Good morning! We’re still working our way through the alphabet, and today we’re going to put it in H, with a pair of imported economy cars from different eras. Crazy Valclav isn’t involved, but they are both being sold at dealerships, so as always, buyer beware.
Yesterday, I gave you a wide variety of choices starting with the letter G, and I’m sure none of us are surprised that the big GMC pickup won. It’s a good price for a whole lot of truck, not the sort of thing you’d want to daily drive, but when you need it, nothing else will do. What did surprise me, though, is that the Welsh Wonder put up such a strong showing. I’ve been a fan of the Gilbern GT ever since someone showed up with one at the Portland All-British Field Meet a few years ago, but I had no idea they were so rare.
But I already have my MGB GT, which is too similar to the Gilbern to make a case for it, and I prefer my green GMT400 to that big-block monster. So they’re both out of the running for me. The Goggomobil is adorable, but my neighborhood empties out onto a highway with average speeds of about 60 MPH, so I don’t think it would do me any good. That leaves the Metro, and I’d be happy to have another one. They’re fun to drive, butt-simple to fix, and capable of some amazing feats.
That Metro is a perfect segue into today’s choices, since both of these are cheap economy cars, too. Or rather, they were, in their day. But as we all know, after attrition has taken most of them off the road, even the most humble machine becomes a “classic,” and prices rise accordingly. But there’s old, and then there’s old – one of today’s choices is from the same year as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure; the other pre-dates The Wizard Of Oz by two years. Will one of them leave you stranded along the Yellow Brick Road? Is the other totally bogus? Let’s check them out and see.
1937 Hillman Minx Drophead Coupe – $12,000
Engine/drivetrain: 1.2-liter flathead inline 4, four-speed manual, RWD
Location: Morgantown, PA
Odometer reading: 86,000 miles
Operational status: Cranks but won’t start
Wow, look at that: cars with suicide doors two days in a row! Today we have the Hillman Minx, a small car produced by the Rootes Group in Great Britain. This Minx is a “drophead coupe,” which is basically a very British way of saying “convertible.” It’s a left-hand-drive version originally sold in Canada, and the seller claims it is the only one of its kind known to still exist. We’ve had rare cars on here before, but I don’t think we’ve ever featured the only one left.
The Minx is powered by an 1185 cubic centimeter inline four, a flathead of course – overhead valves in 1937 were only for the wealthy. It does boast one technological innovation, however: in 1935, the Minx was the first mass-produced car offered with a fully-synchromesh transmission. This one does not currently run; it has been sitting for a long time. But flathead engines are simple; if you’ve got fuel, spark, and compression, it’ll run. You just have to figure out which one is missing.
Someone has begun restoring the interior; the door panels and dashboard look pretty good. The seats are a mystery; what lies beneath those cheap Wal-Mart seat covers? The seller isn’t saying. The shape looks wrong for the original seats, though. They look too new. The rear seat is in nice condition, though.
It’s incredibly dirty outside; the seller describes it as a “barn find,” and it looks like half the barn’s dust is still clinging to it. The seller says it has no “invasive” rust, which sounds good, and if the shiny parts are indicative of the paint’s condition, it’s actually not bad.
1989 Hyundai Excel GLS – $4,000
Engine/drivetrain: 1.5-liter overhead cam inline 4, three-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Odometer reading: 12,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives, but that’s all we know
Hyundai these days is a peddler of some pretty nice EVs, as well as a whole line of stylish internal-combustion-powered cars. But here in the US, it all started with this car, the original Excel. Based on Mitsubishi mechanicals and styled by Giugiaro, these cheap runabouts were everywhere for about a decade. After that, they all disappeared, either rusted away or worn out. I haven’t seen one on the road in at least ten or fifteen years. Come to think of it, this might be the last of its kind as well.
The Excel is powered by a 1.5-liter inline four of Mitsubishi design that makes about seventy horsepower. I have never seen one that did not leak oil, and I’ve serviced scores of these things. Most Excels had either four- or five-speed manual transmissions; you could only get an automatic on the fancy GLS model like this one. And, of course, it’s a simple three-speeder. There’s a video of it starting and running in the ad, but we don’t know much more than that. It has only 12,000 miles on the odometer; apparently no one ever drove this car. I guess I can’t blame them.
It looks pretty decent inside, but I don’t know what the hell happened to that steering wheel, and you’ll notice that one of the window cranks is lying in the foot well. That’s a sign of quality right there. It’s probably just missing the little metal clip that holds it in place. Pick one up from the Dorman HELP! rack while you’re at Autozone getting a nice new Grant steering wheel for it.
Rust was always the enemy of these original Excels, but this one seems all right. Apparently it was parked inside all these years. There is a dent in the right front fender and a crack in one taillight lens, but apart from that it’s remarkably clean. I don’t know what the market is like for the world’s nicest first-generation Hyundai Excel, but if there is one – here’s your car.
We’ve looked at a lot of Hondas here, which is why I avoided featuring one today. And Hudson and Hummer seemed too obvious, too. Besides, I like the idea of formerly ordinary cars that have become special just because there are hardly any left. Either one of these would draw a crowd at a car gathering. It’s just a matter of which one you’d rather explain.
I’ll pay 12 grand for a car made of unobtanium before I’ll pay 4 grand for a slushbox Hyundai with a dent in the wing.
My first car was an 1988 Excel GS, 2-door hatchback, black with black mesh wheels and a 5-speed. Paid $8k for it brand new.
Sold it 5 years later for $1800 after 189k miles. Two ‘major’ repairs during my ownership… a clutch and a caliper. That’s it. It was a dog but it served me well.
I remember these well when they first started to arrive. The contemporary wisdom at the time put it in the “Yugo” quality category. My brother bought a new one in 89 0r 90. Worst quality I had ever witnessed. I remember riding in the back seat trying to reattach the door handle (it apparently was not designed to be pulled on to close the door). The poor thing died at around 70,000 miles and was put down.
Had a friend who bought an Excel new, back in the day. He drove it very gently and spent a lot of time just keeping up with all of the stuff that would go wrong with it on an everyday basis. He ended up giving it to his teenage son, and it lasted a couple of months after that. (That does get me to believe that this thing really does only have 12,000 miles on it.) I have no interest in a super-boring car that requires constant attention and grandma-level driving just to keep it functional. The Minx has more character in any given third of its dashboard than the entire Hyundai has, so the choice is easy. I’d rather overpay for something I really like than pay anything for something I don’t want.
Advertising abuse report:
I was in the middle of reading about the Excel when, without any clicking on my part, my browser was hijacked and taken to URL below. (I manually added spaces to the protocol specifier to keep the comment system from turning it into a clickable link.) I am a subscribing member. It is one of those “VIRUS DETECTED CALL THIS NUMBER IMMEDIATELY” bullshit explicitly called out as “we don’t want that” in recent Tales from the Slack.
Please banish and feel free to delete this comment when resolved.
h t t p s : / / msnotice31181a-2081e.kxcdn.com/Win08ShDMeEr0887/?id=Monrovia&foo=quebec-dap-1jdnzmn6lj&toy=the%2Cand%2Cthat%2Cfor%2Cone%2Cbut%2Cwith%2Cminx%2Cwas%2Cit%2Care%2Ccar%2Cexcel%2Chyundai%2Call%2Chave%2Cyou%2Chours%2Cthere%2Cwhich%2Ccars%2Cthese%2Chad%2Cjust%2Cwhat%2Cthey%2Cfrom%2Cstill%2Chillman%2Cminutes%2Cfor%3A%2C1937%2C1989%2Cau&keyword=gamboge-scorpion
FYI for people not on Autopian Discord: as per #general this is a known issue and they’re working on it.
“hardibro: this is a web-wide issue and we are working on it, but it’s impacting other sites”
I voted for the Hillman. I would have voted for the Hillman if it didn’t crank. I would have voted for the Hillman if the frame was rusted. I would have voted for the Hillman if the Hyundai had $6,000 in the trunk. I would have voted for the Hillman, if it was possessed.. I would have voted for the Hillman if it was filled with bees. I would have voted for the Hillman if a bootleggers corpse was in the trunk.
We get it, you love the Hyundai, no need to be such a homer. 😉
As a boomer I had to look up “being a homer”.. 😀
That Excel probably has only 12k because it’s been sitting in shops to get repaired for most of its existence.Those early Hyundai machines were just terrible.As for the Hillman put it back in the barn.The choices could have been so much better today.
The Hillman is way overpriced for the condition it’s in. So my vote goes to the Hyundai… even though that is ALSO overpriced… but not as badly.
Minx because I’d graft a Suzuki Cappuccino under it.
I saw a lot of those Excels come through Dad’s repo lot back in the day. They were made of tissue paper and aluminum foil; they could be hotwired in less than a minute, and fell apart while driving. If the Minx had been a flaming bag of dog poo, I still would have chosen the dog poo. Minx all day.
Could already tell from the title shots, gotta go with the Minx. Yeah, it’s kind of expensive and doesn’t run, but at least it’s unusual. Fix up the tractor engine and you’re off. You ‘all are so cheap with your fake internet money, live a little!
The Minx might need a small fix or a lot of hours and $$$$ to evem start. $12k is the asking price for a puzzle.
The Excel at least runs, and the issues are probably fixed by a salvage yard run.
I don’t want either, but I could at possibly donate a running Excel with the issues fixed to someone in great need and it’s modern enough to take to any mechanic. The Minx is something you buy and put a small fortune into for restoration because you have the money and the time. But then its a museum piece at that point, and I have neither the money or time for all that just to have a ar I really shouldn’t drive if I want to be able to afford kind of insurance on it.
Hyundai. The Minx will never run and I’ll have $8000.
I was of car buying age when the Hyundai Excel came out. It was considered to be crap even then, just one rung up from a Yugo.
I knew a guy in the 90s who wrecked his 1st gen Excel. He bought a Yugo and was able to swap in the seats from the Hyundai and other stuff as well (it’s been 30 years, all I remember is the seats but there’s a bunch more) which were an upgrade to what came with the Yugo. So, as bad as some of these comments say the Hyundai is, a Yugo is worse.
Looking forward to maybe making Joe Isuzu jokes tomorrow?
I had a friend in college that had one an ’89 Hyundai, and every time she slammed the car door closed too hard, the front marker light would fall off. Every crappy car aspires to be as big a POS as those Hyundais.
I wouldn’t drive either car, and both seem very expensive for what they are, but I wanted to consider what the better deal is. The Hillman got my vote, because I think it’d be worth putting time and money into. The Hyundai isn’t radwood enough to be appreciated as a classic.
Can I go back and take the Goggo?
Once again, apples and oranges. Dad had a Hyundai Excel. POS. Blew its head gasket around 30k or so. Parts for the old Hillman? The radiator looks done. Brake system? Fuel system? Should run for the price they’re asking. I vote neither. I’ll ride my bike.
“[I]n 1935, the Minx was the first mass-produced car offered with a fully-synchromesh transmission.”
Pretty astonishing! My first car, a 12-year-old 1974 Volvo 144, didn’t have its first gear synchronized (to be sure, it was the most bare-bones variant of the 144 offered in the US that year, with the original owner selecting only one option, a radio.) And my ex-FIL, a mechanical engineer, would talk about the first car that he bought new (after having had multiple older cars including a MG TD and a Jaguar XK140) which was a 1964 VW Beetle cabriolet in sea-foam blue (yeah, he had fond memories of that car) and how it was the first car he ever owned with a fully-synchromesh gearbox. He still couldn’t get over his surprise even decades later about a car being so ostensibly economy and having such an advanced feature.
The Austin 7 did offer the top two gears with synchromesh in 1933 and then added synchromesh to second gear the next year for the last five years of the 7’s production. Still, no full synchromesh was ever available.
My ’89 Chevy pickup doesn’t have a synchro on 1st gear. It’s the granny gear, so you’re pretty much only using it from a dead stop, but still.
Query for David Tracy about his own ’89 Chevy K1500, whether its 1st gear has synchro or not. I’m currently borrowing my nephew’s ’89 Chevy K1500 but it’s automatic. However, yeah, ’89 Chevy trucks FTW, GMTA and all that.
The Hillman is cute, and y’all should keep voting for it … but prewar stuff has never been my jam, so we’ll take the Hyundai. It’s handsome in a rectilinear 80s way, even with that fender crease that looks like it was caused by a rollback truck.
Now, where did I put my parachute pants?
That Excel is selling for the same price it did when new. Huh. I mean, considering how few of them there were that sold and how few there are left, maybe…? But it is mid 1980s Mitsubishi-backed Hyundai, so it’s not as bad as the Pony since you can just replace the Hyundai parts with Mitsubishi ones.
But the Minx is probably just as rare. Very few pre-war Humber and Hillman ‘verts are still around. Hell, very few pre-war Hillmans are still around. Most of what exist now are Imps, Commers, and Huskies from the mid 1950s onwards because the British scrapped so many cars thanks to regulation changes.
I can’t really make a choice.
And war shortages. A car is no use when Jerry is bombing the roads and bridges.
Looks like we have two sellers that got really ambitious with the “0” button on their keyboards.
That’s bonkers money for a beat up Excel – which, as I recall, started at $3999 for a base model.
Which was about the same price for a new Yugo! I seem to remember these as competitors for rock bottom new cars. Most people went for the Hyundai.
You’re right – It was the Yugo which was $3999, the base Excel was $4999