Junkyard Find: 1987 Hyundai Excel GLS Four-Door Sedan
Just a year after Malcolm Bricklin began selling the Yugo GV in the United States for just $3,990, a new car from South Korea hit American showrooms with a slightly higher price and a more reassuring birthplace. This was the 1986 Hyundai Excel, a deal that seemed— and turned out to be— too good to be true. Here's a second-year example of the Excel, found in a Denver car graveyard.
The country that produced the Yugo was well into the process of disintegrating in 1986. The story was much different in South Korea, which was about to become a true democracy after decades of autocratic and/or despotic rule.
Do democracies build better cars? The case could be made that Hyundai quality got better at about the same rate as the South Korean government became less repressive.
1987 was early days, though, and the Excel quickly became known for shaky build quality. I recall seeing plenty of new-looking (and unwrecked) Excels with 20,000 miles on their odometers showing up in California Pick Your Parts during the early 1990s.
This is a GLS four-door sedan with automatic transmission, the most expensive Hyundai available in the United States as a 1987 model. Its MSRP was $7,665, just under half of the 1987 Yugo's price tag (those prices would be $21,734 and a hilarious $11,313 in 2024 dollars).
That still made this car a bit cheaper than a new base-model 1987 Toyota Corolla or Nissan Sentra, and it came with plenty of features those cars lacked.
The cheapest possible 1987 Excel was the three-door hatchback with four-speed manual, which listed at $5,195 ($14,730 after inflation).
The Excel looked pretty good with its Giugiaro design, and Sajeev Mehta opined for this publication that it wasn't a bad car.
I was in college in 1987 and I knew classmates who bought new Yugos and Excels at that time. The ones who bought Excels regretted their purchases more quickly than the Yugo drivers; Sajeev and I will just have to agree to disagree on the subject of Excel quality. They should have driven 1968 Mercury Cyclones, as I did that year.
I found the pinstripes and Hyundai monogramming on this car fascinating. I'm pretty sure this was a dealer-added bonus, although it's possible this car's original owner paid a shop to do this painting.
The interior is done up in the Bordello Red cloth favored by many manufacturers during the 1980s and a bit into the 1990s.
There's a matching Wild Cherry Car-Freshner air freshener hanging from the mirror. You'll find one in ever car. You'll see.
This car shows just under 25,000 miles on the odometer, and the interior is nice enough that I think this may be the actual final mileage.
The 2008 Obama-Biden campaign sticker suggests that this car was still on the road at age 21, however, so maybe it's a well-cared-for 124,927-mile car (or a 60,000-mile car whose speedometer cable broke in 1990).
Would riding to school in a 20-year-old Excel make drugs seem like a reasonable escape hatch for a child in Aurora? Not to worry, the kid graduated from the APD's D.A.R.E. program!
These cars became junkyard rarities during the 1990s, so this one's final owner was forced to make a field-expedient quarter-glass panel out of packaging tape.
The engine is a 1.5-liter Mitsubishi-derived straight-four, rated at 68 horsepower.
With the automatic transmission (which added $420, or $1,191 in today's dollars, to the cost of the car), this would have been a miserably slow machine.
By the way, Detroit offered a 1987 car that undercut the base Excel's price: the final-year Chevrolet Chevette two-door, which listed at $4,995 ($14,163). With hindsight, I'd say the antiquated and cramped late Chevette was a better deal than the Excel.
This car doesn't have air conditioning, but it does have a good late-1980s-vintage Panasonic AM/FM/cassette deck with digital tuning and auto-reverse. This was required equipment for listening to the great hits of the era.
Hyundai was building decent cars by the middle 1990s, winning my personal "fastest quality improvement of all time" carmaker award.
Designed by the same man who designed this Maserati.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
1987 Hyundai Excel in Colorado wrecking yard.
[Images: Author]
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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, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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Wow. It has been a while since I've seen one of these anywhere
My friend bought one of the first Excel GL sedans in the Tampa market. On our way back from Golf one weekend afternoon, we were stuck in a traffic jam on I-75 when the distinct smell of antifreeze began to permeate the cabin and soon a plume of steam rose from under the hood, jammed in the middle lane of the expressway, we slowly made our way to the shoulder. Opened the hood to a scalding billow of steam and stepped back. Gave it 20 minutes to cool and it started right up. Back in the traffic we went, the car running fine. 20 minutes later another plume of steam and the engine started clanking. Close to our exist we kept going and nursed the Hyundai to his house. Coolant stremed out from under the car. Towed to the Hyundai dealer, the electric fans were probnounced defective which was covered under warranty. What wasn't covered under warranty was the bown head gasket from running the car too hot. An insult is a new $6k car that needs a 1k cykinder head and gasket plus labor less than a year old. Sayonara Hyundai, replaced by a new Escort.