Welcome back to Holy Grails, the Autopian series where you tell us some of the coolest, most underrated cars that you love. Our inbox continues to fill with epic car history, and honestly it’s hard to choose just one to write about. After years of writing about our holy grails, it’s awesome to see yours! This time, our grail is a car that you’ve certainly seen at dealerships and on the road, then probably immediately forgot. But this car is actually one of the automaker’s most important, and GM still did some weird things with it. This is a car where the eco-friendly version was actually the fastest, and was the first GM passenger car to feature a diesel engine in decades.
Last week, reader James got us all hot and bothered with the closest thing to a legitimate BMW M7. BMW South Africa took the already fast BMW 745i and made it even faster by shoving in the engine from an M5. And the reason was just as silly as the swap. The turbo of the regular 745i took up the space needed for the steering shaft in the right-hand-drive version.
This suggestion comes from reader David R, and it sent me down memory lane. I’ve long had a tradition of going to the Chicago Auto Show. It started when I was a teenager in 2009. I would go to the show with my friends and we’d watch the automaker presentations and sit inside of our dream cars. When we went in 2010, Chevrolet had a big reveal at its display. The car on Chevy’s turntable was the new Cruze.
Released in late 2009, but making an appearance at Chicago’s February 2010 show, I still remember what the display’s host told the crowd. The Cruze was the replacement for the Cobalt, and its design and development involved a global team of people.
General Motors’ Bet On The Future
The Cruze came to America at the right point in time. The Great Recession made fuel inefficient vehicles a bit too expensive for Americans to drive and unfortunate sacrifices for the Car Allowance Rebate System. General Motors itself took a beating, ending a run of losses in the aughts by filing for bankruptcy in 2009.
Thankfully, GM’s financial crisis didn’t derail what some publications have called the company’s most important car in its history. I know that you’re scratching your head, so I’ll let Edmunds explain:
Known internally as project J300, the Cruze is the very first GM car to be planned from its green light back in late 2006 as a totally global model. It’s taken GM awhile to set up something as brilliantly cost-effective as this car, but it’s finally here and there is now no looking back. Here’s hoping it’s not too little, too late.
Engineering for the J300 project has been headquartered in Germany at GM Europe’s headquarters in Rüsselsheim, Germany. All design work has been led by the international team in Incheon, South Korea, at the former Daewoo facility, with designers Dave Lyon and Taewan Kim presiding (love the BMW 3 Series-style taillights also found on the recently sexed-up Citroën C5). Cruze production is cranking full steam at a plant in Bupyong, South Korea, and will soon also rev up in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Shenyang in China.
With today’s globalized perspective, all this makes the Cruze GM’s most significant car ever. Provided economies in key markets pick up in timely fashion, annual worldwide sales of the Cruze could easily top 1 million vehicles. The best year for worldwide Chevy Cobalt sales came in 2005 with 148,949 sales; the total dipped to 118,349 in 2008. The Cruze has been given the task of exceeding these numbers in the U.S. alone.
The image of the car depends on the market you’re talking about. In Southeast Asia (and perhaps in China as the Buick Cruze), it’s a family’s dream car. In Korea or Russia and Eastern Europe, it’s a solid midmarket player, a clear notch above the Korean brands or VW-based Škoda. In Europe and Australia, the Cruze is the smart, well-finished alternative with big-car room and small-car practicality. For us in North America, the Cruze needs to steal customers from the Japanese, the Koreans, and from the Ford Focus.
Edmunds wasn’t alone in calling the Cruze hugely important for GM, as Autoline Network felt similar. CNN Money said the Cruze was “perhaps [GM’s] most important car in decades.” Forbes alleged that even people within GM knew how important this car was to proving that GM could be successful again. Automotive legend Bob Lutz reportedly considers the Cruze one of the triumphs from his time at GM.
The Cruze was important to GM because this global car had the potential to sell tons of units all over the world, helping to put GM on solid ground once again And it did just that. Sales first started in 2008 in South Korea and by 2016, General Motors managed to sell four million of them around the world. Back then, Chevy called the Cruze its best-selling car around the world. Basically, the Cruze was the vehicle to gauge GM’s recovery.
What Makes This Cruze Good
For many people, this might be where the story of the Cruze ends. Perhaps you’ve driven one as a rental or perhaps even owned one without putting much thought about it. That’s not the case for reader David R. In one of the very first Holy Grail submissions, this reader points out that the Cruze had a couple of weird versions with the Eco and the Turbo Diesel. Despite the name, the Eco version is the fastest, and the diesel is historically significant. This reader gave us a whole list to explain:
Good day, all you crazy diamond Autopian staff! Keep shining your lights onto the wild and wacky in the automotive industry! I’m loving all your content, and happy to keep clicking! In the comments my handle is Drive By Commenter.
For a special edition, I’d like to direct your attention to the 1st generation Chevy Cruze Eco, specifically the 2011-2013 model years. What makes it special? Well, let’s start:
1. It was the most efficient gas ICE car on sale in the US at the time at 42 mpg highway.
2. It was also the fastest 0-60 in the Cruze lineup at about 7.9 seconds.
3. It weighed 200 lbs less than others. Think removed sound deadening and no spare along with some more exotic weight savings like shaved welds.
4. Forged lightweight 17″ Alcoa aluminum wheels. Everything else was cast or steel.
5. It was manual transmission only at first.
6. For 2011 and 2012 it was the only way to get GM’s very tunable 1.4T engine with a manual.
7. Ride height was slightly lower than others.
8. They had a possibly GM-first adjustable grille shutters for better aero.
9. The underside was slathered in aerodynamic trays and aids unlike the others.
10. There was one option at first: a cruise control and Bluetooth package. This eventually got added as stock for 2012 and the only option became transmission choice.
11. These machines had short gears 1-3 and overdrive gears 4-6. So romping up an on ramp without ruining a 44 mpg tank was doable.
12. If this sounds like the engineers snuck a slightly warmer performance variant past the bean counters, yeah, they did.
13. The little “Eco” badge is on the left side of the trunk lid instead of the right.
14. The front grille opening is an inch narrower than other Cruzes.They’re almost indistinguishable from a regular Cruze aside from the wheels, narrower grille opening and little “Eco” badge on the trunk. A layperson wouldn’t know the fun stuff happening under the sheetmetal.
If this isn’t special enough, research the Cruze diesel that took on the Jetta TDI. Those took the Eco shell and dropped in a 2 liter VM Motori derived (IIRC) turbodiesel with a bespoke automatic. They also got other upgrades like larger front brakes. If the Eco is a bit of a zebra, the Cruze diesel is a polka-dot rainbow unicorn. Lordstown got taken over by hypermilers for a little while in the early aughts, and those were the results.
The Holy Grail
Starting with the Cruze Eco, I looked into this list and incredibly, it’s pretty accurate. A brochure for the 2012 Cruze opens with “THIS IS the compact car that is taking a stance. Poised, confident and ready to take on the world. Choose Eco for the best highway mileage of any gas engine in America. Surprisingly roomy. Perfectly appointed. It’s time to take one out for a spin and CRUZE.”
Initially, the Cruze came with two engine choices. For $16,525, you could get a Cruze LS, which came with a 1.8-liter Ecotec four making 138 HP and 125 lb-ft torque. Throw in a little more money at $18,425, and you could get a Cruze 1LT, which sports a 1.4-liter Ecotec turbo four making 138 HP and 148 lb-ft torque. For the LT, 1LT, 2LT, RS, and LTZ, the turbocharged engine means an acceleration from 0 mph to 60 mph in about 9 seconds. The 1.4-liter four combined with a six-speed manual meant up to 38 mpg.
But there’s one more version of the first-generation Cruze that was available in 2011 to 3013, and it’s the Cruze Eco. This version of the Cruze was targeted towards the car buyer wanting to squeeze every mile-per-gallon out of their car. The Cruze Eco scores up to an estimated 42 mpg on the highway, better than anything else that wasn’t a hybrid. And how did GM do it? In part by putting the Cruze on an aggressive diet.
As Motor Trend notes, GM ditched the spare tire, ripped out some sound deadening, and even made the fuel tank 3 gallons smaller. That’s not enough weight gone, so GM dug deeper to shave more off. Motor Trend continues:
Up front, the anti-roll bar links joining the bar to the shock body are made of plastic, with orderly chunks hewn out to liberate a couple ounces (fear not, the mounting points are still metal). The Eco manual is also missing the Watt’s linkage affixed to the torsion-bar rear suspension on other Cruze models, all in the name of saving fuel.
The wheels of a Cruze Eco are also different, eschewing the steelies of the LS and the cast alloy of the other trims for 17-inch forged aluminum wheels.
The weight loss was dramatic, with GM finding 179 pounds to remove, with the Cruze coming in at 3,029 pounds. And Chevy still wasn’t done, as it lowered the Cruze Eco and added active shutters to its grille. According to GM Authority, the Cruze Eco was the first GM vehicle to get active grille shutters, and the technology later spread across GM’s lineup. And indeed, just as our reader says, the Eco’s six-speed manual got a wider overall gear ratio spread than the other Cruze trims.
And sure enough, period tests reveal that the Eco is the fastest Cruze that Americans got. While non-Eco models hit 60 mph in as fast as about 9 seconds, Motor Trend found the Eco able to do the job in 8.1 seconds. The publication cited a short first gear in helping the car get there. Not bad performance for the price of $18,425.
This also made it faster than standard versions of the era’s Honda Civic, which had similar power numbers, but took about 9 seconds to hit 60 mph and got a little worse fuel economy.
GM’s First Diesel Car In 28 Years
And we’re not done yet. Starting with the 2014 model year for $25,695, the Cruze became available with a 2.0-liter LUZ turbodiesel making 151 HP and 264 lb-ft torque. This powertrain comes from an engine family developed jointly between General Motors and Fiat.
With this diesel engine, the Chevy didn’t just destroy the Honda Civic and Ford Focus competition with fuel economy, but it even then took on the king of diesel cars in America: Volkswagen. A Volkswagen Jetta TDI scored up to 42 mpg in 2014. But the Cruze? It scored 46 mpg highway in its testing. And as our reader says, the Cruze Turbo Diesel did it with help from an automatic transmission not found on other Cruze versions.
All of that is cool enough, but the Cruze Turbo Diesel also comes with another factoid: This was General Motors’ first diesel car in America since 1986. Back in the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s, General Motors experimented with cramming diesel engines into passenger cars. As Diesel World magazine writes, these engines were allegedly rushed into production and had corners cut, sometimes leading to serious reliability issues. GM ironed those issues out, just in time for buyers to get turned off from diesel. GM then killed off its diesel cars for 28 years.
Amazingly, the Cruze diesel survived the Dieselgate era, and continued to be sold until the Cruze itself was discontinued in America in 2019. The second-generation Cruze’s diesel was a 1.6-liter turbo four making 137 horsepower and 240 lb-ft torque. And it continued to beat Volkswagen at its own game, getting an estimated 48 mpg on the highway.
Ultimately, the Cruze was a wildly successful car for General Motors, and it came at just the right time as people wanted efficient transportation. Like the Mercury Tracer LTS that kicked off this series, the Cruze doesn’t look like much on the outside. Heck, I’ve seen people run Chevy Cruzes on Gambler 500 rallies, so they’re already throwaway cars for some. But if you look under the skin, GM was doing some cool things with the Cruze. And as gas prices continue to be high, it might be worth considering a Cruze Eco as your next commuter.
Do you know of a ‘holy grail’ of a car out there? If so, we want to read about it! Send us an email at tips@theautopian.com and give us a pitch for why you think your favorite car is a ‘holy grail.’
(Photo credits to General Motors.)
I had it’s tiny sibling, a 2012 1.4t MT Sonic LT. With some better tires, a cold air intake, a ported intake manifold, and a Trifecta Tune it bumping it up to 22lbs of boost it would rip. Kept up with my Subaru buddies, and still scored solid mid 40 MPGs on my 500-miles a week commute.
Sold it in 2016, and still kinda regret it.
I always liked that car, it seemed like a really fun subcompact, kind of a sleeper. Sadly I never even got to ride in one, let alone drive one.
The 1.8 base version was not good. My better half had one for a month during the Takata airbag recall debacle when Honda sent a letter saying don’t drive your 2nd gen Fit. The base Sonic was just inferior in every way possible. We were glad to get the Fit back!
Darn the lack of an edit feature!
Anywho, the 1.4T version could be pretty well modded to be a warm hatch. That generation of 1.4T tops out at about 160-165 hp and about 200 ft/lbs on stock components after a safe tune. The turbo ran out of huff and the injectors couldn’t flow any more gas. But handling, that’s where both the Cruze and Sonic could see a good difference. Tires and brakes especially. A set of stickier tires really let the chassis shine while the so-called Encore big brake mod let larger rotors and pads be run on the stock front calipers.
What a fun trip down memory lane this has been!
I always thought GM used a VW diesel for some reason….
Now I wonder why in all that is late 70’s/early 80’s Chrysler engineering “what-ifs” didn’t FCA ever even think of trying to give us diesel Jeep Cherokee’s or Compass/Patriots.
Or a diesel Promaster City.
Hell, maybe even the first diesel Dodge since 2008 as a Dart?!
What a new “what-if” in the never-ending hellscape that is Chrysler lmao
Jeep did offer the 1st gen Liberty with a 2.8 CRD, but it got the ax because of new US regulations in the late aughts (also not a great motor – reliability wise). The issue most manufacturers of diesel engines found was that the US regulations made it way more difficult to comply with and made development cost prohibitive…. particularly since the USDM has a finite amount of interest in diesel cars and would sell dozens compared to hundreds of gas powerplants. Those tough regulations is pretty much why VW cheated (they owned the market here, didn’t want to spend more development Dollars) and why Mazda couldn’t figure out how to make their diesel engine meet emissions as VW was apparently doing it… They finally got it to work in 2018 but Dieselgate was the nail in the coffin for our market. All of this is why GM putting a diesel in the Cruze was shocking as they were going straight for VWs TDI throat…they knew that it’s uphill to try and take from Corolla/Civic market, but Americans would likely skip VW for Chevrolet if they did it correctly.
Bought a 2012 1.4T new for long commuting duties. Was a good little car, comfortable, acceptable performance and got stellar fuel economy. Probably should have held onto it for a commuter but I sold it after a few years because I got bored with it…
Very well written article! My wife bought our 2014 Cruze Diesel brand new, and we still have it today – just over 130k miles now.
The emissions systems can be very finicky (because, you know, they actually do something, unlike VW), and the Aisin transmissions they use are incredibly clunky, but aside from that, they’re a hell of a package. The surge of torque they have is a blast – especially since ours has a Trifecta tune, it has even more than the 280 lb-ft (which is what it made on overboost) it came with (ours dyno’d at something like 250 or 260 lb-ft *at the wheels* without the tune).
It’s comfortable, handles quite compliantly with the factory watts link out back (I also have a rear chassis bar installed, but not a swaybar since I want to keep it pretty neutral-handling for my wife), and gets a bazillion mpg the second you put it on a freeway for long stretches.
I’d post a picture but, ya know…can’t quite do that.
I find it quite amusing that you dyno’ed a Cruze Diesel. Amusing in a positive, “way to go!” sense.
I was already there dynoing my Supercharged Cobalt and my ’81 Z28, and it wasn’t too far from home so I figured see what that put down too (and see if it made power power and/or torque than the 305 in the Camaro – it made slightly less HP, but a good amount more torque). Will be curious what it does with the tune.
i shudder at work when a trade customer says they have a cruze in their workshop, they were a nice car but poorly engineered.
2011 1LT Cruze owner with 180k i put on the car myself. Aside from the valve cover going every 30-50k the car is bulletproof. Being that the vc is ~$50 and its ~10 bolts to swap I cant even be angry at this weak point. There is a simple mod to never have this issue again, I did around 120k and it was so worth it. With the mod i see no reason why this car wont last me another 11 years.
Ah, the first Generation Cruze. After extensive therapy, I can now read or hear the word “Cruze” without it eliciting a flight/fight response.
I had a 2013 Holden Cruze SRi-V from new. It was a hatch, with I think was a unique body style to Australia and had the Hungarian built 1.6L turbo. It was assembled in Adelaide, where I live. At the time it was well priced, very well equipped compared to its peers, looked sharp, handled well and I felt I should actually put my money where my mouth was and buy Australian, what with Holden looking moribund at the time.
On the drive home from the dealership, the 6 speed manual was difficult to get into 2nd and 3rd gears on a downshift. The dealer tried to gaslight me, telling me it was normal and the gearbox needed to “wear in”. I told him I had driven way older, shittier manual cars before and they had better feeling transmissions than this one. Eventually after months of fighting, they replaced the transmission under warranty.
The “MyLink” infotainment system was the next component to be replaced under warranty. It didn’t improve daily software freezes. This was one of the earlier implementations of a touchscreen in a mass market car and it showed.
The coolant bottle ruptured soon afterwards, stranding me on my way to work.
The car developed a propensity to destroy coil packs. They would mysteriously fail every 10-20,000km.
It drank premium fuel and wasn’t that economical. It would return 8.9L/100km on the highway, which can sometimes be matched by my 2.5 tonne, diesel 4WD. The CEL would frequently come on, the explanation was always “poor quality fuel” despite me trying many different sources for the 98 RON it craved.
The clutch blew at 250,000km (not really that strange). 6 months after this was changed at a cost of $3500, the AC compressor decided to shit itself. A cracked oil pan was also noted at this time. The price of the compressor alone was $1500. At this point it was winter so I traded the car in without mentioning the AC didn’t work.
Poor Holden. Build quality was never their strong suit.
8.9 l/100 km highway is pretty bad for a small car. My DD WRX averages 8.2 l/100 km for my commute, which is mostly rural roads. On the highway it will do 7.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t remember there was a 2nd generation Cruze.
I had a 2014 with the 1.4l for a while. It was comfortable, even on long stretches, got decent mileage, and I think it still looks very good in an under-stated appropriate for an economy compact car sort of way. Compared to contemporary compact cars it felt a lot more solid, think door slam test, highway cruising stability. At the time I did consider another car that is even further under the radar – the Buick Verano. This was based on the Cruze, but was available with a 2.0l that made 250hp.
I bought a Cruze LT1 new in 2013. I intended it to be an interim car as I gave a car away to my son after he went through college. I will tell you that it was one of the most fun cars I owned since the Z-28 I owned when I turned 18 many years ago. It took curves like it was on rails, and I never heard a tire chirp at any time. The 1.4 turbo had boost early and was well suited with the 6-speed automatic. The transmission lever let me shift when I wanted, and it stayed there. I could start from a stop in first, second, and even third gear for some reason (I only did it a couple of times because I could.) When passing at high speed I could take it down to 5th and it would easily gain enough speed to pass on a two-lane highway. Speaking of which, when I downshifted, the engine would rev-match – something I never would have expected with a car like this. Unfortunately, I gave the car to my daughter when she got out of college, and I bought a 2017 Cruze. I thought it would be better. It’s not.
In India, this car bombed. It simply was not glamorous enough to be aspirational and reliable enough to spend money on.
Coupled with horrendous service in India, the car never raised its head above water and died an early death.
I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I’d love to hear more about the car culture in India. You should reach out to David or Jason and see if they’d write an article about that!
Interesting, I knew about the Cruze diesel and Eco, but never considered them special. When I was shopping for my first post-college car, I was absolutely enamored with the turbocharged Cobalt SS (wound up buying an old shitbox pickup but that’s another story). GM’s decision not to use the LNF motor in the Cruze was really disappointing, and I wrote off all Cruzes after that. Perhaps I judged them a bit too harshly.
For my Holy Grail suggestion, let me direct you to the ‘85-‘87 Ford Ranger diesel. Powered (strangely, given Ford’s relationship to Mazda) by a Mitsubishi 4d55 turbo diesel, it marks the one and only time an American truck manufacturer put a turbo diesel in a compact pickup, at least until recently. As I understand it, they were only rated at about 90hp from the factory, but they could rather easily put out close to 200 with some simple mods. The 4d55 was rarely seen in the US but was pretty common in Australia and most of the Asian continent, where it stayed in production until the ‘00s.
1st gen Rangers in general have a reputation for being long-lived trucks, and the diesel was no different. I met a guy last year with an ‘87 diesel that had 347k miles on it. He daily’ed it, and routinely got around 32mpg in it. If only America was so anti-diesel…
S-10 had a Isuzu diesel available. Rare, but they did sell them.
So rip some stuff out and charge more? Looks like a page out of the Porsche playbook.
Great read! Have to say, the short lived 2017-2018 manual diesel hatchback Cruze is my true holy grail of GM ecoboxes.
This x1000
I’m surprised it wasn’t mentioned
I always liked the 1st gen Cruze, as mentioned in other comments it had mature styling, and seemed like such a big step up from the crapbox 90’s and 2000’s GMs that came before it. Really looked like a practical european everyday car. The 2nd gen ended up looking very generic, but the Cruze definitely improved my perception of GM as a brand.
Finally, the first gen Cruze gets some love! THE most competitive small car GM ever made. Especially the with lightyears ahead of the competition 1.4T.
Admittedly mine has the Cobalt carryover 1.8NA, which has the same lack of horses the 1.4T suffered from, but without any torque at all. Mine is the heaviest and slowest version you could get (heavy base 1.8, auto, steel wheels) and it’s STILL way more fun to drive than it has any right to be. It was the driver’s choice for tweener compact-ish sedans. And it was way ahead of the curve on quality of design and materials for its interior. It turns out Daewoo did manage to make a good car after all.
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/54070/cruze-ing-around
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/52414/clean-cruze
I posted some photos of my beautiful Autumn Metallic 2012 over on Oppo a while back.
My friend had a MT Cruze. It had weird ergos and you couldn’t shift without your elbow running into the arm rest unless you lifted your arm up at an angle. Also 1st gear was mega tall and difficult to drive. Also the dealer financing made him mail in checks with no way to pay online. This was in the USA at a multi-line GM dealership where he bought it new.
I was not surprised when they discontinued them.
Huh. Never had that issue. But this car has great ergonomics for me. YMMV…..
Maybe different trim level with different seats
I remember being extremely impressed with the gen.1 Cruze when it was new. Despite being very fuel-efficient, as you point out, it felt as solid as a midsize car and had mature styling when everything else seemed tadpole-shaped and juvenile. That the Cruze came right as the two perennial benchmarks of the segment (the Jetta and Civic) had been cost-cut to high hell…made it that much more interesting.
The Cruze was also one of the vehicles to debut GM’s new Global A electrical architecture, which felt a lot cleaner and high-tech than what it replaced. It debuted with the 2010 introductions (Equinox, Terrain, LaCrosse, Camaro, 9-5), but the Cruze came out right on the heels of those for the 2011 model year.
Anyway, I always requested the Cruze whenever I would rent cars, and usually ended up with a 2LT or LTZ spec, which felt like a lot of car for the money. I would have bought a Cruze circa 2014, had not the Chevrolet dealerships treated me like trash. When I was in the market for an efficient commuter once again, in early 2018, I wound up buying a lightly used 2016 Cruze Premier RS, which was the gen.2. Unfortunately, that car had none of the solidity of the gen. 1, and felt super cost-cut.
A shoutout to the gen.1 Cruze’s “grown-up” Delta II cousins, the Buick Verano (sedan) and Cascada (convertible), which had more powerful engines and more sound deadening. In reality, they were a rebadged Opel Astra J sedan and Opel Cascada, respectively, but they were good cars.
Cost cutting? My 2013 Cruze had a leather wrapped steering wheel. The 2017 Cruze I bought was straight out of a plastics mold – complete where the resin flowed into the seams and were not removed.
I’ve seen better steering wheels on arcade games.
Wow, Mercedes, thank you for featuring my submission for a Holy Grail!
Full disclosure: I researched this car like crazy before buying one, a 2012 in fall 2011. Of course I got the Eco. At the time I was putting on 25k miles a year for work and needed a fuel efficient car that wasn’t a snoozefest to drive. I was also a moderator on a Cruze forum and helped come up with some early livability mods to the headlights and getting a better transmission fluid into the manual transmission.
I still have my Cruze. It’s still cruzing along with 220k miles on it. I’m planning on holding onto it for a while longer, as it’s been a good car that still fits my needs.
Great submission, making me start to reconsider the negative stance I had against the Holden version.
That stance likely stems from the prior vehicle they had in this class, the Epica which was a sub-par Daewoo imported and badge-swapped which came from a long line of lacklustre small cars sold with the lion logo tacked on.
I can’t recall right now if it was the Cruze or the Captiva, but one of them had an issue where if the tail light bulbs went they could damage the BCM as they ran on the same circuit?
That was the C(r)aptiva. Not the Cruze.
I can’t believe “Craptiva” is such a common expression in Oz
MitSHITsubishi was taken
Yeah, & I’ve ALWAYS called them Mitsu(BITCH)i, for a long time now…I like some of them- favorite is the 3000GT, also the old small trucks, the Evo’s, etc
I always say Mitsubishitty
I used to be active on the forums too! I love my cruze as well. 180k strong on a 1lt
And to top it all off you could even have one with AWD at one point! I remember my dad looking at them for my younger brother, but he ultimately went with a Jetta. And I always thought the hatchback was a genuinely good looking car as well. It’s a bummer that regular American sedans are a dying breed.
The Cruze was never offered with AWD…
I looked for one of these for a used first car for one of my kids but started reading horror stories about the 1.4. Not sure if it was one of those situations of a bad engine design or a good engine design in a budget car that was never going to get any maintenance. Would be interested in hearing from those who have owned one as to how reliable or not it was.
Car and Driver did a test of the manual and recommended the automatic instead, so the manual must be pretty bad.
There were a lot of diesels sold here in the Great White North but all the ones I saw for sale had huge mileage on them. There were also a few unicorn hatchbacks which were much uglier than the sedans.
GM did this car a disservice by recommending semi synthetic oil at 7500+ mile change intervals for the 1.4T. The oil life monitors on the 2011-2013 ones were wildly optimistic. They’d let the car go 10k miles before indicating to start thinking about a change. Using full syn at 7500 mile intervals was necessary. The water pump and integrated PCV system are the weak points on this engine. I’ve done a number of pumps and replaced the components that house the PCV system on mine. These engines are decent little mills if they’re treated right. Unfortunately a lot of them weren’t.
The fluid in the manual gearboxes was also horrible by 40k miles. One, it was garbage to start and two, there wasn’t enough. Swapping to 2.5 quarts of any other synchromesh fluid than the BP piss water installed at Lordstown made shifts much better. Still clunky because this is GM, but able to be shifted quickly and consistently.
Time, age, and being cheap to start definitely don’t help. Finding a good one at this point may be a challenge.
They required the first generation of Dexos, which was a synthetic blend. When I bought my 2013 Cruze I required the dealership use Mobil 1. My daughter owns the car now but takes it to the dealership where they use full synthetic Dexos. In my experience, if you use full synthetic oil at the proper intervals (~5000 miles) and properly maintain the coolant, the engine will be trouble free.
My boss had a brand new Cruze Eco when I worked for him – it was constantly in the shop and GM ended up lemon law’ing it back (he had a bunch of lawyers chomping at the bit to take the case).
Maybe a one off, but probably not. Doesn’t seem like reliability on the non-eco was any better. I wonder how the diesel did.
I await the Holy Grail Shitbox Showdown.
With the caveat that this Holy Grail series runs for a few weeks…..
You do the Shitbox everyday….
If only they would have made an SS version based on the BTCC car, they instead put the engine in the Verano, which was a shame.
I actually bought a new ECO. As I am a Certified Unit, it was quite uncomfortable. After a year I traded it on a Passat TDi. I don’t really remember much else about the car other than its low-friction tires made for some poor handling. I never would consider it a Holy Grail but I guess it didn’t really suck. I’ve had far worse.
Yeah, an oft-overlooked demerit of these fuel economy specials is the low rolling resistance tires. Back when I had a long commute, I bought a very cheap Fiesta SFE (the 1.0L 3 cyl), and the factory tires were optimized for fuel economy and literally nothing else. Poor handling, poor performance in bad weather, and poor wear rate. When I replaced them with “normal” tires, economy dropped by almost 10% though.
TBF, the longer braking distances mean you get more distance for the initial energy input. /s
The tires on my 2013 LT1 Cruze are 10mm wider than the tires on my 2017 Cruze. The tires on the older Cruze were more than sufficient to keep the car on the road.
I had a new 2003 Corolla that had narrow gas mileage tires. They were absolutely horrible, I replaced them with real tires ASAP.
The Pirelli P7 tires on mine now are light-years ahead of the original sets. Almost as good fuel economy with way better traction and ride quality. Spinning the tires off the line when there was a drop of water on the road got old fast.
The original Goodyear tires were acceptable in the dry and when the temperature was 45*F or more. A completely meh tire that did its job of getting good fuel economy.
Those P7s are great tires. I swore by them on my 1st-gen Volt (which is basically a heavier electric Cruze anyway).