Chevrolet Cruze - following the smaller-is-better trend
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| Chevrolet Cruze - following the smaller-is-better trend |
This little sedan has actually been on sale in over 60 world markets for some time and GM has logged over 250,000 sales and millions of miles of driving. Finally after all of that in-the-field fine tuning, it comes the USA.
The Cruze has to cover a broad swath of the market with a price range starting as low as $16,900 and escalating to over $26,000 for the LTZ with leather seats and navigation!
The styling makes the car look substantial, statesmanlike, confident and larger than other compacts. The Cruze is a very solid car. The rigid body structure delivers a solid platform to work with which makes it squeak and rattle free. Another by-product of the structural design is that it has a very composed ride.
A week of driving it under a wide variety of conditions yielded the assurance that the car is well put together. Additionally, the Cruze handles very well. In fact it handles better than others in its class and most other cars on the road for that matter.
Another unique bonus to the Cruze is its advanced safety features. GM like most other manufacturers has discovered that the best way to improve the safety performance of any car, especially a small one, is to have lots of air bags. The Cruze comes with a class-leading 10 bags standard. That’s 2 front, 2 side curtain, 2 front seat thorax, an unusual 2 rear seat thorax and totally new 2 front knee bags! That added to a strong body structure and a responsive car that can actually avoid some collisions, places this model head and shoulders above the others in its class when it comes to safety.
The Cruze is offered in 3 trim levels, the LS, LT and LTZ. The base LS is only offered with the 1.8 liter 4 cylinder engine. Either a 6 speed manual or 6 speed automatic transmission is available. It is rated at 22 city and 35 highway mpg. The better engine is the new 1.4 liter turbo. This tiny 88 cubic inch powerplant is no larger than some large motor cycle engines but delivers the goods quite efficiently. The upcoming ECO model is optimized for economy and will deliver a 40 mpg rating.
The interior fit and finish is very good. The front seat travel is very long allowing tall occupants to ride up front. The trunk is large and the rear seat backs fold down to enlarge the usable cargo space.
The new Chevy Cruze is happy and efficient in city driving yet has the comfort and poise to do a cross country drive. It’s a nice piece of work.
