsubishi.
While these vehicles were indeed budget oriented, they weren’t awful for the time period – it is so easy to judge by today’s standards, but this website has a distinct bias (and is not truthful) about these products. It would be one thing to sell them for $2k more and you’d expect much out of it, but at that price point, there was no comparison with a Yugo – to suggest a Yugo, which was a Fiat under license, was better is to show how dishonest this site is.
I’m a Ford guy, but what has been said about Hyundai is not truthful – my Mom bought her first new car without my Dad’s name on the financing as a Hyundai Excel and she never had any problems with it – and because I helped with the negotiations, she got a great deal and she basically paid interest on the loan and lost $500 additional off her new car purchase price. She got back less than $500 off her original sticker price – I detailed it and it looked brand new and drove like it.
And I know first hand about the Chevette – it took nearly 20 seconds to get to 60 mph from a standing start with two people in it. I know – I timed it from a toll booth standing stop. So don’t make false statements on the worst product.