This red beauty if a Buick Excelle HRV Sport, seen in central Beijing in 2019. The Buick was in a fine shape, painted in fiery red and fitted with the factory standard body kit. Yes, General Motors can be wild if they really want to.
Factory image, with a flame decal on the rear door. Never seen one like that on the road.
The Buick Excelle HRV Sport was a sporty variant of the Buick Excelle HRV, which was a hatchback version of the Buick Excelle sedan, and both the sedan and the hatchback were based on the Daewoo Lacetti. In China, lots of Daewoo’s were turned into Buicks this way, and produced by the Shanghai-GM joint venture.
The The Buick Excelle HRV Sport debuted in 2007. It had an impressive body kit all around, sporty 15 inch multi spoke alloys, darkened windows, a spoiler atop the rear window, a very big wing on the rear deck, and a shiny exhaust pipe tip.
The ‘V’ dropped off the badge.
Sadly, it was all looks. The engine was unchanged compared to the standard HRV; a lazy 1.6 with 106 hp and 142 Nm, mated to a 4-speed automatic. The standard car was also available with a 5-speed manual, but the Sport was not. If anything, the Sport was probably slower than the standard car, as it had to carry all that extra body work around. The Sport was only available with the automatic, and it was priced at 113.800 yuan in 2007.
The interior was a big mess but in a fine general shape. The HRV Sport got some extra stuff here too: a leather steering wheel, a leather gear lever knob, half-leather seats, and faux-metal trim on the doors. Sadly, the owner of this cars has chosen to cover the seats and the steering wheel with after-market covers. Happily, I found a factory photo:
The text on the seats is ‘Ultra’.
The word ‘Ultra’ was also in the flame decal, see on the right. Strangely, ‘Ultra’ was no part of the name of the car, not in Chinese and not in English. And, like I said earlier, I never saw an HRV Sport with these decals on the road. When new, it looked like this. At the time, Chinese media said the Ultra-stuff was added to “emphasize the sportiness” of the HRV-Sport.
The rear bench was covered with a new cover too. White bear needs a wash.
The Buick Excelle HRV Sport was made for two model years so they are pretty rare nowadays.
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