Starting at $4995 for ?86, the Hyundai Excel (?88 shown) boasted a Giugiaro design and a 68-hp engine capable of calling up 60 mph in 16.3 seconds.
From the December 2017 issue
Korea as it relates to the auto industry is largely a story about industrial conglomerate Hyundai. Founded in 1967, Hyundai (Korean for modernity) began assembling Ford Cortinas under license in 1968. The company?s first vehicle of its own design, the Mitsubishi-powered Pony, arrived in Korea in 1976. But it wouldn?t be until the 1980s that Hyundai would sell a car in our market. Although the media of the ?80s celebrated yuppies and their brand-conscious consumption of BMWs, there was then, as now, a vast population of price-driven Americans who were receptive to a new-car bargain, never mind its source. So when the 1986 Hyundai Excel?essentially a Giugiaro-bodied Mitsubishi Precis?burst onto the scene at the low, low price of $4995 (versus $6699 for a Honda Civic DX), Americans snapped up more than 150,000 of them. And the heretofore unknown nameplate sold more than 250,000 cars annually in its second and third years in the United States. Three years, though, was all it took for Excels to start falling apart. Sales collapsed in 1989 and flatlined through much of the 1990s. In 1998, Hyundai?s then president, Finbarr O?Neill, introduced a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty (5 years/ 60,000 miles, bumper to bumper) to assuage quality concerns. Sales of the now four-model lineup?Accent (the irrede...