Slammers Car Reviews

Here at Slammers inc. we do our best to bring you the finest standard in car reviews, providing you with the information to make an educated decision on your next purchase.
Car reviews will be posted regularly to this section of our company's website, and we do take suggestions, so if you would like to send us your own cars for a review, please do.
Reviews will be published in this post for you to read, and sorted by chronological order.

Ibishu Covet Review (1987)

Spoiler

With the increase in oil prices and the decrease of the mighty dollar's value, most car enthusiasts are forced to wave goodbye to their gas guzzling sports cars and low MPGs. As such, compact economy cars have seen a recent surge in popularity, as auto makers rush to build simple, light-weight, efficient vehicles, and consumers rush to buy them.

The well established japanese automaker Ibishu is no exception to this global phenomenon. Indeed, the necessity to produce an efficient, compact and practical vehicle for the masses has once again brought out the best of the Ibishu engineers, and we're here to see if the new Covet is all that it's cracked up to be.
Now, Ibishu has taken a very interesting approach to their new Covet. Instead of building a single basic model with optional extras, they've gone and made four different trim levels of this car, which vary wildly in price, comfort and sportiness.

Our first variant is the DX, a stripped down base model with nothing but the essencials. This one comes with a 1.5L single overhead cam straight four, with a carburettor and a four speed manual, mounted transversely in front of the front axle.

According to Ibishu, this is the very cheapest version of the Covet you can get, and is targeted at young buyers who need nothing but a simple car for puttering around town. All expenses were spared with this ultra-cheap rattle-box. In fact, they didn't even bother to add hubcaps.
While testing this car on the road, we found the engine to be quite anemic, lacking both in torque and power. Even at full throttle this car barely gets up to highway speeds, which we found quite frustrating, not to mention the tall geared four-speed gearbox heavily impairs the performance of this car. Speaking of which, the transmission itself felt quite notchy and uncertain, we could never quite tell if we were in fourth or second gear, had it not been for the engine noise.
Another thing to note is the interior: our test car suffered from plenty of rattles and squeaks in the dashboard and trim pieces, and the seat belt mounting broke during our test drive.
The roadholding was unsurprisingly average, and the handling is quite tail-happy, which is strange considering that this car is front engined, front wheel drive. That being said, the ride quality and overall comfort are surprisingly good, as the seats found in this variant are the only ones Ibishu made for the covet.
Fuel consumption wasn't amazing either, but considering that this base model costs only $3000 brand new, we'll let it slide.

Up next, we tested the DXi and the LXi, which came with a fuel injected version of the 1.5L 4 cylinder found in the DX, and a five speed manual.

Not much can be said for the DXi that hasn't been said for the DX, apart from the fact that it comes with a slightly more peppy fuel-injected engine and a much improved five speed manual transmission, with the option of a four-speed automatic.
The fuel injected unit delivers around 90 horsepower, which is plenty considering that this car weighs just under 900 kilograms. Coupled with the five speed transmission, driving this car was in fact quite easy and intuitive. The gearbox was easy to use, and showed no signs of the same poor design that the four-speed suffered from. Because of the fuel injection system, the fuel economy was much improved aswell.
Our only complaint is the four-speed automatic, as it shifts quite late and seems to rob quite a bit of power from the engine, taking away from the economy value of the car.
But hey, at least they bothered to throw in a set of plastic hubcaps with this one. For those seeking a no-frills economy car on the cheap, we highly recommend the DXi over the DX, as the $800 price difference is more than justified.

The LXi however, is a whole different story. Despite using the same engine and transmission options as the DXi, it felt like a whole new car.

While the DXi improved upon the DX's running gear, the LXi works in a whole different department. The suspension for this model has been tuned for maximum comfort, while retaining easy and predictable handling. We found in our testing that the ride quality in this version was much improved over the DX and DXi versions. The power-steering had a perfect ammount of weight to it, and a very direct road feel, making the driving experience quite fun.
Another major improvement was the appearance; the LXi offers color-coded bumpers and modern hubcaps, giving off an appearance of luxury, and a feeling of comfort.
Despite all of these features, we found this model to be somewhat redundant. It's too fancy for a simple economy car, and it's not quite good enough to belong in the luxury car market. The pricing wasn't all that great too, at $4700. That's almost one thousand dollars more than the DXi, for an objectively very similar car.

Now, if this were any normal car company, the review would end here. There would be no further information, and all that there is to say about this car would have been more than well enough said.

However, this is Ibishu we're talking about, and they decided to crank out an extra sporty version of the Covet, that they called the ZXi. This variant of the little economy car seems to have been almost purpose-built, with a brand new dual-cam, 16 valve straight four which cranks out just over 100 eager horses.

We found this extra sporty hot hatch version quite confusing. All of the suspension and the engine were completely re-done in what appears to be quite the showoff from the japanese car maker. Nevertheless, this peppy little car was quite a blast to drive, with much improved cornering speeds, quick and responsive steering, plenty of stability, and great acceleration. That being said, the ride quality which we praised so much in the LXi version appears to be missing from this one, although that is a fair price to pay for the performance this supermini delivers.
The engine itself is very torquey and rev happy even at low speeds, and produces a wonderful sound in the medium and high rev range. This sound is enhanced by the brand new performance exhaust system that was fitted to the car to give it that extra bit of character.
The visual changes made to this car were also quite amusing. We loved the new hubcaps, which seemed somewhat reminiscent of Group B rally cars, and the rear spoiler also adds a fair ammount of aesthetic value to the already well-designed hot hatch.
Our only complaint is the pricing. At $8000, this car is competing with rear-wheel drive two seater sports cars, and for that kind of money you might aswell go and buy yourself one of those instead.

So, in summary: We loved the Covet's practicality, fuel economy, comfort and styling. However, we didn't like the slushy automatic gearbox, the poor build quality in the interior, and the pricing on some models was a bit too high.
Overall, we give this car a solid eight out of ten. A practical commuter vehicle that does its job well, without sacrificing prestige or refinement.

 

I have a request, can you do a review of my Bruckell Road Cruiser? I'll hand it over to you for the review if necessary.

Spoiler: REQUEST: 1993 Bruckell Road Cruiser [No. 69]

MY LICENSE PLATE:


Trivia:
-Only 100 models were made.
-The 100th model is on display at the Bruckell Automotive Museum.
-Mine is the 69th model.

 

I'm pretty sure the museum burned down in the roleplay thread, and most of the road cruisers got crushed

 

I'm back from my 7 day vacation. I'll do some more reviews soon

 

Most

Spoiler: The rest

The remaining road cruisers were scrapped, and melted down to make the wire parts of toilet cleaning brushes.

Back on topic though, if you make a burnside/miramar/moonhawk/barstow review, can it be from the time the vehicle was released?

 

Yes, I'm going to make these reviews as if they were from the time period of the car's initial launch.