Holden Cruze (my review).. Bad economy!

[EDManual]

Hired a Holden Cruze with the 6 speed auto, 17inch alloys, 1.8 4 cyl, leather seats and sunroof in Adelaide last week.

First impressions were plasticky, but nice to look at especially inside.

This car had 10,000km on it.

I like how low you can sit.

Started it up to a really noisy rattly engine. Would not rev out well at all, in fact had near no more pull from 4000 - redline, than 2000 to 4000!

However I drove it revving it out the whole time and it became smooth, lost its rattling and gained speed in the higher revs! Obviously was not run in, and luckily I came along to bed the rings in!

The steering had no feeling or weight to it. When driving at 50% (near no one does that these days... more like 5% of the cars capacity!), it handles quite well, but that would be due to the large tyres I suspect. When really moving its not great at all. Heaps of understeer that comes all of a sudden (when stab control is off). When stab control is on you just cant really get moving into, round and out of bends like you would want to.

Over 2 days driving I must say i liked the driving position, and it was still nice to look at.

Fuel consumption was not brilliant however, trip computer said i was averaging 16.1 litres per 100 (reset before I started), when filled up, the manual calculation was 17.2 l/100. 300km to a tank of 53 litres. The light came on at about 280km.

Time and time again I am amazed how terrible the economy is on small automatic cars! If you want to drive them at about half the pace of a falcon (which is flat out in a car like this), you really pay for it in fuel!

About half my driving was in the Adelaide hills, sure I was moving, but no high speeds. Just spirited driving. The rest around the suburbs, glenelg, marion etc. Never really speeding, just revving it out with the AC on.

I say, DONT BUY ONE if you like driving. An xr6 turbo, SS commodore or something would use less fuel. If you just want to get from a to b, sure.

Remember the Topgear test with the Prius Vs a V8 M3 BMW? The prius was flat out, with the M3 keeping up behind, but just cruisy fast for it, and the Prius used more fuel than the V8.

Same sort of thing with this.

Plus again its amazing what a good work out can do for an engine! Completely different car to drive (engine wise) after just 150Km!