Faults:

The brakes were not very strong and effective when the car was acquired!

General Comments:

The seats are comfortable, and make the driving experience a pleasure.

I love hearing the sound from the running engine; it sounds so cute!

Side mirrors are large and cover a lot of the rear. This can become very helpful when your rear window is fogged and you can't see anything through it!

Fuel consumption isn't too bad.

A little lack of performance & horsepower from the 1.6L engine, not too sure about the manual, but it is true with the automatic.

Very clever design of its boot; it looks like a saloon from its exterior looks, but once you open the boot, it becomes a hatchback and gives you so much space to store your stuff.

Overall, it is a good car for me, and I would love to buy a newer Applause model.

Faults:

Nothing apart from fading red paint.

General Comments:

An incredibly solid, reliable and economical car. Nothing went wrong with it, felt extremely solid and sturdy.

Red paint was not up to Australian sun.

Apart from that, a fantastic car.

Faults:

Had the stone guard on the front right disc brake rubbing against the disc because it had been bent in. Bent it back out, now the car is perfect.

General Comments:

Surprisingly fast.

Has a nice sound when you punch it.

Has somebody body roll, but some low profile tyres and stiffer suspension can sort that out.

Air con is great.

Massive boot for the size of the car.

Very user friendly.

DIY repairs are very easy.

Faults:

I bought the car at 226,000k's and it was very good as it was owned by a lady, I had the car serviced and the mechanic didn't find anything wrong with the car.

Me being a young man, I've raced it a couple of times. I've blown the head gasket and the mechanic says it will cost 1100AUD to fix.

Other problems include:

Low idling in the early stages of driving, below 400rpm.

General Comments:

This car is very reliable despite the problems mentioned above. It's never broken down on me, it performs good, and I've hammered a few cars while racing. Even though with a blown head gasket, I cannot notice a reduction in performance, and I was still driving it up until tonight when my brother said not to.

The interior is like a dream - velour seats, immaculate all over, my paint is good.

Faults:

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

General Comments:

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 travelled, 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 gone, 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.