After Hyundai prospered selling cars in the USA in the course of the middle Eighties after which Kia Motors jumped in nearly a decade later, prospects will need to have seemed reasonably good for South Korean automotive manufacturers here (never mind that Kia went bankrupt in 1997 and was taken over by Hyundai). The Daewoo Group built the Pontiac LeMans for GM in the course of the 1988 through 1993 model years, and so Daewoo CEO Kim Woo-choong will need to have decided, later within the Nineties, that the time was right for Daewoo-badged cars on this side of the Pacific. For the 1999 through 2002 model years, three Daewoo models were sold here: the Lanos subcompact, the compact Nubira and the Leganza midsize luxury sedan. We have seen discarded examples of the Lanos and Nubira in this series lately, and now it is the turn of this Leganza in a Wyoming self-service automotive graveyard.
Unfortunately, things were unraveling badly for the corporate by the point the triumvirate of recent Daewoo models hit American showrooms. Kim Woo-choong fled South Korea to avoid embezzlement and fraud charges in 1999 (he ended up doing time within the slammer in a while) and the corporate went bankrupt in 2000. Throughout the chaos, GM took over the parts of the Daewoo car-building operations it didn’t already own (while conspicuously not buying Daewoo Motor America). The Daewoo-GM plot twists continued for a few years after, but we will persist with the 1999-2002 period for now.
The three Daewoo models were quite low-cost. For 2000, the Lanos may very well be had for as little as $8,669 ($15,699 in 2023 dollars), the Nubira began at $10,990 ($19,903 now) and the most affordable Leganza model was $13,660 ($24,738 after inflation).
This automotive is a top-trim-level CDX, with an MSRP of $18,660 ($33,763 in today’s money), but that is still much cheaper than the worth tag on, say, a 2000 Mitsubishi Diamante: $24,997 ($45,269 now).
Daewoo got American college students — called “Daewoo Campus Advisors” — to pitch cars to their peers, giving them loaner Daewoos to drive in the method. Apparently, a lot of those cars were never heard from again.
The bottom Leganza had a manual transmission as standard equipment, but I’ve never seen one so equipped. The engine was a 2.2-liter four-cylinder rated at 131 horsepower and 148 pound-feet, which wasn’t much for a automotive that weighed greater than 3,200 kilos.
Still, the Leganza CDX got here with some decent standard equipment for the worth. Air con, good audio system with a distant CD changer, sunroof, power every thing, the works.
2002 was the tip for Daewoos here. The Pep Boys were hired to perform warranty service on Daewoos here after the bankruptcy and GM takeover.
It wasn’t quite as final as that sounds, though. In reality, Daewoo never really left our shores, since the sun never sets on the far-flung GM Empire. The subsequent generation of Lanos became the Chevrolet Aveo starting in 2004, the following generation of Nubira became the Suzuki Reno for 2005, and the Leganza’s next generation ended up because the Suzuki Verona. There’s loads of history within the junkyard!
This automotive racked up just over 160,000 miles during its life.
It’s on this place today due to a nasty wreck that tore up the precise front suspension.
Styled by an Italian (Giorgetto Giugiaro), engineered by a German (Ulrich Bez).
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
