mod please delete.

 

There actually WAS a good Hyundai Excel race car, if you consider the Scoupe 2-door coupe variant, which was the same car as the Excel, just with two fewer doors and a different roofline. A Scoupe won the prestigous 1992 Pikes' Peak Hill Climb, which is not an easy event to win.

But, as an everyday street car, though, the Scoupe was more or less the same POS that the first and second-generation Excels were. (Actually, the Excel was a rebadged version of the Mitsubishi Precis, and not a real Hyundai design to start with).

Sorry, Mike (1SICK)..........I know you owned one, and I don't mean to be rude (and it did win Pikes' Peak), but as a street car, the Scoupe was very unreliable just like the Excel, and burned a number of owners. The Excel and Scoupe were the cars that first gave Hyundai the bad reputation it started out with, though they were in fact Mitsubushi products and not Hyundais.

 

i thought Scoupe's Alpha was hyundai's first in-house design.. i could be wrong. forgot all the history.

anyway, can't blame mitsu for sh!!ty Excel because it was built in south korea.

 

The Hyudai Excel and Scoupe were Korean cars, built in Korea, by Hyundai. They did use an engine borowed from Mitsubishi, however. Their VIN's even start with a (K)orea. It's the Precis that was the Hyundai copy, not the other way around.

 

Yes.....an interesting question, and I'm glad you brought that up. It was definitely a Mitsubuishi engine (Hyundai did not start using their own engine designs in the American market for some time after their introduction), but, as you note, the car was built in South Korea in Hyundai plants. What is unclear is exactly how much of the basic design (outside of the Mitsu engine) came from each of the two automakers.

Still, as I see it, the main point is that the Excel/Scoupe/Precis were all three essentially the same vehicle, no matter exactly whose drawing-board (or boards) they originated from.