We bought our 1.6 Lanos second hand direct from Daewoo - it was 5 months old, had under 1000 miles on the clock and still had "new car smell". In the five years we have owned it, it has mostly given us trouble free motoring, largely due to the 3 year warranty on fixed price servicing that Daewoo UK used to offer.
The only real trouble we've had has been with the timing belt, which I'm told is always a problem with these GM-based engines. Ours snapped at 30k miles, taking out all the vales and the cylinder head. Daewoo UK (now defunct) were very good, fixing the whole thing under warranty, throwing in the 30k service and giving us a courtesy car for two weeks while they did it!
Unfortunately, when GM bought Daewoo Motors they didn't want the UK subsidary, and so it was allowed to go bust and GM-Daewoo just started up a chain of franchise dealers. My local dealer is now some 20 miles away, and the servicing is definately not fixed price, although you could say the price was fixed! I paid more for a 60k service than my colleague did for his Audi.
Although the timing belt was changed at 60k (we had to pay an extra £90 for this, bringing the price close to that of two Audi services...), the idler pulleys (also notoriously weak on GM engines) aren't part of the Daewoo service routine, just recommended by everybody as good practice. So they weren't changed by the dealer, and so when one disintegrated 11k miles later taking the valves out with it we were left holding the baby.
My conclusion: not a bad car at all, just make sure the timing belt AND IDLER PULLEYS are changed regularly and if it's out of warranty then find a friendly local mechanic to do the servicing for you.
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Advantages: reliable, hard working, good looking, spacious, comfortable, Disadvantages: retail value drops a terrifying amount which is good for second handers.
Seton 10.02.2008 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Daewoo Lanos 1.6
Feb 19th, 2004
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