When The ZAZ Man's Testifyin'

by Jack Baruth

April 13th, 2012 3:54 PM

Your humble author wasn’t charmed by the 2009 Aveo I rented a few years ago, but apparently my opinion was not universal. The Aveo was known as the Daewoo Kalos in its home country of South Korea. “Kalos” sounds too close to “Kodos” for my liking, but apparently the Koreans just animate “The Simpsons”. They don’t watch it. The Kalos/Aveo, known internally at Daewoo as the T200 has been globally replaced by the T300, a vehicle which the tame US media has more or less agreed to describe as a “world car built right here in America” and refer to as the “Chevrolet Sonic”.

Most of us thought we’d never see the Aveo on the news again, save perhaps for random appearances on “16 & Pregnant” and/or “America’s Most Wanted”. We were wrong.

LeftLane’s Drew Johnson reports that the Kalos/Aveo has been resurrected by Murilee Martin’s favorite Ukranian automaker: ZAZ! That’s right! It will be available as a four-door and five-door variant. There’s also apparently a cargo version, seen in the cover photo. It’s all too exciting to consider, really. Not since the nice folks at SIG-Sauer agreed to stop stamping out sheet-steel not-quite-Glocks long enough to resurrect the gorgeous SIG 210 have we seen a re-pop this delightful.

Surely Aveo owners around the world will now go crazy trying to get authentic ZAZ badges and grilles to put on their Daewoos. I can imagine the conversation now:

Owner 1: Hey, nice T200, bro.

Owner 2: Yeah, bro, I decided to take it fully UDM, bro. ZAZ clips, bro. ZAZ steering wheel. Formaldehyde-intensive seat cloth. I basically have $32,700 in this thing, bro, but it looks just like a ZAZ Vida sedan.

Owner 1: That’s awesome, bro. Hey, bro, want to smoke some crystal meth and engage in a long night of ritual cutting and vaguely-remembered sexual activity with complete strangers?

Owner 2: Um… IN!!!!!

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2 of 9 comments

Probert on Apr 14, 2012

I like it. A few cheap van type vehicles like that would work in the US qite nicely. Surf's up.

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Joeaverage on Apr 19, 2012

As gasoline goes up I'm sure some service people will decide that a four cylinder Transit or a car like the one above can carry their toolboxes and ladder just as well as a big V-8 cargo van. Why piss away more profits on gasoline than you need to? Europe was covered in these little vanlets when I lived there 20 years ago.

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