The Isuzu Gemini was never a car destined for great things. At best it was a shockingly bad imitation of the Ford Escort Mark I-II (which was hardly a fantastic car unto itself) sometimes badged under the guise of GM-Holden to cater for Australia’s retirees, while also being appended with a variety of daft names for Asian markets, including the “Daewoo Maepsy-Na” and “Daewoo Bird” among others. At worst it was a blocky, depressing upscale of the Holden Barina painted in either a faded Damask pink or a flat-looking green, sometimes even featuring grey two-tone like a 1980s Russell Hobbs percolator. Like any modern car (and by that we mean a modern car in the 1980s), there was acceptable power, driveability and reliability, but unacceptability started to creep in with the first hint of soul-destroying, 1980s small-car-features such as dire build quality, wayward steering and an engine note like a cement mixer. Keeping in-line with the concrete-theme was the de rigueur 1980s small car gear-change that made the shifter feel like it was mounted in a bucket of Easicrete and a clutch pedal that only responded to wildly stamping on it, not to mention a miniscule four-cylinder donk that made highway driving an exercise in crushing the accelerator into the floor and altering speed with the marginal manual transmission.
While the Holden version of the 1980s Gemini not only came with the abovementioned Russell Hobbs percolator get-up, it carried over the theme with exterior and interior materials of comparable quality to an Amway automatic coffee machine (that is to say, abominable) including rear window louvers that resembled a dish rack and a short, stubby boot, blocky front and rakish roof line which left one expecting to see a power cord dangling from the back and a giant cap on the roof for pouring in ground, decaffeinated blend. (Almost unbelievably, the 1980s Gemini was originally penned by famed Italian car designer, Giorgetto Giugiaro – the man responsible for one of the most beautiful Japanese cars ever, the 117 Coupe – but with some unwanted help with the design from GM.) Nonetheless, the worst was yet to come with the Japan-only “Coupe” version of the Isuzu Gemini – a car allegedly influenced by the Lotus Elan. What Isuzu’s design team clearly forgot however was that taking inspiration from a 1970s, British sports car doesn’t mean you should make a sports car of 1970s, British quality.
There are a lot of cars that have aged very badly (some of which are commented on in this very blog), but few can be so easily placed at a particular point in time like the Isuzu Gemini Coupe (also, oddly called the Isuzu PA-Nero for no apparent reason). Apart from being a front-engine, front-wheel drive coupe doing a poor impression of a shrunken 1980s Ferrari 308, with a compartment in the back that appeared to house a motor, or possibly a convertible roof (it housed neither), the Coupe, like the Nissan EXA (trust us, Google it), is one of those amazing cars (most of which originated in the 1980s) that appears to have been designed by two completely different people at two completely different points in time. Not only that, but it appears that the person who designed the front plagiarised their work from the Toyota Sera (a curious spin-off of the dull-as-ditchwater Starlet, which featured scissor doors), while the man or woman behind, so to speak, the rear of the car apparently decided to shrink the rear-end of an early 1990s Chevrolet Camaro using computer aided design, which, if the butcher-job that resulted was anything to go by, was assumedly a design system running on a Commodore 64 8-bit PC.
In the US, the Gemini Coupe was introduced as a part-successor to the Isuzu Impulse (otherwise known as the Isuzu/Holden Piazza – another Izuzu design courtesy of Mr Giugiaro). While the Piazza has come under fire for being a seriously bad car, the Gemini Coupe (also called the Impulse in the US) is in our view the true blot on Isuzu’s corporate history. Although the semi-concealed headlights and other parts of the nose of the second generation Impulse (most of which were borrowed from the Piazza) helped soften some of the mashed-up, shrunken Ferrari 308/Nissan EXA/Chevy Camaro styling of the Gemini Coupe, in the end the design couldn’t be saved, especially given the arched bootlid featured on every incarnation of the Gemini Coupe.
Worse was yet to come to the shores of the US however when GM introduced the Gemini Coupe under yet another guise, this time in the form of the Geo Storm. The design directive for the Storm, according to GM, was for a budget car with the look and feel of a sports car. Unfortunately, the request sent to Japan was clearly lost in translation, the resulting bucket of bolts that emerged mysteriously lacking any sports car element while featuring far too much of the look and feel of a budget car (that is to say, the entire car). Although certainly better looking than the Gemini Coupe with its giant, googly headlamps, the Storm was nowhere near as good looking as the Isuzu Impulse, despite also featuring semi-enclosed headlamps. The restyling of the Gemini Coupe to create the Storm seemed to take far too much inspiration from the Lotus Elan itself, featuring knife-edge-styling much like Colin Chapman’s classic sportster.
The choice of engines and transmission set-ups on the Gemini Coupe/PA-Nero/Impulse/Geo Storm was typical of any other early-1990s Japanese compact car…namely, uninspiring. The mediocre performance served as a clear reminder that this was not a sports car and, if you thought it was one, you’d been duped into driving a Ferrari Camaro EXA.
Cars That Suck 