Daewoo?

Looking for cars for Ratghia to take to college and stumbled onto a 2001 Daewoo Lanos with 25,000 miles on it. He needs a good reliable appliance to get him back and forth from school (a five hour drive) and around on campus

Anyone have any experience with these?

I have no experience with Daewoo cars, but I don't mind mentioning that Daewoo forklifts are positively awful. I do, however have a Daewoo TV that's not to bad. YMMV.

25K miles? Sounds like the odometer has been rolled back.

Anyway, a Lanos is a solid little car, but finding parts is just about impossible unless you know enough Korean to order from overseas. Unless you were inheriting the car, I'd say keep looking.

being that they lasted all of 3 or 4 years in the US i'd pass... as mentioned parts avl...

I also would pass...

dp

Not a bad little car at all. Certainly much better than a similar vintage Cavalier. They share a lot of parts with the later Aveos/Suzukis/Euro GMs. If you need help getting parts, I do speak Korean. Almost the entire drivetrain is shared with the Nubira and Leganza (excluding the 2.2 liter Leganzas). The ECUs swap directly car to car.

They also have some pretty favorable suspension geometry if you are of the autocrossing mindset. It goes almost without saying that you score highly on the sleeper scale.

Bad news is that they get pretty crappy gas mileage for such small cars. 30 tops on the highway. My identically engined, 150 lb heavier Nubira has never topped 28. The interior quality is not great either, but no worse than other GMs of the era. My Nubira has had a lot of ticky tacky electrical things with minor interior gadgets as well.

My mom has a Daewoo Legume? The bigger sedan. It is fairly reliable, but the interior has fallen apart from the sun. The pleather has come unglued from most of the dash which casued all the defroster vents to fall into the ducting. Parts are also imposible to get. it seems to need something replaced every few months and each time our mechanic has to call a place in Jersey and wait a couple weeks for it to arrive, usually hidden inside a package of instant kim chi, with shipping costs exceeding the price of the part. She got the car for free from her boss when no one would accept it as a trade in a few years ago and we have since learned that a free Daewoo may be almost as expensive to own as a free Lotus.

I would vote for a camry or corolla of a little bit older vintage for a commuter instead of anything korean that old with suspicious mileage.
or mazda protege.
If you want to make the trip to raleigh nc my friend is selling his 03.5 mazdaspeed protege with a slightly larger side mount intercooler, hks (i believe) bov, and hks exhaust for $4k
it's got a salvage title but it was repaired and drives amazingly well, it used to be silver but they painted it black and did a pretty good job. He just doesn't really fit well in such a small car. lol