The Chevrolet Spark is a 5-door hatchback from Chevrolet, built from 1998 to 2022, when airbags, anti-lock brakes and Japanese build quality became the world standard. Under the bonnet: Petrol engine. Fabrizio Giugiaro at Italdesign drew it.
The story
The Chevrolet Spark (Korean: 쉐보레 스파크) is a city car manufactured by General Motors's subsidiary GM Korea from 1998 to 2022. The vehicle was developed by Daewoo and introduced in 1998 as the Daewoo Matiz (대우 마티즈). In 2002, General Motors purchased Daewoo Motors, which was marketing the vehicle with several GM marques and nameplates. The third generation was marketed globally, prominently under the Chevrolet brand in North America as the Chevrolet Spark and in Australia and New Zealand as the Holden Barina Spark. The fourth generation was launched in 2015, known as the Holden Spark in Australia and New Zealand. It also serves as the basis for the Opel Karl in Europe, Vauxhall Viva in the UK, and VinFast Fadil in Vietnam, the latter being manufactured under license.
A limited-production all-electric version, the Chevrolet Spark EV, was released in the U.S. in selected markets in California and Oregon in June 2013. The Spark EV was the first all-electric passenger car marketed by General Motors since the EV1 was discontinued in 1999, and also the first offered for retail sale by GM (the EV1 was available only on lease). In the South Korean market, the Spark complies with South Korean "light car" (Korean: 경차, romanized: Gyeongcha) regulations, which regulate overall vehicle dimensions and engine capacity with tax and parking fee benefits. Production of the Spark at the Changwon, South Korea assembly plant ended in 2022. The plant would instead produce the second-generation Trax.
What is underneath
Power comes from Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 795 -. It shifts through a 5-speed manual transmission / manual / 3-speed automatic transmission / automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2340 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Daewoo Tico; assembly was at Changwon. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Peugeot 206, the Lexus IS, the Ford Focus — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Chevrolet catalogue sit the Chevrolet Adra and the Chevrolet C-10.
What it costs now
The money question first: $4,800–$15,300 is the typical asking range today, and running it — fuel and maintenance at its age — costs about $2,490–$5,217 a year. Insurance sits around $960–$1,830 a year. The figures are class-level estimates from the federal record, with the formula on the methodology page; the model-year pages carry complaints, recalls and repair costs year by year.