No.

best bang for your buck is toyota corolla. Having had festiva's, lasers, excels, daewoo lanos and a corolla in the family i have to say the corolla had better build quality, better performance and better resale value

Corolla would be ok, but anything before 2000 model looks like a dinosaur, and 2000 models are fetching waay too much.

Weve decided to look for a Mazda 323 Protege 97'...... beautiful little cars & cant complain about the Mazda build quality, plenty of features..... i sound like a car salesman

early hyundai accent!!!!
has the x3 1.5 twin cam which uses a porsche ecu, airbag,power windows
heaps of quality cheap bolt on body/ power mods available,can use excell parts
has mistsi engine, so has heaps of engine options fit wise
lancer,magna? evo?vr4 ?

from memory the x3 excell sprint was runout selling new for 10990 with full kit floor mats,year free insurance ,3 year bumper to bumper warranty
and a holiday
get on car sales ,ebay whatever today over ten years down the track and they still advertise mid km models for 4+grand
what better resale could you want then that!

Just to follow up on this thread, we ended up with a Mazda 323 Protege late '99 model..... paid only $5600 (market value up to $8000)

1.6L DOHC engine
Driver's airbag
6 stack CD player
air-con
power steering
14" alloys
chrome door handles & T-bar button lol
wind up windows
Plenty boot space.... fits 5 x 16" rims
smooth ride, can launch over speed bumps dont feel a thing

I have a 94 Excel and can tell you it is a rocket.
Bought it in Newcastle and it belonged to a member of the Newcastle Lap Cars Club.
It is lowered, chipped, exhausted and kitted.
The car has almost 320000 k's on it now and I have put almost 150 of that on it in 4 years.
The only problems they have are the typical CV joint problem associated with front wheel drives, and they can also have a problem with Temperature sender unit that causes the car to not want to start due to the ECU telling the ECU that the temperature is hot when it isn't and that makes the choke come on when you don't need it.
Easy fix....change it.
If you keep regular sevicing up and do an annual wheel allignment the car will go for ever.
It is also a good idea to use premium grade fuel as that stops a fair bit of carboning up of the plugs...beter explosion less carbon. But that goes for any motor vehicle.
I get about 70 k's more per tank and give a bit of a shock to the commodores at the lights using vortex. teehee

Ok Below is really dangerous. Most OHC Engines with timing belts in fact *are NOT* free reving engines, and the excel is one of them. I took one out (timing belt failure) 2 years ago, belt was at 120000km and booked for replacement a week later.

Instead, cost $1500 to have a mechanic fixed (in sydney, didnt have my tools). That included a ReCo Head as valves etc were bent. I knew it from the interesting noise it made as well.

Some of the earlier engines were free runners (camira is one that comes to mind), but most recent and/or Higher compression engines are in fact interference design. Dont even start to assume no damage will be done. A belt doesnt take much to change, and isnt very expensive

Nigel