Yep, you gotta be a real "enthusiast" to keep and and maintain a Ford. I should know.
)
and that's exactly why I can't understand why Australian's loved holden and ford so much, they truly are some of the worst built cars in Australia with probably the only exception being Jeep.
Because people in Australia used to be loyal like work places once were but now it's every man and dog for themselves.
The Koreans ain't perfect.
"
That's the thing people quickly forget when they say "good riddance" to the local sedans.
They were more like a Mitsubishi. I can remember the old tin tappet covers that leaked over the exhaust.The nationalism of home made car is a big advantage IMHO, even if the parent companies were from the US. They did make some nice looking designs at times. It is pity that we didn't have a bigger market for them to gain more traction and evolve. They just couldn't move to follow market changes and offering rebadged Daewoo's if you didn't want a 4 door sedan seemed to be the way forward.
As a long term accidental early vintage Hyundai owner (I got this fine vehicle from someone else), that car was pretty reliable, not sexy, not fast, sipped fuel, you could park if anywhere and it will be there when you return, you don't go fast uphills, your bike fits in the back with both wheels on, you need to up the idle speed if you want to use the A/C in summer or it will struggle at idle, giving people a ride who own normal cars under 5 years old will make them cringe, asking the concierge to park the Goat in a expensive hotel was always good for amusement " Don't scratch it, I will be checking
It was called the Goat since it was like riding a small legged animal particularly with the stock 155 tyres. Slapping on 175's was the cheapest bang of buck upgrade you could do.
I only failed to proceed incident I had was the ECU packing it in after 20 years and the magic smoke escapes from the capacitors on the motherboard. I serviced it myself for all routine tasks and easy to do things like belt changes etc. Made simple enough to figure out.
I appreciated the hasslefreeness in hindsight and only got rid of it since the 0 star crash rating can't be wise thing plus I had the chance to upgrade while my company was still in flight and had cashflow.
Behold the mighty Goat in all of its middle of the road anonymous averageness with factory unmatched fuel filler paint.
It is pretty odd that sometimes the most imperfect things become memorable but everything has a good side but you might have to look for it.
I didn't have to walk that much. Winning.........
View attachment 360252
Automatic exhaust stud anti-seize system.
Apparently Hyundai purchased Mitsubishi's tooling from their previous models to get started.
Now that is some cheap fun right there.
I currently work with a couple of ex-Holden engineers and marketing peeps who worked on that project. I'm told it was the excessive US import tariffs on utility vehicles which killed it in the end, much higher than cars at the time. Also the fact that we were above parity with the USD at the time. 0.80 USD to the dollar was the magic number that killed US exports in the end.
Proton also borrowed a lot from mitsubishi including a whole car, a Lancer CC rebadged as a Proton M21. I owned one for a while recently which i used for motorsport. Brilliant vehicle absolutely could not kill it and when like a cut cat and handled like it was on rails.
Mitsubishi hookered all of their old stuff to whoever wanted it by the look of it.
My gran bought the earlier version of that in 1988, the base 4 speed carby model, only option was AC. That thing was as basic as they come, old Mits Colt running gear. Not fast, but it jsut went and went and went... My mum inherited it at about 15 years old and it went for another 8 or so on the horrible dirt road they live on. Only died because dad let it get low on oil and stuffed the rings. Solid and worthy car.The nationalism of home made car is a big advantage IMHO, even if the parent companies were from the US. They did make some nice looking designs at times. It is pity that we didn't have a bigger market for them to gain more traction and evolve. They just couldn't move to follow market changes and offering rebadged Daewoo's if you didn't want a 4 door sedan seemed to be the way forward.
As a long term accidental early vintage Hyundai owner (I got this fine vehicle from someone else), that car was pretty reliable, not sexy, not fast, sipped fuel, you could park if anywhere and it will be there when you return, you don't go fast uphills, your bike fits in the back with both wheels on, you need to up the idle speed if you want to use the A/C in summer or it will struggle at idle, giving people a ride who own normal cars under 5 years old will make them cringe, asking the concierge to park the Goat in a expensive hotel was always good for amusement " Don't scratch it, I will be checking
It was called the Goat since it was like riding a small legged animal particularly with the stock 155 tyres. Slapping on 175's was the cheapest bang of buck upgrade you could do.
I only failed to proceed incident I had was the ECU packing it in after 20 years and the magic smoke escapes from the capacitors on the motherboard. I serviced it myself for all routine tasks and easy to do things like belt changes etc. Made simple enough to figure out.
I appreciated the hasslefreeness in hindsight and only got rid of it since the 0 star crash rating can't be wise thing plus I had the chance to upgrade while my company was still in flight and had cashflow.
Behold the mighty Goat in all of its middle of the road anonymous averageness with factory unmatched fuel filler paint.
It is pretty odd that sometimes the most imperfect things become memorable but everything has a good side but you might have to look for it.
I didn't have to walk that much. Winning.........
View attachment 360252
Legacy. Drive a 90s - 2000s one (discounting Mr Crudley's miracle mobile above) and the hate becomes much more justifiable. Amount of people I knew who had Getz's literally fall apart after fairly nominal mileages was disgraceful.
yeah very true, the early (2000's) accent and getz were very, very plastic. but for the time were also incredibly cheap, reliable motoring and set the trend from there on and forwards.
Same with the current gen Hyundai i30. I've driven a few of those and the current corollas when travelling for work, and based on that I'd 100% take the i30 any day. Lively steering, nicer buttons everywhere, better multimedia etc. The corolla was just so detached in every way in comparison.
I've seen studies that show the buying motivation behind SUV's and fourbies is about crash test results. Likelihood of injury and death are reduced.