Junkyard Find: 2001 Hyundai Tiburon
One thing I’ve noticed after decades of prowling high-turnover self-service wrecking yards is the increasing average age of junked Hyundais. The first-gen Excel started showing up in junkyards in large quantities when the cars were about five years old (i.e., the worst car available in North America during the second half of the 20th century), and by the mid-1990s they were all gone. These days, most of the Crusher-bound Hyundais I see are more like 15 years old, about halfway between the average age of junked Chryslers and junked Hondas. The Tiburon has been around since 1997, and this is perhaps the third one I’ve seen in this setting.
Because I’ve never seen a Tiburon in a 24 Hours of LeMons race, I can infer that even beat examples are worth something (or LeMons racers are so terrified by the Excel’s reputation that they want nothing to do with any Hyundai product).
Not quite 150,000 miles on the clock, then a cosmetically disfiguring crash and probably some mechanical problems made this car not worth fixing up. The first of many Tiburons to show up in the self-serve yards?
After the 60-year-old Kaiser we saw yesterday, I felt it was time for a somewhat less elderly Junkyard Find. Speaking of which, I haven’t gotten around to making computer wallpaper images from the Brain Melting Junkyard photo sessions, but you can find plenty of free junkyard wallpapers at my site.
Korean-market car ads are always so macho. The Tiburon was a bullet!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I had a black 2000 MY version of this car. Women LOVED it. It had a totally unique design, both inside and out. You can say that this was either a good or a bad thing, based on your opinion of it. I think I paid around $13K for mine, and most people thought it was considerably more expensive than that. It wasn't the fastest thing around, but it was pretty cool for my 22-year-old self.
Can't agree that the Excel was the worst vehicle sold in the USA in the second half of the 20th century. Take your pick from: - 1987 Yugo - 1960 Renault Dauphine - 1957 Toyota Crown