I've acquired a Korean Accent

[WillCarter]

Long story short, I work for BCA appraising cars and in our particular branch we deal with a lot of We Buy Any Car detritus which usually means an endless line of Qashqais, Jukes and Picassos in various stages of knackered day in day out. The upside to this being that we also get some incredible high end stuff in, and more interestingly to people like us, very low end stuff too.

One such car was this 1995 Hyundai Accent which rolled into the hangar to a series of jeers back in February. From a distance it looked bloody awful, the paint was flaking off in chunks and it was about 10 different shades of pink, however upon closer inspection I realised that it was possibly a bit of a rough diamond. A look inside revealed that it had done 26k from new, everything worked fine and upon appraisal other than the obvious paint damage there wasn't much to report beyond a couple of parking dings.

Needless to say, I was smitten and knew I would have to be the one to save it. For those who don't know, BCA sell exclusively to the trade and unfortunately stuff like this which has little to no market value usually becomes landfill which was something I couldn't let happen. As I say, BCA is strictly trade, which means purchasing as an employee isn't as easy as you might think, various hoops have to be jumped through but after a number of interactions with confused higher ups the red tape was cleared and my bid was submitted. 

A day later I got news that unsurprisingly my bid had been the only one and that once I'd paid up I was free to take it when I was ready. Brilliant news. I knew as soon as I saw it this car that it needed saving and that's just what I'd done. A few days later I took it home, parked it up... and then promptly did nothing with it for months. This was the issue, now I'd saved it, what do I do with it? I have a perfectly good daily driver and realistically it didn't make financial sense to spend any money on restoring it. 

So that was it really, that is until May came around. I'd got a few days off for my birthday and wrangled a ticket to the Retro Rides Weekender. The plan was to drive down in my Rover 75 Tourer, sleep in that and enjoy a no fuss weekend. But then the cheeky little Accent started winking at me. Could I really trust a car I'd basically never driven to do a 400 mile round trip and get me there and back safely? Well, the answer was a resounding yes. It didn't really like doing more than 60 but for a car that had seemingly rarely left London, that wasn't too surprising and if you let it set its own pace it bundled along quite happily. Surprisingly it got a great response at Retro Rides too, getting lots of smiles and comments and confirmed to me that I'd made a good decision, even if I still wasn't quite sure why I owned it. 

After that it went back and forth to work a couple of times when the 75 was out of duty and I found myself beginning to enjoy its simplicity and cheerful manner and I slowly began to realise that not only was I going to be the one who saved it, but also the one that was going to preserve it, regardless of any sense it made financially. This was confirmed when we took it to Festival of the Unexceptional a couple of weeks ago where again it got an amazing response and more than one offer to buy it which were promptly but politely knocked back. 

So, what's the plan? Well essentially get it painted really. It honestly doesn't really need much else, but the paint is totally beyond repair and being such a great colour it seems a shame to not get it back to its former glory. Other than that the only other problem areas are the plastics which are unfortunately beginning to perish and crumble meaning things like inner door handles all need sourcing and replacing. 

As for historical significance, I'm not sure these cars will ever have much to a wider audience, however to a niche audience such as ours its worth noting that this is a launch year car since the Coupe didn't arrive until 1995 making this one of, if not the oldest remaining survivor in the UK. It is also as far as I know a one owner car and seemingly didn't venture far from where it was sold in Muswell Hill, though unfortunately I stupidly forgot to take note of the previous owners address on the old V5 as it would have been nice to let them know it had been saved.

So yeah, that's it really. Work on the paint should hopefully begin in the winter ready to get it back out for shows and events in the spring and I hold out hopes that it will be deemed good enough once finished to enter into the FOTU concourse which is really my big aim for the car. Here's to my impending financial ruin.

As it appeared in the hangar.

The one good bit of paint and closest to the actual colour.

The evening I received the keys.

Retro Rides prep.

Made it there and back with no drama.

Enjoying Festival of the Unexceptional.

[Rocket88]

PCP at 14p per month…😂

[High Jetter]

Well saved! BCA should offer or roffle any similar landfill contents on here!

[garethj]

Excellent work!  I visited suppliers for work in Korea in the late’90s or early 2000s and these things were everywhere.

I did hundreds of miles in the back between hotels and various factories, one of them was the place that made bumpers for them.  It was winter and they had the doors open for trucks to pick up finished parts, the snow was howling in and covered everything.

A brilliant little car that just kept going.

[egg]

You have won at life. Hyundai. When all you want is everything.

[cobblers]

I really like these. The styling is absolutely joyous! My mums feller used to work at a Hyundai dealer and he'd come back in one of these if he'd drawn the short straw 😅.

 Has it got the Sony stereo in?

[wuvvum]

I had one in the same colour - bought it at night and didn't realise it was pink until I got up the next morning and opened the curtains.  Decent little thing to drive, although the interior stank of fags.

[jon.k]

Curvy!

[Spottedlaurel]

Excellent! A heartwarming tale.

The shape (and I suppose the basic concept) of these reminds me of the original Datsun 100A.

[davehedgehog31]

What a thread title. 

[High Jetter]

Yes, I can understand him now

[RayMK]

Having owned two Stellars, two Sonatas (1990s version) and an Atoz, I think your Accent is completely understandable.

[motorpunk]

The wheel size to spoiler size ratio is greatly amusing. Loving this little car.

What's the engine? How does it drive? 

[beko1987]

If I had to get into cockroach motoring I'd pick one of those over a Nissan micra all day long! 

Nice save

[junkyarddog]

These really are am excellent little car.

The only thing I can remember selling from them were alternators and inner door handles.

Glad to see one saved.

[mk2_craig]

Touchdown! 
 

Very well played. These sold so well for Hunday and now they’re obscurity’s own self. 

[barefoot]

I drove no end of these when the Porsche specialist I used, gave them out as courtesy cars. He also sold a fair few to folk with knackered Escorts and the like. The 1.5 was far superior to the 1.3, which this looks like.

Fun buy though, well done.

[somewhatfoolish]

An Car with hero level pogweasel. Well bought.

[WillCarter]

3 hours ago, cobblers said:

I really like these. The styling is absolutely joyous! My mums feller used to work at a Hyundai dealer and he'd come back in one of these if he'd drawn the short straw 😅.

 Has it got the Sony stereo in?

Just the standard Hyundai tape deck I think, in good working order though.

1 hour ago, motorpunk said:

The wheel size to spoiler size ratio is greatly amusing. Loving this little car.

What's the engine? How does it drive? 

The spoiler alone makes it a Hot Hatch.

This one is the 1300 of Hyundai's own design, as alluded to elsewhere there was a 1500 available too on higher spec cars. In terms of driving, perhaps unsurprisingly much like a small eighties or lesser nineties Japan Hatchback.  If you've ever been in something like a K10 Micra or a Suzuki Swift that's pretty much the level. It's not going to win any races, but it pootles along nicely and you don't ever seem to need to slow down for corners once you've got some momentum going. I will say that at 6'3 I couldn't live with the driving position if it was a daily driver, but that's as much to do with my dodgy knees as much as the car so a minor gripe really. 

[Dyslexic Viking]

Good save. I have always liked these.

[wuvvum]

For ultimate shite points of course you would need the version with the 3-cylinder 1.5 VM diesel.

2 hours ago, motorpunk said:

The wheel size to spoiler size ratio is greatly amusing.

I think the Elantra had the Accent beat in the comedy spoiler stakes.

[Spottedlaurel]

Got me curious as to whether I'd uploaded any other early examples to Flickr. Seems like I saw another salmon/pink/pale red one in 2014, but with a different bumper/grille arrangement:

None as early as M-reg, although it's possible that the odd French version I've photographed might go back that far (got photos of a tidy one there this year). Harking back to past glories, theirs were badged as Pony....

[RoverFolkUs]

Seems mad that they were still trying to sell these in 2005! Albeit slightly squarer and sportier looking from the outside - but the interior, the controls and the running gear were all still firmly stuck in the 90s

I had to replace some brake pipes on an 05 plate one of these recently and when I sat in it, I would have said it was from around 1994/95 ish if I hadn't looked at the plate beforehand! 

Hyundai had all the right ideas about affordable transport but they were still trying to sell a marginally refreshed version of that when Ford were coming out with the MK2 Focus! 

Well saved, I can't recall seeing one of these on an M reg, infact anything earlier than an R reg, for donkeys,

[richardmorris]

8 hours ago, WillCarter said:

Long story short, I work for BCA appraising cars and in our particular branch we deal with a lot of We Buy Any Car detritus which usually means an endless line of Qashqais, Jukes and Picassos in various stages of knackered day in day out. The upside to this being that we also get some incredible high end stuff in, and more interestingly to people like us, very low end stuff too.

One such car was this 1995 Hyundai Accent which rolled into the hangar to a series of jeers back in February. From a distance it looked bloody awful, the paint was flaking off in chunks and it was about 10 different shades of pink, however upon closer inspection I realised that it was possibly a bit of a rough diamond. A look inside revealed that it had done 26k from new, everything worked fine and upon appraisal other than the obvious paint damage there wasn't much to report beyond a couple of parking dings.

Needless to say, I was smitten and knew I would have to be the one to save it. For those who don't know, BCA sell exclusively to the trade and unfortunately stuff like this which has little to no market value usually becomes landfill which was something I couldn't let happen. As I say, BCA is strictly trade, which means purchasing as an employee isn't as easy as you might think, various hoops have to be jumped through but after a number of interactions with confused higher ups the red tape was cleared and my bid was submitted. 

A day later I got news that unsurprisingly my bid had been the only one and that once I'd paid up I was free to take it when I was ready. Brilliant news. I knew as soon as I saw it this car that it needed saving and that's just what I'd done. A few days later I took it home, parked it up... and then promptly did nothing with it for months. This was the issue, now I'd saved it, what do I do with it? I have a perfectly good daily driver and realistically it didn't make financial sense to spend any money on restoring it. 

So that was it really, that is until May came around. I'd got a few days off for my birthday and wrangled a ticket to the Retro Rides Weekender. The plan was to drive down in my Rover 75 Tourer, sleep in that and enjoy a no fuss weekend. But then the cheeky little Accent started winking at me. Could I really trust a car I'd basically never driven to do a 400 mile round trip and get me there and back safely? Well, the answer was a resounding yes. It didn't really like doing more than 60 but for a car that had seemingly rarely left London, that wasn't too surprising and if you let it set its own pace it bundled along quite happily. Surprisingly it got a great response at Retro Rides too, getting lots of smiles and comments and confirmed to me that I'd made a good decision, even if I still wasn't quite sure why I owned it. 

After that it went back and forth to work a couple of times when the 75 was out of duty and I found myself beginning to enjoy its simplicity and cheerful manner and I slowly began to realise that not only was I going to be the one who saved it, but also the one that was going to preserve it, regardless of any sense it made financially. This was confirmed when we took it to Festival of the Unexceptional a couple of weeks ago where again it got an amazing response and more than one offer to buy it which were promptly but politely knocked back. 

So, what's the plan? Well essentially get it painted really. It honestly doesn't really need much else, but the paint is totally beyond repair and being such a great colour it seems a shame to not get it back to its former glory. Other than that the only other problem areas are the plastics which are unfortunately beginning to perish and crumble meaning things like inner door handles all need sourcing and replacing. 

As for historical significance, I'm not sure these cars will ever have much to a wider audience, however to a niche audience such as ours its worth noting that this is a launch year car since the Coupe didn't arrive until 1995 making this one of, if not the oldest remaining survivor in the UK. It is also as far as I know a one owner car and seemingly didn't venture far from where it was sold in Muswell Hill, though unfortunately I stupidly forgot to take note of the previous owners address on the old V5 as it would have been nice to let them know it had been saved.

So yeah, that's it really. Work on the paint should hopefully begin in the winter ready to get it back out for shows and events in the spring and I hold out hopes that it will be deemed good enough once finished to enter into the FOTU concourse which is really my big aim for the car. Here's to my impending financial ruin.

As it appeared in the hangar.

The one good bit of paint and closest to the actual colour.

The evening I received the keys.

Retro Rides prep.

Made it there and back with no drama.

Enjoying Festival of the Unexceptional.

All set for the current Barbie theme.

[WillCarter]

Made it onto the official FOTU report.

[Datsuncog]

Blimey, what a great save!

Nice little cars; once so common but a rare sight now. Very, very Autoshite.

I drove a boggo spec one for a while in Australia, where it was badged as the Excel Spirit - revvy enough and quite eager.

The last one of these I remember seeing on the road was this facelifted saloon outside Dublin, a few years back - not entirely pristine, it has to be said...

But they just keep on going.

Legendary.

[320touring]

Good save!

 

Inspiration

 

 

 

[carlo]

I think you would have won thread title of the year, were there such a thing (or is there?  I don't know).

Although with 156 odd examples of "I haz boughted a new Ford", there may have not been much competition.

 

 

[TheOtherStu]

2 hours ago, carlo said:

I think you would have won thread title of the year, were there such a thing (or is there?  I don't know).

Although with 156 odd examples of "I haz boughted a new Ford", there may have not been much competition.

 

 

In fairness, whilst this is amazing shite and would love to see it at FOTU, that beige Toyota Crown is absolutely glorious and is my favourite thread in a while.

[wuvvum]

4 hours ago, TheOtherStu said:

In fairness, whilst this is amazing shite and would love to see it at FOTU, that beige Toyota Crown is absolutely glorious and is my favourite thread in a while.

I think Carlo was referring to the wittiness of the thread title rather than the quality of the purchase.