Drew Dowdell

Well I did Reg's test. I notice no performance difference with the A/C on full blast. It appears that the Cruze (like many other cars) uncouples the A/C clutch under heavy acceleration. Holding your hand over the vents the blast of ice loses its edge a little but remains cold. All in all, no noticable change in pull.

What is your car music guilty pleasure? We all have our car music, the stuff that really gets us into the drive. But what is the car music that you love that you... really wouldn't admit to? The stuff that doesn't fit your personality or your car's personality..... This idea came to me as I was driving to work this morning in the 2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco wearing french cuffs, cufflinks, and a pink "Cancer Sucks" bracelet in support of a family member while enjoying.... Marylin Manson - Lest We Forget. Great music for an urban morning commute and for those of you who know me well enough... completely outside of my personality. So what is your car music guilty pleasure?

By doing this, you will not increase your credit score one iota. If you pay the balance of the very same day, the balance never has a chance to hit your credit report. Simply having an open, empty, line of credit on your credit report does very little. They want to see history there. After the first statement, pay enough on the balance to ensure that your outstanding balance is 1/3rd or less of your total credit line, then pay the minimum payment required to keep the free financing and leave the balance on the card for as long as possible without paying off the card until the free financing period ends. 1/3rd is the key. Always keep your balances below 1/3 of your credit line. Don't accept any card that has a fee unless it is a points card that you will use heavily (like me and my U.S. Airways card).

From what I understand, the new 2.5 series based Ecotecs might be just up to the task of proving you wrong. Supposed to be very smooth with a good combo of power and fuel economy.

and even more quiet.

Coming Soon: CheersandGears - The Next Generation Well it's time for us to upgrade to the next platform of the software CheersandGears.com runs on. It is a pretty big jump, so it won't all happen at once. A couple of features won't work right out of the box and all of our skin templates will need to be re-written. Improvements coming with the upgrade: Vastly improved search function. A new area for articles separate from the regular forums, the forums will still be used for comments on the articles. View New Content is now more customizable, you'll be able to select the forums you want to monitor. View New Content will FINALLY work correctly and not forget to show you forums you haven't read just because you've logged on in the interim. We will be far more visible to the search engines (we're already pretty good in this area given our size) We will have an entirely new front page portal. Drastically improved page loading speed. Along with a whole host of other improvements. During this time: Advertising will be suspended. Any members that have purchased Premium Memberships will have their memberships extended by an equal amount of time. The current front page portal will go away until the new portal is in place. The skin template will look choppy until I get it's replacement installed. I will post again here when the upgrades will actually start.

As I've been told by someone, the Malibu Coupe was a car without a code... meaning it wasn't even a planned car to be canceled in the first place. Don't be upset at GM for "canceling" something that was a figment of someone else's imagination.

it goes both ways.

Good, now I can play farmville and drive again....

What kind of fuel economy would we see from such an engine?

You mean the Equinox? It is a modified Epsilon.

To be fair, I think a modern V6 is a lot more dependable than the old V6es of yore. Ditto the 4-cylinders. The 2.4 Ecotec is easily a 250k mile engine if you take care of it properly.

I think the Maxx would be a great middle-road option for the Malibu.

I'd hit it!

Will try it, but haven't noticed anything like that yet. The major bane seems to be steep hills on the highway which required a shift to 3rd in order to maintain speed. However, if you're not in a hurry, you can do 1 - 2 - 4 - 6 shifts without difficulty and still accelerate at normal traffic speeds. In the hard urban cycle I'm driving now, the DIC is displaying an average 32mpg. but I've also unloaded the trunk too.

My guess is that there still is a Cruze coupe coming, if even just in the next generation, and that a coupe is more sellable in a larger size car, rather than the Malibu, more along the lines of the next generation Impala. Having a Malibu coupe would probably be too much. in between those two.

Industry sales may be flat, but Honda and Toyota market share are there for the taking.

Don't F with mama!

they're all just little eggs.

Interactive Review: 2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco 6-Speed Manual Well, I've been a bit remiss getting the next interactive review up after swapping out of the 2012 Chevrolet Camaro SS 45th Anniversary Edition last week, but I have a good excuse. I've been on the road since Wednesday for my day job, spending the last 4 days in New Haven CT. This week's Interactive Review will be, by necessity, a bit shorter. This week we swap into the opposite end of Chevy's performance spectrum, trading high performance for the high fuel efficiency of a 2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco with 6-speed manual. Fortunately, unlike some people, I have more than enough credit line on my man card to drive a car with an Eco badge. The trip from New Haven to Pittsburgh is about 465 miles via I-80. Over the entire trip I averaged 51.0 mpg at a fairly constant 65mph and used 9.1 gallons of gas in the process. Now one thing that brought the mileage down was the 250lbs of used networking equipment in the trunk while climbing over the Allegheny Mountains, effectively undoing Chevy's weigh saving measure of the Eco trim, but 51mpg is still a very impressive number made possible in part by the taller overdrive gear. So far, I am very impressed with the Cruze. The car is quiet at speed and it seems to be the easiest to drive manual I've ever been behind the wheel of. I am a little disappointed that steep mountain climbs require two or even three downshifts to maintain speed, but such is the price to pay for such a high efficiency vehicle that isn't a hybrid, especially since you don't take a performance hit over the non-Eco model. So have at it folks, shoot me some questions about the 2012 Chevrolet Cruze Eco. Gallery

My '04 CTS was fine after 48k....