Junkyard Find: 1986 Hyundai Excel GL

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

I find more Porsche 928s, Alfa Romeo Alfettas, Buick Reattas, and Datsun 810s than I do first-gen Hyundai Excel s during my travels in high-turnover self-service wrecking yards, in spite of the 1985-89 Excel selling in tremendous quantities in the United States. You saw these things everywhere on the street until about 1992, at which point the import sections of American junkyards became choked with low-mile Excels that crapped out in not-worth-fixing fashion. I believe the first-gen Excel was the worst motor vehicle you could buy new in the United States in the 1980s, and maybe for the entire fourth quarter of the 20th Century. Yes, even worse than the Yugo.

This is the second first-gen Excel I’ve found this year, after this ’87. That’s something of a record; I don’t think I’ve found two of these cars in the same year since Bill Clinton was in the White House.

47,932 miles. This car probably clanked to a halt in a cloud of smoke in about 1990 and then spent the next 22 years forgotten under a tarp in a driveway.

With the world to choose from when shopping for engines, Hyundai went with Mitsubishi as its supplier. The 4G15 wasn’t in the same reliability league as its Toyota, Honda, and Nissan counterparts, but the Excel had many other weak points.

I keep hoping to see an early Excel in a 24 Hours of LeMons race, but so far the teams choosing Korean cars have gone with Kia Sephias, Hyundai Accents, and Ford Festivas.






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Carfriend313 Carfriend313 on Sep 15, 2012

    Narrowly beaten to the title of 'most ironically named car' by the Mitsubishi Carisma.

  • Laserwizard Laserwizard on Feb 18, 2016

    What a crock. This was not the worst car sold in the 1980's! The Yugo was far worse - the Chevette was horrific and a slug. Hyundai to this point was a really limited production company and was very late to the automobile market with North American sales pretty much being limited to Canada. Those models were subpar. With the Excel there was a fair amount of cross pollination with Mitsubishi through license - essentially a reworked Dodge Colt. Engine was made by Hyundai under license from Mitsubishi. While these vehicles were indeed budget oriented, they weren't awful for the time period - it is so easy to judge by today's standards, but this website has a distinct bias (and is not truthful) about these products. It would be one thing to sell them for $2k more and you'd expect much out of it, but at that price point, there was no comparison with a Yugo - to suggest a Yugo, which was a Fiat under license, was better is to show how dishonest this site is. I'm a Ford guy, but what has been said about Hyundai is not truthful - my Mom bought her first new car without my Dad's name on the financing as a Hyundai Excel and she never had any problems with it - and because I helped with the negotiations, she got a great deal and she basically paid interest on the loan and lost $500 additional off her new car purchase price. She got back less than $500 off her original sticker price - I detailed it and it looked brand new and drove like it. And I know first hand about the Chevette - it took nearly 20 seconds to get to 60 mph from a standing start with two people in it. I know - I timed it from a toll booth standing stop. So don't make false statements on the worst product.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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