The £500 Daewoo Nubira
Discussion
This is going to be a long read about a very unexciting car – so feel free to give this one a miss. Those who like bargains might enjoy the read.
After reading the recent Pistonheads Boxster 987 buyers guide, I felt it was a good time to put my 2010 Boxster S up for sale. I wrote an extensive, honest and detailed ad on the morning of Friday 2nd August and by lunchtime the ad was live. I priced my 987 at the higher end of the market which I felt was fair for its condition and spec and at the time it was listed I’m pretty sure it was the most expensive 987 for sale privately on Pistonheads or Autotrader, excluding the ‘Spyder’ models.
The idea was to actually sell the car around March/April 2020 when I had planned to get my next car and I didn’t want to be in a position where I accept a low PX offer or a low sale to get cash quickly so that I could jump into my new car next year so I figured if I listed the 987 now I could lower the price each month until it gained some interest – that way I knew I’d sell the car for as much money as possible… Things didn’t go as planned though.
Two days after listing the Boxster, I’d already taken 3 calls and 5 days after putting it up for sale, it sold for the full asking price which was £7,250 more than WBAC offered me! Whilst I was happy to be getting top money for my car – and having only lost 5k on it in the 3.5 years I’d owned it, I was still really upset to see it go so quickly. In truth, I didn’t want to sell it – it was an incredible car. I honestly can’t fault it – but life is too short to drive one car forever. Problem was, I now didn’t have a car… Off to the classifieds I went.
The idea was to spend as little money as possible on a Shed that would get me through winter whilst I save up more cash to add to my budget with the ‘worst-case scenario’ plan that I get £0 back for it and lose my money. To me, the loss is acceptable providing the car proves to be a reliable winter hack – I just see it as part of the cost of the new proper car I want.
I looked at a host of cars for shed money and while there is a lot of interesting metal at the bottom end of the market, budget CLK’s with patchy MOT history don’t exactly give me confidence for reliability.
The host of ‘safe’ sheds in my price range are exactly as you’d expect, uninspired hatches and the odd high mileage 3 series or similar – both of which I’m fine with but the terrible MOT history on most of the local offerings didn’t make me overly excited to part with my cash.
After a few hours of searching, I stumbled across a 1999 Daewoo Nubira, it was absolutely hideous but with the promise of one lady owner and a smidge under 35,000 miles it looked to be a good option at a wallet pleasing £500. The MOT history revealed nothing overly scary either, aside from a blip in the late 2000s where it appears the tester added an extra digit to the mileage log – I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t a genuine mistake.
I called the salesman and arranged a viewing and test drive. I pulled up in the Porsche (as at that point only a deposit had been left) and the dealer looked a bit surprised, he walked over laughing and told me that the Nubira was no Porsche. I explained the reason I was looking for such a cheap car and he told me the story of the Daewoo – the elderly lady who had owned it from new was a family friend and had a recent non-motoring related accident leaving her unable to drive manual so she’d had to buy an auto.
Renault offered her a £1 PX to take it off her hands and wouldn’t give a penny more, which she declined and made a deal with the vendor that they’d split the profit of whatever it sold for. I believe the part about the Renault dealer but suspect she wasn’t a family friend at all and he just offered her more than scrap value for the car and is selling it on. Either way, the car was in a condition you’d expect it to be in from a single elderly owner. The exterior is clothed in scratches and there are several parking scuffs littered about but nothing to indicate anything more serious. The interior is like new – or at least like new from 20 years ago.
Under the bonnet, everything looked clean and fairly well looked after, the battery was clearly new(ish) too which was a bonus. The car also had 4 recent tyres with lots of tread, I was told the tyres were only put on as the original tyres had perished. Everything looked good and seemed legit so far with the only downsides being the broken AC and sticking windows.
I’m not mechanically savvy at all, when viewing a car I have no idea what to look for, how to tell if something needs addressing unless it’s blindingly obvious like bald tyres and worn pads, so I read some reviews of the Nubira from when it was new so that I could compare my test drive to what reviews said it was like at the time with the idea that if it was vastly different to what the reviews say, there could be something seriously wrong with the car – not the best plan admittedly, but surely better than going in blind? After a reasonable test drive I handed over my £500 and the car was mine.
The Nubira, which replaced the Nexia, was designed by I.DE.A Institute and the engineering team were overseen by former Porsche engineer Ulrich Bez. It uses one of General Motors Family II engines, the X20SED. This variant of the engine was developed by Holden and uses a cast-iron engine block with a cast-iron crankshaft and aluminium head with DOHC and four valves per cylinder. This engine is also equipped with a Multi-port fuel injection system and a direct ignition system and is mated to the Daewoo D-20 Gearbox.
The numbers aren’t actually too bad for the Nubira - 131bhp, 134ib-ft of torque and weighing 1,189KG, giving a power to weight ratio of 110bhp/ton – quite reasonably given that it is a 20-year-old Daewoo. 0-62mph arrives in a mere 8.7 seconds and keeps going until it hits its blistering top speed of 121mph!
The name Nubira is Korean for ‘crisscross’ and given that Holden developed the engine and it comes from the same family as the engine used in the VX220, I think it’s only fair to say that the Nubira is a crisscross between a Monaro and a VX220…
…Oh how I wish it was. I’m sure a lot of you agree that some movies are so bad that they’re good. I’m a strong believer that the same applies to cars – just because a car is bad, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad. Are you still with me?
The Daewoo Nubira is a bad car and in some ways, I’d say it’s so bad in fact that I really do think it’s actually great! It is actually pretty quick for what it is. Sure, it’s no mapped 335D but it’s still pretty punchy for its age. I expected the car to feel sluggish but it really isn’t – it pulls off the line fairly briskly and as you go through the gears it never bogs down and so far I’ve never felt the need to drop a gear if I quickly need to speed up to overtake. Even at 30mph in 5th (top) gear, if you put your foot down it gains speed at a respectable rate. Obviously this is all relatively speaking – I’m not for one saying that the Nubira is fast in any way but I really wouldn’t call it slow. I’ve gone from a 310bhp Boxster S to this and it really is so much more powerful and torquey than I expected – even having read the figures before test driving it still surprised me.
The gears ratios are very short, so at 70mph, it gets pretty noisy at nearly 3,500RPM with very little sound deadening in the cabin. I can imagine this getting pretty unbearable on long journeys and it’s going to drink a lot more fuel sitting at 70mph too. My commute sees me rarely going above 50mph, so it’s not been a problem but the few times I have been on motorways, I’ve sat at 60mph or so – both to conserve fuel and save my ears. The gearbox has no real feel either, with the exception of occasionally struggling to find first gear, every other gear is easy to find and slides right in. The clutch is very spongey, as per the reviews of the time and the biting point is very high up – I have no idea if this is normal or if the clutch is on its last legs.
Handling. Where to start with the handling. We’ll start with the tyres – the 4 nearly-new tyres are awful and must have been the cheapest tyres that the previous owner could find. Going around a corner at a normal speed – as in keeping up with the car in front – can result in tyre squeal. I’m not talking about keeping up with an Elise either, I’m talking about keeping up with the old lady driving an Ecoboost Fiesta. It’s not every corner and it doesn’t happen all the time but I’ve had more tyre squeal from the Nubira in just under 3 weeks than I have had from my E30 race car from 3 seasons of racing. It’s also extremely easy to get the wheels spinning when launching, pulling away at anything over 2,500rpm seems to get them going and in the wet it’s difficult to get any power down without a bit of spin.
Now while the Nubira was never designed to break FWD Nürburgring records and I never expected it to handle well, I’m going to cut it some slack when talking about the rest of the handling characteristics because on decent rubber it won’t be anywhere near as tragic.
Despite the tyre squeal, it does still seem to grip reasonably well – at the point of squeal, I don’t feel as if I have reached the limits of adhesion, but then again you don’t feel anything through the wheel at all. The steering does have a fairly nice weight to it but as you’d expect there is absolutely no feedback whatsoever and when you turn in it feels a bit of a gamble – have I put in too much steer? Too little? Will it make the corner? Will it understeer into that tree? Truth be told, I’ve not encountered any understeer yet but haven’t exactly pushed it yet.
Body roll is laughable. Even at low very low cornering speeds, items in the cabin fly across to the other side of the interior almost as if the cabin has less gravity in it, causing everything to float around. It’s comical really and in truth, I do really like how terrible the body roll is – I’ll explain exactly why that is later on.
Brakes are another of the Daewoo’s weak points. The car was generously equipped with both front and rear discs, however, they aren’t particularly effective. I imagine that the pads are budget which doesn’t help but in the wet, combined with the ditch finder tyres, there is a worrying lack of ability to swiftly stop. As you’d expect, the brakes don’t have any feel. Like with the steering, getting the car to stop when and where you want is very much a bit of a guess.
It’s not looking too good so far, is it? Well, is the cabin a nice place to sit? Actually it is.
My Nubira is the CDX model which is the highest spec and considering the budget price that this model was new it’s not that badly equipped. The full leather seats are pretty comfortable and legroom in the rear is plentiful. My only complaint about the seats is that the front seats aren’t height adjustable. I’m bang on 6ft and in the seating position I like, my hair brushes against the roof which is irritating – even in my MK1 MX-5 I had enough headroom with the roof up! The solution to this is to have the seat further back and tilted more than I normally would have, I’m not massively keen on how much more stretched out my arms are from doing this but it’s definitely my best option – even then my knees are a little cramped around the steering column.
Visibility is excellent all-round, but the wing mirrors are very small and not pleasant to look in, I tend to always follow a mirror check with an over the should check – something I didn’t feel like I had to do in the Porsche anywhere near as often despite it’s much bigger blind spots.
The car has power windows front and rear, though they’re all a bit slow and sticking. A sunroof that works perfectly as well as electric mirrors that also operate as they should. The Air Conditioning is broken which won’t be a problem come winter but has been a nightmare with the recent weather, the car is like a greenhouse at it gets swelteringly hot when the sun is out. The air vents themselves are quite small and you really don’t get much choice of direction and movement they blow in, it seems ok as a driver but my girlfriend constantly moans about she can’t angle them to her face and has to sit awkwardly to get any air – not really a serious problem but it has been an issue with no aircon in the recent 30+ weather we’ve had recently.
As far as infotainment goes, there is a Sony 10 CD changer in the boot as well as a (stock) Sony head unit which actually is pretty good for a stock stereo. The only complaint about this is the volume is + and – buttons rather than a spin-dial knob, which are way more efficient for finding your personal optimum audio volume – but it’s a small niggle. The speakers are actually very good, much better than you’d have expected. The party piece is, of course, that ultra-modern cassette player. Ok so while that was obviously a joke, I have a cassette-AUX adapter and use that to connect my phone to the stereo and then hold the phone in place with an air-vent connecting phone holder so the ancient cassette slot is of genuine use to me. There is also an overhead clock which I constantly forget is there.
Running costs and practicality are fair. As previously stated there is ample legroom in the rear and the boot is actually pretty huge and enormous with the rear seats folded down – it’s not as spacious as a transit but it’s the most spacious car I have owned barring a 1996 Grand Cheroke I ran for a few months whilst searching for the perfect Boxster S.
Tax is around £23 per month, insurance £300 for the year and fuel economy is slightly better than expected. Parkers reckoned I’d get 30mpg so based on that I expected high 20s at best. There is no trip computer so I’ve been working my mileage out the old fashioned way and I am actually averaging just under 35mpg. Not great but not terrible and a reasonable improvement over the 24mpg I averaged in the Boxster – though on a run high 30s wasn’t uncommon. One annoyance is the fuel gauge. Parkers list the Nubira tank size as 62 litres, however when I first filled it up – with the fuel gauge indicating that I was completely empty, having shown as empty for about 20 miles – I was only able to get 50 litres in. I doubt that Parkers are wrong but equally if I really still had 20% more fuel than indicated, it’s something I wouldn’t feel comfortable in risking – driving 100 or so miles on the red. It’s too risky. It just means I need to fill up every 10 days as opposed to every 2 weeks – it’s far from the end of the world but it’s just a gripe.
Though you have probably never driven a Nubira and never will, I’m sure by this point you’ve got a good idea of what it’s like to be in. I was lucky enough to go on numerous US trips when I was younger and after spending a lot of time in NYC cabs, I fell in love with the Ford Crown Victoria. It’s low power lazy V8 suited the car perfectly and while not fast by any means it was grunty enough for what you need and it would effortlessly take you to your destination, being sure to wallow at every turn of the steering wheel. I’ll never own a Crown Vic, as much as I’d like one I can’t see it being a car I ever end up buying. As silly as this might sound to you, the Nubira is my Crown Victoria and that’s why I have such an affection for it. It’s reasonably powerful and torquey, it’s a relaxing drive and if you show it a corner it rolls around like crazy. It’s fit for purpose – it gets you from place to place in comfort and gives you no grief or drama. At least not in the dry. If you squint your eyes, you could even say it looks a little bit like a Crown Victoria – at least from behind. A little. In my eyes, at least.
With the performance limitations this car has, I have adopted a much more relaxed driving style and do look forward to driving to and from work in it. It’s nice not feeling I need to rush anywhere and seldom feeling the need to overtake. The original plan once I am ready to buy my next proper car was to strip the Daewoo and track it – if it blows up it blows up, if it doesn’t it doesn’t but I’m already going off that idea. It seems too nice to kill – besides whilst it has enough power to get around Brands Hatch Indy, I don’t like the idea of brake fade on the pit straight and understeer as I go into paddock hill at 80mph. I’m toying with the idea of getting some better rubber and pads on it as I do feel the car is going to be genuinely dangerous when the weather turns but with it being only £500 I also want to throw as little money at it as possible. At present WBAC offer me £315 for it, so I imagine I’ll get at least a couple hundred back too, which is nice as I had factored in losing all of its value!
For £500, I do feel that I’ve picked up a bit of a shed bargain with such low mileage and interior in such good nick. It’s not the most exciting shed but it is different and to me, it is also interesting. Hopefully, it’ll do its job and get me through the next 6 months or so. I hope you enjoyed the last 3,000 or so words and are inspired to hunt the classifieds looking to bag your own Nubira bargain! There are less than 50 manual CDX’s left registered in the UK so good luck!
After reading the recent Pistonheads Boxster 987 buyers guide, I felt it was a good time to put my 2010 Boxster S up for sale. I wrote an extensive, honest and detailed ad on the morning of Friday 2nd August and by lunchtime the ad was live. I priced my 987 at the higher end of the market which I felt was fair for its condition and spec and at the time it was listed I’m pretty sure it was the most expensive 987 for sale privately on Pistonheads or Autotrader, excluding the ‘Spyder’ models.
The idea was to actually sell the car around March/April 2020 when I had planned to get my next car and I didn’t want to be in a position where I accept a low PX offer or a low sale to get cash quickly so that I could jump into my new car next year so I figured if I listed the 987 now I could lower the price each month until it gained some interest – that way I knew I’d sell the car for as much money as possible… Things didn’t go as planned though.
Two days after listing the Boxster, I’d already taken 3 calls and 5 days after putting it up for sale, it sold for the full asking price which was £7,250 more than WBAC offered me! Whilst I was happy to be getting top money for my car – and having only lost 5k on it in the 3.5 years I’d owned it, I was still really upset to see it go so quickly. In truth, I didn’t want to sell it – it was an incredible car. I honestly can’t fault it – but life is too short to drive one car forever. Problem was, I now didn’t have a car… Off to the classifieds I went.
The idea was to spend as little money as possible on a Shed that would get me through winter whilst I save up more cash to add to my budget with the ‘worst-case scenario’ plan that I get £0 back for it and lose my money. To me, the loss is acceptable providing the car proves to be a reliable winter hack – I just see it as part of the cost of the new proper car I want.
I looked at a host of cars for shed money and while there is a lot of interesting metal at the bottom end of the market, budget CLK’s with patchy MOT history don’t exactly give me confidence for reliability.
The host of ‘safe’ sheds in my price range are exactly as you’d expect, uninspired hatches and the odd high mileage 3 series or similar – both of which I’m fine with but the terrible MOT history on most of the local offerings didn’t make me overly excited to part with my cash.
After a few hours of searching, I stumbled across a 1999 Daewoo Nubira, it was absolutely hideous but with the promise of one lady owner and a smidge under 35,000 miles it looked to be a good option at a wallet pleasing £500. The MOT history revealed nothing overly scary either, aside from a blip in the late 2000s where it appears the tester added an extra digit to the mileage log – I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t a genuine mistake.
I called the salesman and arranged a viewing and test drive. I pulled up in the Porsche (as at that point only a deposit had been left) and the dealer looked a bit surprised, he walked over laughing and told me that the Nubira was no Porsche. I explained the reason I was looking for such a cheap car and he told me the story of the Daewoo – the elderly lady who had owned it from new was a family friend and had a recent non-motoring related accident leaving her unable to drive manual so she’d had to buy an auto.
Renault offered her a £1 PX to take it off her hands and wouldn’t give a penny more, which she declined and made a deal with the vendor that they’d split the profit of whatever it sold for. I believe the part about the Renault dealer but suspect she wasn’t a family friend at all and he just offered her more than scrap value for the car and is selling it on. Either way, the car was in a condition you’d expect it to be in from a single elderly owner. The exterior is clothed in scratches and there are several parking scuffs littered about but nothing to indicate anything more serious. The interior is like new – or at least like new from 20 years ago.
Under the bonnet, everything looked clean and fairly well looked after, the battery was clearly new(ish) too which was a bonus. The car also had 4 recent tyres with lots of tread, I was told the tyres were only put on as the original tyres had perished. Everything looked good and seemed legit so far with the only downsides being the broken AC and sticking windows.
I’m not mechanically savvy at all, when viewing a car I have no idea what to look for, how to tell if something needs addressing unless it’s blindingly obvious like bald tyres and worn pads, so I read some reviews of the Nubira from when it was new so that I could compare my test drive to what reviews said it was like at the time with the idea that if it was vastly different to what the reviews say, there could be something seriously wrong with the car – not the best plan admittedly, but surely better than going in blind? After a reasonable test drive I handed over my £500 and the car was mine.
The Nubira, which replaced the Nexia, was designed by I.DE.A Institute and the engineering team were overseen by former Porsche engineer Ulrich Bez. It uses one of General Motors Family II engines, the X20SED. This variant of the engine was developed by Holden and uses a cast-iron engine block with a cast-iron crankshaft and aluminium head with DOHC and four valves per cylinder. This engine is also equipped with a Multi-port fuel injection system and a direct ignition system and is mated to the Daewoo D-20 Gearbox.
The numbers aren’t actually too bad for the Nubira - 131bhp, 134ib-ft of torque and weighing 1,189KG, giving a power to weight ratio of 110bhp/ton – quite reasonably given that it is a 20-year-old Daewoo. 0-62mph arrives in a mere 8.7 seconds and keeps going until it hits its blistering top speed of 121mph!
The name Nubira is Korean for ‘crisscross’ and given that Holden developed the engine and it comes from the same family as the engine used in the VX220, I think it’s only fair to say that the Nubira is a crisscross between a Monaro and a VX220…
…Oh how I wish it was. I’m sure a lot of you agree that some movies are so bad that they’re good. I’m a strong believer that the same applies to cars – just because a car is bad, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad. Are you still with me?
The Daewoo Nubira is a bad car and in some ways, I’d say it’s so bad in fact that I really do think it’s actually great! It is actually pretty quick for what it is. Sure, it’s no mapped 335D but it’s still pretty punchy for its age. I expected the car to feel sluggish but it really isn’t – it pulls off the line fairly briskly and as you go through the gears it never bogs down and so far I’ve never felt the need to drop a gear if I quickly need to speed up to overtake. Even at 30mph in 5th (top) gear, if you put your foot down it gains speed at a respectable rate. Obviously this is all relatively speaking – I’m not for one saying that the Nubira is fast in any way but I really wouldn’t call it slow. I’ve gone from a 310bhp Boxster S to this and it really is so much more powerful and torquey than I expected – even having read the figures before test driving it still surprised me.
The gears ratios are very short, so at 70mph, it gets pretty noisy at nearly 3,500RPM with very little sound deadening in the cabin. I can imagine this getting pretty unbearable on long journeys and it’s going to drink a lot more fuel sitting at 70mph too. My commute sees me rarely going above 50mph, so it’s not been a problem but the few times I have been on motorways, I’ve sat at 60mph or so – both to conserve fuel and save my ears. The gearbox has no real feel either, with the exception of occasionally struggling to find first gear, every other gear is easy to find and slides right in. The clutch is very spongey, as per the reviews of the time and the biting point is very high up – I have no idea if this is normal or if the clutch is on its last legs.
Handling. Where to start with the handling. We’ll start with the tyres – the 4 nearly-new tyres are awful and must have been the cheapest tyres that the previous owner could find. Going around a corner at a normal speed – as in keeping up with the car in front – can result in tyre squeal. I’m not talking about keeping up with an Elise either, I’m talking about keeping up with the old lady driving an Ecoboost Fiesta. It’s not every corner and it doesn’t happen all the time but I’ve had more tyre squeal from the Nubira in just under 3 weeks than I have had from my E30 race car from 3 seasons of racing. It’s also extremely easy to get the wheels spinning when launching, pulling away at anything over 2,500rpm seems to get them going and in the wet it’s difficult to get any power down without a bit of spin.
Now while the Nubira was never designed to break FWD Nürburgring records and I never expected it to handle well, I’m going to cut it some slack when talking about the rest of the handling characteristics because on decent rubber it won’t be anywhere near as tragic.
Despite the tyre squeal, it does still seem to grip reasonably well – at the point of squeal, I don’t feel as if I have reached the limits of adhesion, but then again you don’t feel anything through the wheel at all. The steering does have a fairly nice weight to it but as you’d expect there is absolutely no feedback whatsoever and when you turn in it feels a bit of a gamble – have I put in too much steer? Too little? Will it make the corner? Will it understeer into that tree? Truth be told, I’ve not encountered any understeer yet but haven’t exactly pushed it yet.
Body roll is laughable. Even at low very low cornering speeds, items in the cabin fly across to the other side of the interior almost as if the cabin has less gravity in it, causing everything to float around. It’s comical really and in truth, I do really like how terrible the body roll is – I’ll explain exactly why that is later on.
Brakes are another of the Daewoo’s weak points. The car was generously equipped with both front and rear discs, however, they aren’t particularly effective. I imagine that the pads are budget which doesn’t help but in the wet, combined with the ditch finder tyres, there is a worrying lack of ability to swiftly stop. As you’d expect, the brakes don’t have any feel. Like with the steering, getting the car to stop when and where you want is very much a bit of a guess.
It’s not looking too good so far, is it? Well, is the cabin a nice place to sit? Actually it is.
My Nubira is the CDX model which is the highest spec and considering the budget price that this model was new it’s not that badly equipped. The full leather seats are pretty comfortable and legroom in the rear is plentiful. My only complaint about the seats is that the front seats aren’t height adjustable. I’m bang on 6ft and in the seating position I like, my hair brushes against the roof which is irritating – even in my MK1 MX-5 I had enough headroom with the roof up! The solution to this is to have the seat further back and tilted more than I normally would have, I’m not massively keen on how much more stretched out my arms are from doing this but it’s definitely my best option – even then my knees are a little cramped around the steering column.
Visibility is excellent all-round, but the wing mirrors are very small and not pleasant to look in, I tend to always follow a mirror check with an over the should check – something I didn’t feel like I had to do in the Porsche anywhere near as often despite it’s much bigger blind spots.
The car has power windows front and rear, though they’re all a bit slow and sticking. A sunroof that works perfectly as well as electric mirrors that also operate as they should. The Air Conditioning is broken which won’t be a problem come winter but has been a nightmare with the recent weather, the car is like a greenhouse at it gets swelteringly hot when the sun is out. The air vents themselves are quite small and you really don’t get much choice of direction and movement they blow in, it seems ok as a driver but my girlfriend constantly moans about she can’t angle them to her face and has to sit awkwardly to get any air – not really a serious problem but it has been an issue with no aircon in the recent 30+ weather we’ve had recently.
As far as infotainment goes, there is a Sony 10 CD changer in the boot as well as a (stock) Sony head unit which actually is pretty good for a stock stereo. The only complaint about this is the volume is + and – buttons rather than a spin-dial knob, which are way more efficient for finding your personal optimum audio volume – but it’s a small niggle. The speakers are actually very good, much better than you’d have expected. The party piece is, of course, that ultra-modern cassette player. Ok so while that was obviously a joke, I have a cassette-AUX adapter and use that to connect my phone to the stereo and then hold the phone in place with an air-vent connecting phone holder so the ancient cassette slot is of genuine use to me. There is also an overhead clock which I constantly forget is there.
Running costs and practicality are fair. As previously stated there is ample legroom in the rear and the boot is actually pretty huge and enormous with the rear seats folded down – it’s not as spacious as a transit but it’s the most spacious car I have owned barring a 1996 Grand Cheroke I ran for a few months whilst searching for the perfect Boxster S.
Tax is around £23 per month, insurance £300 for the year and fuel economy is slightly better than expected. Parkers reckoned I’d get 30mpg so based on that I expected high 20s at best. There is no trip computer so I’ve been working my mileage out the old fashioned way and I am actually averaging just under 35mpg. Not great but not terrible and a reasonable improvement over the 24mpg I averaged in the Boxster – though on a run high 30s wasn’t uncommon. One annoyance is the fuel gauge. Parkers list the Nubira tank size as 62 litres, however when I first filled it up – with the fuel gauge indicating that I was completely empty, having shown as empty for about 20 miles – I was only able to get 50 litres in. I doubt that Parkers are wrong but equally if I really still had 20% more fuel than indicated, it’s something I wouldn’t feel comfortable in risking – driving 100 or so miles on the red. It’s too risky. It just means I need to fill up every 10 days as opposed to every 2 weeks – it’s far from the end of the world but it’s just a gripe.
Though you have probably never driven a Nubira and never will, I’m sure by this point you’ve got a good idea of what it’s like to be in. I was lucky enough to go on numerous US trips when I was younger and after spending a lot of time in NYC cabs, I fell in love with the Ford Crown Victoria. It’s low power lazy V8 suited the car perfectly and while not fast by any means it was grunty enough for what you need and it would effortlessly take you to your destination, being sure to wallow at every turn of the steering wheel. I’ll never own a Crown Vic, as much as I’d like one I can’t see it being a car I ever end up buying. As silly as this might sound to you, the Nubira is my Crown Victoria and that’s why I have such an affection for it. It’s reasonably powerful and torquey, it’s a relaxing drive and if you show it a corner it rolls around like crazy. It’s fit for purpose – it gets you from place to place in comfort and gives you no grief or drama. At least not in the dry. If you squint your eyes, you could even say it looks a little bit like a Crown Victoria – at least from behind. A little. In my eyes, at least.
With the performance limitations this car has, I have adopted a much more relaxed driving style and do look forward to driving to and from work in it. It’s nice not feeling I need to rush anywhere and seldom feeling the need to overtake. The original plan once I am ready to buy my next proper car was to strip the Daewoo and track it – if it blows up it blows up, if it doesn’t it doesn’t but I’m already going off that idea. It seems too nice to kill – besides whilst it has enough power to get around Brands Hatch Indy, I don’t like the idea of brake fade on the pit straight and understeer as I go into paddock hill at 80mph. I’m toying with the idea of getting some better rubber and pads on it as I do feel the car is going to be genuinely dangerous when the weather turns but with it being only £500 I also want to throw as little money at it as possible. At present WBAC offer me £315 for it, so I imagine I’ll get at least a couple hundred back too, which is nice as I had factored in losing all of its value!
For £500, I do feel that I’ve picked up a bit of a shed bargain with such low mileage and interior in such good nick. It’s not the most exciting shed but it is different and to me, it is also interesting. Hopefully, it’ll do its job and get me through the next 6 months or so. I hope you enjoyed the last 3,000 or so words and are inspired to hunt the classifieds looking to bag your own Nubira bargain! There are less than 50 manual CDX’s left registered in the UK so good luck!
Edited by TREMAiNE on Tuesday 3rd September 14:56
TREMAiNE said:
Holden developed the engine and it comes from the same family as the engine used in the VX220
Sort of, it's similar in architecture to the VX220 turbo engine (sans turbo), rather than the 2.2 in the NA version (which would have the inlet at the front). It's a 2.0 Ecotec, similar to a Vectra SRi 130, not a bad engine all the same.What an absolute pile of turd.
But I totally get your reasoning... and when you do get your next car, you’ll feel soooo much happier.
I often drive a Dacia Sandero at work (airport car), it’s brand new, and equally turd. So if this is overpriced at £500, the Dacia is about £8k overpriced. I’d say you got a good deal.
But I totally get your reasoning... and when you do get your next car, you’ll feel soooo much happier.
I often drive a Dacia Sandero at work (airport car), it’s brand new, and equally turd. So if this is overpriced at £500, the Dacia is about £8k overpriced. I’d say you got a good deal.
I never planned for the post to be that long but I got carried away. I'll be honest I didn't read the content, I just looked at the photos. I really can't get enough of bland, boring sheds and this certainly delivered on both of those.
Look at that interior, man. It's as sleep inducing as it's amazing! As another poster has said it'll absolutely reek of Daewoo plastics too... fabulous
Again, great work OP and I reckon you could quite easily double the mileage and end up getting your £500 back in years to come
Look at that interior, man. It's as sleep inducing as it's amazing! As another poster has said it'll absolutely reek of Daewoo plastics too... fabulous
Again, great work OP and I reckon you could quite easily double the mileage and end up getting your £500 back in years to come
If you squint it sort of looks like an 04-09 Maserati Quattroporte...
Big fan of Daewoo's for what they offer. We had a Lanos in the family for years and it was a great little car despite the badge. Only problem being it was an FSM Lanos.
My wife genuinely said that the Nubira was her favourite car when she was younger a battered one pulled up next to us at the lights the other day.
My late father in law had a poster of one inside his garage. It seems in PL during the 90s they were seen as aspirational
Big fan of Daewoo's for what they offer. We had a Lanos in the family for years and it was a great little car despite the badge. Only problem being it was an FSM Lanos.
My wife genuinely said that the Nubira was her favourite car when she was younger a battered one pulled up next to us at the lights the other day.
My late father in law had a poster of one inside his garage. It seems in PL during the 90s they were seen as aspirational
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