Daewoo Bucrane

“Italian styling” was once so much of a buzzword that, for a long time, automakers who needed to give their cars a kick in the pants would hire a Bertone, Zagato, IED, Italdesign, or a handful of smaller design houses to create a concept car.

For a time, Daewoo and Italdesign became so intertwined that the Korean automaker was putting Fiat’s unused concept car Cinquecento hatchbacks into production (as the Matiz). For a number of years, Daewoo had Italdesign define the visual language of its small cars.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore anyone who collects or preserves classic Daewoo products — but for Daewoo itself, this reliance on others for its identity was a fatal flaw.

Auto writers were not able to admit that the Italdesign Daewoo models all looked like lozenges — no matter how inexpensively priced, cheaply built, or unrefined the Daewoo range was, few people liked the styling enough to look past those other issues.

I’m sure it was lovingly made, however, I’d have fired Italdesign upon it delivering photos of the finished Bucrane to my imaginary office at the top of Daewoo HQ.

Why? It’s a big fat bar of soap.

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