1995 Daihatsu Applause Executive review from Australia and New Zealand

Air conditioning resistor malfunction at 100'000kms ($50 Dollar replacement).

My parents initially bought this car as a cheap and simple runaround. It has served this purpose extremely well with its low fuel consumption, great handling, excellent reliability and cheap maintenance costs.

Even at over one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers traveled, it will handle any form of thrashing and hard driving. I have owned many performance cars, and I am still surprised by just how robust and tough this car is.

The car feels impressively powerful and torquey due to its light weight. With the addition of a cold air feed and straight through exhaust system, it will also be faster than most cars in its class (e.g the Lancer, non vtec Civics and non SSS Pulsars).

Due to its 'lift back' configuration, boot space is simply amazing. Even with a large sedan in our garage, nothing will compare to the Daihatsu when the rear seats are folded down.

The only negative issue I find with the Daihatsu is the stock suspension set up, which is very floaty and allows the car to be 'blown around' in windy conditions when travelling at over 90km/h. This is of course easily fixed with the addition of aftermarket components such as springs, shocks and perhaps swaybars and strut braces if you want that race-car handling.

Many cars have come and go, but the Daihatsu Applause will always stay due to its reliability and convenience. Styling may obviously not be the a strong point, but again, this is not an important issue when considering a car in its range.