Aug 11, 2003 – Italdesign was responsible for the design of the Daewoo Matiz, Kalos and Evanda. Actually, Giugiaro was the first Italian to design cars for the Koreans, when he gave the emerging Hyundai the succesfull Pony in the early seventies.

At Frankfurt Daewoo will launch a new car developed together with Italdesign-Giugiaro, and large amounts of General Motor's global engineering facilities. This is the first really international result of the 2002 GM-Daewoo deal. The new Golf-size car is called Lacetti, built on the new Nubira chassis (the Nubira is a Pininfarina design that made its debut at Geneva in March). It does not replace any model in the Daewoo line-up, but will certainly emerge as a very important model in Daewoo’s re-defined future. Sales in Europe will commence in March, but since the name was registered in USA as long ago as September 2001 we can presume that it will appear there too.

We could call it a mainstream design, with pronounced wedge shape, the fashionable shoulders, the short overhang and the marked wheel arches. A long wheelbase (2600 mm) gives the suddenly very important wheel-in-the-corners feeling. External measurements are 4295 x 1725 x 1445 mm. A five door version is the only one we are told about now, but variants should be possible. Necessary, perhaps, if it is really going to compete in the crowded C-segment.

We can suppose that the new almond shaped grille will replace the current waterfall decoration on coming, and face-lifted Daewoos. At least I hope we can.