This is a 1999 Daewoo Leganza.

I'm still working on this page, but I'm covering the sound deadening of it right now.

These aren't pictures of my car, but one like it:

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First few pages I'm going to be dealing with sound deadening and installing equipment in certain parts of the car.

Page 2: OEM stereo system
Page 3: Rear Doors
Page 4: Front Doors
Page 5: Trunk Lid
Page 6: Headliner

A little background on the car:

This is the story of my 1999 Daewoo Leganza (or as I like to call it the “Lasagna” based on the cursive font they used for the logo on the rear deck). I originally bought this car in fall of 1998 as a brand new 1999 model. The story behind this car is a bit convoluted. In the spring of 1998 I was sitting around and heard a commercial for Daewoo, which I was familiar with because they made appliances and a number of other things (it is a large South Korean conglomerate that makes everything from armored personnel carriers to televisions and cars). Daewoo was looking for college students who might be interested in traveling to South Korea and working for the company at their local colleges once they had received a tour of their facilities. Their founder was seen as the Bill Gates or Jack Welsh of South Korea. Later he turned out to be more like the Kenneth Lay of Enron fame. He thought that for Daewoo to be considered one of the big players (like Hyundai or Kia who were already in the US market), Daewoo would have to enter the US automotive market. His idea was to use college student to advertise the car to their peers at their schools by a grass roots program. The first step of this program was to send students to South Korea to get to know Daewoo. Once we came back, we would help sell the cars and get commissions for any sales leads we generated.

After everyone had a chance to get back from their trip (they had trips over most of the summer) the original plan was to offer students a free 90-day test drive. At that point, I had beaten my previous car into submission and needed a new car, figuring 90 days would give me enough time to shop for a new used car.

Then the original plan started to go out the window. Initially, they figured that they would have a fleet of used cars that they would have to try to unload somehow. The way around that was to offer the person taking the test drive the chance to purchase the car at a 30% discount. They hadn’t figured out that getting young college aged kids insured wasn’t going to be as easy as they thought it would be (the rental car people won’t let you rent a car in many cases until you are 25, and they were trying to get people that were aged from 18 years old and up insured for 90 days). In the mean time, the natives grew restless, wondering where their free cars were. The program was based on word of mouth, and they didn’t have a product to show. They were also finding out that if you can’t sell a new Daewoo, who was going to buy a used one?

So the plans kept getting changed, the “salesmen” were getting restless and the plan was falling part. Finally word came down from the mountain (I called or visited my local dealer at least twice a week for close to 2 months) that a new plan was coming. They were going to give a 50% discount, but only for cars in “stock”. The local dealer took it to mean that the customer had no choice. The next closest dealer took it to mean that if he could call Long Beach (where the cars were being unloaded from the ships that brought them over from South Korea) and see what was coming in, he would try to get us our first choice in cars if possible. I decided I was going to drive 2 hours to try and get my car. I had decided I was going to get the Nubira Sedan (the medium sized one) in indigo blue. After about a number of weeks waiting, they called me up and told me my car was in. I made the two hour drive and then I paced around the parking lot for about 2 hours because they had sold so many cars at 50% off that they were being worked to a breaking point. For some reason I couldn’t find my car. I saw a number of black Nubiras, and then a bunch of other ones. Most said, “sold” on them. I was starting to get upset. I asked one of the people where my car was and they pointed at one of the “blue” cars that turned out to be a black/blue. Oh no. I can’t have a black car, even if it sort of looks blue. I had been pining for a 5 speed Leganza, but I kept hearing that they were about as easy to find as teeth on a chicken because they couldn’t pass emission and hadn’t been released yet. I called about 20 times asking if my car was in, and then asking if a Leganza SX with a 5 speed had come in (the only trim level with a 5 speed). I figured I would ask one last time and if not see if I could get a silver Nubira if all else failed. Lo and behold, they had just gotten a white Leganza SX 5 speed. Big car, big rear deck, lots of room for bass I thought. I was sold.

To make a long story short, I ended up getting the car for $8200 out the door, about 50% off plus taxes and registration. At that point, I was happy as a clam. While I wanted a big car for a big stereo, dreams of sugar plums and 10,000 watt systems were dancing in my head. In my mind, within weeks the car would be apart and in a month or two the car would have a big system.

I had high hopes for putting a huge system in the car, thinking thousands of watts, woofers galore, and more signal processing than the space shuttle.

Reality stepped in and I decided to go much simpler.

I had only a few requirements that I had to meet with the system:

1. Had to be quiet. So basically I was going to put a ton of sound deadener in the car so I could have a conversation with the radio off. Sound deadener would be going on most of the car.
2. No weird smells. I don’t want the car to smell like I just laid asphalt in it. I also didn’t want to try and lay deadener outside on a hot summer day holding a heat gun feeling like I was on the surface of the sun. I had already burned myself or melted stuff enough time with a heat gun to realize I wanted something that didn’t rely complete on heat to get the job done.
3. I had to keep most of the trunk. As great as a pair of 15” woofers in an 8 cubic foot box taking up the entire trunk might sound, I needed to keep almost my entire trunk. I wanted to be able to fold down the back seat as well for skiing and other related sporting activities, so a baffle across the back seat was ruled out as well. That left either a small sealed box that would attached to the fold down rear seat or an infinite baffle system firing through the rear deck where the stock 6” x 9” were.
4. The amp had to be small as well. As much as I wanted to have 14 channels, a dedicated amplifier for each channel (each amp bridged mono of course to each speaker), that got in the way of keeping the trunk. A 4-channel amp would have to do.
5. The spare tire had to stay. Murphy’s Law says that the second you pull out the spare (even if you haven’t had a flat in 10 years), you will get a flat. Odds are that you will also find out that your AAA has run out, and your significant other will be driving the car.
6. Hopefully the car would only be disassembled once. I didn’t want to pull the car apart more than once if not necessary because from past experience I always end up breaking stuff, losing stuff, stepping on stuff or losing stuff in the garage. The more often I took something apart, the more likely I would forget how to put it back together. So I was only going to drop the headliner once, pull out the carpet once, and just go for massive overkill.