Daewoo Motors: How a Korean Carmaker Rose, Fell and Became GM Korea

Daewoo at a glance

The Daewoo name means "great universe" in Korean. It belonged first to the Daewoo Group, one of the country's largest conglomerates, founded by Kim Woo-choong in 1967; the car company took the name only in 1983. All Daewoo cars in our database are on the Daewoo brand page.

Origins: from National Motor to Saehan

The company's history starts long before the Daewoo badge. In 1937 National Motor was founded in Bupyeong, Incheon. In November 1962 it was renamed Saenara Motor and assembled the Datsun Bluebird, which made it one of South Korea's first car companies under the government's new industry policy. In 1965 Shinjin Industrial bought it and assembled Toyota models.

When Toyota withdrew in 1972, Shinjin formed a joint venture with General Motors called General Motors Korea. It sold lightly rebadged GM cars from Europe and Australia, including the Opel Rekord as the "1900" and the Chevrolet 1700. These cars sold poorly in Korea. In 1976 Shinjin's share went to a state-owned bank and the company became Saehan Motor.

Daewoo history by era

1983–1991: Daewoo Motor and the GM partnership

The Daewoo Group took control of Saehan in December 1982, and in January 1983 the company became Daewoo Motor Co. GM still held half. Its key car of the decade was the 1986 Daewoo LeMans, based on the Opel Kadett E; in North America it was sold as the Pontiac LeMans. The Opel Kadett story explains the base car. In 1990 Daewoo added the Espero saloon, styled by Bertone, and in 1991 the Tico city car, a licensed Suzuki design built by Daewoo Heavy Industries.

1992–1999: independence and global expansion

The GM joint venture ended in 1992. Kim Woo-choong then pushed the car business to grow abroad at speed, often in countries that were opening up to foreign investment:

• Uzbekistan: UzDaewooAuto, founded in August 1992, built the Nexia and later the Matiz in Asaka.
• Romania: in 1994 Daewoo took over the Automobile Craiova plant, which built the Cielo, Matiz and Nubira.
• Poland: in 1995 Daewoo-FSO was formed in Warsaw, and a second joint venture created Daewoo Motor Polska in Lublin.
• Ukraine: from 1998 Daewoo held a stake in AvtoZAZ, which later produced the Lanos under licence.
• Czech Republic: in 1998 Daewoo bought 50.2% of the truck maker Avia.

In 1994 the LeMans was renamed Cielo, sold in many export markets as the Daewoo Nexia. In 1995 the Nexia and Espero reached Germany. Then, in 1997, came the first cars Daewoo designed entirely itself: the Lanos, styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign, the Nubira by I.DE.A Institute, and the large Leganza, again by Italdesign. The Nubira was the first model built at the new Gunsan plant. In 1998 the small Daewoo Matiz, drawn by Italdesign, became the company's best seller.

During the Asian financial crisis Daewoo even bought SsangYong Motor in 1998, which brought SUVs such as the Korando and Musso into the group. It sold SsangYong again in 2000.

1999–2002: collapse

The expansion was financed with debt. When the Asian crisis hit, the Daewoo Group could no longer service it, and the group broke up in 1999. Daewoo Motor was declared bankrupt in November 2000, and Kim Woo-choong left the country. Even so, new models kept coming: the Magnus saloon in 1999, the Rezzo (Tacuma) compact MPV in early 2000 and the Magnus L6 in 2002, which had Daewoo's own first inline-six engine.

2002–2011: GM Daewoo

In 2002 General Motors bought the core of Daewoo Motor's car business and formed GM Daewoo Auto & Technology. GM held 42.1%, with Suzuki at 6.8% and SAIC at 6.0%; GM went above 50% in July 2005. The plants in Romania and Poland were not part of the deal. The commercial-vehicle division was spun off and bought by Tata Motors in 2004.

Under GM, Daewoo became an engineering centre for small cars. The Kalos (2002) became the Chevrolet Aveo, the Lacetti the Chevrolet Lacetti and later the Cruze in Korea, and the Matiz the Chevrolet Spark. GM Daewoo also built SUVs for GM, including the Chevrolet Captiva and its twin, the Opel Antara. In January 2005 Chevrolet replaced Daewoo as the brand in Europe; the Lacetti of 2003 was the last car sold there as a Daewoo.

From 2011: GM Korea

In January 2011 GM announced that GM Daewoo would become GM Korea from March 2011, and the Daewoo brand disappeared from Korean showrooms. The Uzbek plant kept the name longer, ending it in 2015, and ZAZ in Ukraine and partners in Egypt stopped in 2012. The Uzbek Lacetti-based Daewoo Gentra of 2013 was one of the last new cars to carry the badge.

Landmark models that defined Daewoo

Engineering and design

Daewoo bought most of its engineering expertise abroad at first. The early cars used GM and Opel platforms, and the first own designs of 1997 came from Italian studios. By 1996, according to the old 1cars text, Daewoo ran three technical centres in South Korea, Germany and the United Kingdom, which developed the Lanos, Nubira and Leganza. This engineering base was one reason GM wanted the company in 2002, when it became GM's centre for small and compact cars.

Daewoo had little motorsport history. Its reputation rested on price and value rather than records or race wins.

Factories and production today

The former Daewoo plants in South Korea passed to GM Korea. At the time of the renaming, the Bupyeong plant had a capacity of about 440,000 vehicles a year, Gunsan about 260,000 and Changwon about 210,000. Former partners abroad went their own ways: Ford bought the Craiova plant in Romania in 2007–2008 and ended Daewoo production there in May 2008; FSO in Poland built the Matiz and Lanos under its own name from 2005 to 2008; and the Uzbek plant kept building Nexia and Matiz models long after the Korean brand had gone.

Daewoo models on 1cars

To see how the Nexia compares in size with its rivals, use our size comparison of the Nexia and the ZAZ Chance, a Lanos-based car. The Ukrainian side of the story is in the history of ZAZ.

Daewoo in numbers

• 1937: the year the company's oldest predecessor was founded.
• 50.2%: Daewoo's share of the Czech truck maker Avia in 1998.
• About 2 million: GM Daewoo's output in 2008, including kits for assembly abroad.
• 28 years: the life of the Daewoo car brand in South Korea, from 1983 to 2011.
• 74 years, by our count: from the founding of National Motor in 1937 to the GM Korea name in 2011.

Our verdict: why Daewoo still matters

Daewoo matters less for any single car than for what it did to the market: it made new cars affordable for many first-time buyers across Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the 1990s. Its Matiz and Nexia stayed in production for two decades because they were cheap to build and easy to repair. For used-car buyers today, a late Matiz or Nexia is a simple, low-cost runabout, but expect basic safety by modern standards: the first Matiz scored three stars in its 2000 Euro NCAP test.