Posts from ‘Daewoo’
These Canada-only General Motors franchises lasted only a few short years.
For American car guys, Canada can seem like a very foreign place. Not only do our neighbors up north refer to American cheese as processed cheese, or more charitably as “mild cheddar,” they have a history of buying and selling cars that many of us Yankees have never heard of.
What Was The Pontiac Firefly?
Most Americans have never heard of the Firefly, but Canadian consumers might well have considered purchasing one of these subcompact Pontiacs. A 1987 “Base” is shown.
Pontiac of Canada was well known for selling gently tweaked variations of Chevy products for exclusive distribution north of the border. The 1976-1987 Pontiac Acadian for example, was actually a retrimmed Chevrolet Chevette.
2005 Chrysler 300 C Touring
Fact: You can’t sell a station wagon in the United States anymore. Fact: You can dress a station wagon up like an SUV and sell that, as evidenced by the popular Subaru Outback.
2001 Oldsmobile Bravada
I recent penned a blog post regarding five vehicles I never see on the road anymore—vehicles that have seemingly vanished. Here I would like to share five vehicles that I somehow can’t avoid seeing, even though they are all long out of production.
1987 Dodge Colt Vista
Based anecdotally on conversations I’ve had recently, a good number of people believe that many American-brand vehicles are built by foreign companies. I actually heard one person claim, “They’re all built by the Chinese now anyway.” Sadly, I was related to this person.
Daewoo Leganza
Daewoo Motors is long gone. The one-time largest automaker in South Korea collapsed in the aftermath of a financial scandal that rocked its parent company the Daewoo Group.
The most viable parts of the ailing car company were cherry-picked by General Motors in 2001, and the rest of the company was left to wilt, and eventually vanish. Daewoo’s largest factory, the Bupyeong-gu Incheon plant, now cranks out the Chevrolet Spark, Trax, and other GM products for U.S. and global consumption.
One and Out: The 2009 Pontiac G3
Pontiac’s sported-up version of the Chevrolet Aveo didn’t last long in U.S. showrooms. The plucky 5-door hatchback was only available as a 2009 model.
First seen in 2005, the GM Daewoo-developed T250 architecture played host to more models than you can shake a stick shift at. The humble subcompact platform’s global family included the Daewoo General and Kalos, Holden Barina, Suzuki Swift, and the ever popular, produced under license, ZAZ Vida.
5 Bad Car Names
Tom doesn’t think much of Breeze as a model name.
According to online business magazine Fast Company, a good product name should be memorable, mean something, and sound good when spoken. By those rules, Accord strikes me as a good model name. Accord means something (the definition of accord is “agreement of import”), it’s memorable as a model name, and it rolls nicely off the tongue.
Extra credit: Can you name this Isuzu SUV? It’s from model-year 2003, if that helps.
Maybe you’re no good at fill-in-the-blank-type tests. No problem. Here we’re looking for you, the sharp-eyed quiz taker, to find the fakes. Below, you’ll find car brands followed by four corresponding models, one of which is a fake! Take your time and read the names aloud. If the name sounds wonky, it probably is. If you score five correct, you’re some sort of auto savant. Score four and you have earned our respect. Good luck!
Quick Look: 2002 Daewoo Nubira
2002 Daewoo Nubira CDX Wagon
ABS is no longer available on the larger of Daewoo’s two subcompact cars. Nubira comes as the SE sedan and CDX wagon.
