If there was somebody in the automotive industry who knew how to spend money well, it would be Kim Woo Choong, the erstwhile chairman of the Daewoo group. It's another thing that he spent money a little too well, ending up on the wrong side of the law and leading one of South Korea's biggest chaebols to ruin. Kim's profligate ways however benefited the biggest carmaker in the universe, General Motors, when they picked up the Daewoo car business.
Today, GM-Daewoo Automotive Technologies is providing the biggest support to mothership GM with a lineup of well thought-out cars at a time when the General is going through some difficult times. One of the cars that was particularly a windfall for GM was the Daewoo Matiz – you see, GM is not exactly a specialist in making small runabouts, and with the Matiz, they ended up with a well-engineered supermini that showcased cheeky Italian lines and one which was a hit in most markets it was sold in. GM-DAT gave the Matiz a thorough facelift inside-out, replaced the three-cylinder motor with an inline-four, stuck the Chevrolet bowtie at various spots and renamed it the Spark. In this guise, the Spark is now sold in over a 100 countries, including our own. So how is new Spark? Is it a Daewoo deja vu or does it need to be seen as a fresh, all-new product? Read on.
