You know Chevy would have had a best seller if they had put a GOOD engine into this car and some sound deadening under the interior. Imagine a QUIET small car that would last and deliver really good mileage (say 40-ish). Alot of people like me would overlook it’s other shortcomings. But they didn’t.

They seem to not really want to sell that car very much… Sort of like other GM products that get no advertising…

Perhaps the Aveo is a product they expect folks who are retiring flat worn out compacts with rust through and a myriad of problems to buy and enjoy. In other words the Aveo is light years ahead of what they had before and they did not cross shop those other brands b/c they are not ‘merican or b/c somebody told them that those import cars are expensive to buy and keep up. I still hear that excuse and I have to report my imports have been cheap to repair and the one had required very few repairs in the first place. (180K miles and counting).

Perhaps the Aveo was aimed at people who shopped for car payments prices and had low credit scores???

Don’t forget that wonderful predecessor to the Aveo, the Geo/Chevrolet Metro. Bad enough that it was a tin box; in their wisdom the product planners at GM decided to chop off the roof, thus destroying ANY remaining structural integrity.

Amen again. I had the unfortunate experience to rent a 4 door, 3 spd automatic Metro way back in 2000 and found it, quite expectedly, the most frightening car I’ve ever driven. First, it was aerodynamic like a twinkie, tall and narrow perched on four tiny wheels (12″s) Second, the motor produced barely enough beans to push its little ass out of the parking lot which leads to the Third, merging into freeway traffic. Absolutely terrifying. Nothing like the feeling of seeing a Semi jake-brake itself because this crackerbox cannot achieve 55 mph in any length of time. Although I will say, I gotta love the little Geo, er Chevy, for trying. It sure tried to get the hell outta the way, it just couldn’t. Second gear and the right foot through the floor made all kinds of noise, but little action. Added to the misery was the sub-par seating, very hard plastic dash and the ridiculous option of A/C; like I needed that on to suck needed HP away from momentum.

The Aveo is a much better car than the Metro, hands down. However, the Metro could be bought brand new for less than $9K and it never pretended to be anything special, nor did it try to compete with the Honda Civic or Toyota Tercel.

Great article above!

Sounds to me your conversation at the Rental Counter went a little like this:

Car Rental Agent: [cheerfully] Welcome to Marathon, may I help you?

YOU: Yes.

Car Rental Agent: How may I help you?

YOU: You can start by wiping that f***ing dumb-ass smile off your rosey, f***ing, cheeks! Then you can give me a f***ing automobile: a f***ing Datsun, a f***ing Toyota, a f***ing Mustang, a f***ing Buick! Four f***ing wheels and a seat!

Car Rental Agent: I really don’t care for the way you’re speaking to me. Let me see your rental agreement.

YOU: I threw it away.

Car Rental Agent: Well I guess you’re f***ed. All we have left is the Aveo automatic.

Mexico has a ton of attractive vehicles in this price point. VW has the Pointer family, Nissan has the Platina (Clio platform), Ford has the Fiesta, Peugeot has the 206 Classic, Toyota the Yaris, Honda the Fit. GM is probably the least attractive, selling the same rehashed Daewoo-platform garbage.

My personal favorite of these is the Renault Clio, the Clio Sport 2.0 is a fantastic deal. Hope someone at Penske/Saturn realizes how attractive these vehicles are.

I’m apparently the luckiest guy in the world – the worst car I got stuck with that I can remember was…a previous gen Ford Taurus (in it’s last, fleet only year).

I have a 2009 Ford Flex SEL now from Enterprise (who I use almost exclusively)…$35 a day. They rent Aveos somewhere? I haven’t seen one in an Enterprise lot that I recall. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough?

So people just pay and accept this?

I might’ve exaggerated a bit on the shaking, the but the hard interior does seem to rattle. I’ve driven the prior gen Echo too, and the yaris is also slightly worse than that. The inside looks really cheap with mediocre build quality, not unlike that of other new toyotas (but cheaper of course).

Engine/transmission had hardly any pickup, and engine noise was depressing.

All in all, it feels like I just took out a detroit product. I didn’t expect BMW, but I did expect Toyota. The yaris kind of reminds me of an escort.

–

For the life of me I’ll never understand the hate on for hatchbacks in the US market,what set it off?

Probably similar to the irrational hatred of wagons due to their traditionally marketed demographics. Hatches: cheapass, wagons: boring square.

Becomethemedia: “For the life of me I’ll never understand the hate on for hatchbacks in the US market,what set it off?”

I’m a little curious about this myself. It sounds like it would make a good TTAC editorial, i.e., “The Rise and Fall of the Hatchback”.

Seems like in the seventies (starting with the Vega and Pinto), hatchbacks were all the rage with every manufacturer having one in their small car line-up. Now, I can only think of a few ‘true’ hatchbacks, and two of them are hybrids.

It’s a shame because they can be quite a bit more practical than a sedan. The smaller the car, the more sense a hatch makes. One of the saddest hatchback eliminations was the Mazda6. Mazda cancelled the nice Mazda6 station wagon a few years ago, then axed the nearly as competent 5-door with the last new model.

# psarhjinian :
July 7th, 2009 at 11:03 am

Evaluating mechanical soundness in a rental is an iffy proposition. The cars are unloved and unrespected and often the worse for it. They’re a great way to judge seat comfort, though.

Like how Toyota foam on its cheaper products degrade with use? (Then again, Mazdas are like that, too).

To me the worst part of this car is not its driving dynamics or lack thereof, but the fact it’s a sedan.
It is well and truly fugly, whereas the hatch version looks okay.Same goes for the Toyota Echo, Yaris, Focus, Versa. These cars are made to be hatchbacks and I think the sedan versions are built to placate the US market.
For the life of me I’ll never understand the hate on for hatchbacks in the US market,what set it off?
I have reoccurring nightmares that Ford will take it’s wonderful Euro Fiesta, detune the engine, soften up the suspension, add 20 cup holders and make it a sedan only version for the N/A market.
In Canada we love hatches but we’re usually stuck with what the US market dictates, which means less hatches, softer suspensions and slush boxes.
In fact I would like to throw this question out to the best & brightest and get their opinion on this.
Same goes for diesel power but that’s another rant for another day.

I was a sucker instead for a Chevy Epica (aka Suzuki Verona), another Daewoo product with dubious quality, and my first GM purchase ever (this is vehicle #19 in my lifetime).

Haven’t had to replace engine or transmission yet–knock on plastic wood–but have paid for many other repairs that shouldn’t have been needed at only 60K miles.

Have been reading a lot about the over-hyped Chevy Cruze, which is really the next-gen Daewoo Optra/Suzuki Forenza. Having experience with another Daewoo product’s quality–my Epica–I wouldn’t buy another GM product (Daewoo produced or “domestic” unless I got a deal on a super-duper extended warranty with the purchase.

If GM can’t take the time to engineer and design a decent small car in America maybe they should get out of the car business altogether.

That seems out of sorts. I’ve had Yarises and Echoes often, and while they’re pretty tinny, I wouldn’t have said they were unstable or shaking/rattling in an untoward fashion. I’d really suspect that the car you’d had suffered something pretty awful at the hands of a previous renter.

Evaluating mechanical soundness in a rental is an iffy proposition. The cars are unloved and unrespected and often the worse for it. They’re a great way to judge seat comfort, though.

Chill. I’ve deleted the offensive comment. As well as all of yours responding to it. If you’ve got a problem with a comment, email farago@ttac.com.

TTAC’s flaming policy is clear, and does not play favorites. ANYONE who flames the site, its authors or fellow commentators faces a permanent posting ban.

Period.

[Not: check your email. Do not respond to this in the comments section.]

So you see how moronic and pathetic people can be. She knew the car had crank windows when she bought it. None of that changed, and here she is complaining about them. She just wanted to jump out of the SUV bandwagon and onto the Small Car bandwagon.

Some people really are stupid enough to buy Aveos, Sebrings, and Avengers (probably at close to retail) and not even shop around or research the purchase at at all.

If you are in school and especially if you’re related to a GM employee, the Aveo is literally the cheapest car you can buy. Stacking the Student and Employee discounts pushes the price of a base Aveo far, far below CA$10K. You cannot get a used, low-mileage Yaris (let alone a Civic or Corolla) for even close to that, and for many students it’s really nice to have a car with a warranty and no serious expenses for a few years.

For comparisons sake, the entirely competant Cobalt LS is $12,598CDN. So for an extra $1500 or so they could be driving the other Chevrolet journalists love so much to hate. All you Cobalt haters take note, in its SS version, it is a Mazdaspeed3 beater, at least according to Road & Track.

It’s worth noting that the Cobalt SS Turbo is very, very far removed from the base Cobalt LS. For someone who wants a sports compact, the Cobalt SS is a very good choice; for someone who wants A-to-B transport, not only do none of the Cobalt SS’s virtues trickle down to the base LS, the base Mazda3 (or Civic, or Focus) is a better car.

Heck, you could argue the Aveo, in hatchback form, is a more versatile and better-packaged car than the Cobalt LS. Were I, for some reason, stuck with choosing between the two, I would definitely pick the Aveo hatch over the Cobalt LS sedan.

And for those smug Yaris fans (I have to admit the “S” or “RS” version are really funky), the Yaris is better than the Aveo, but according to Consumer Reports it is still one of the worst vehicles sold in the USA.

The Yaris sedan is, I’ll admit, a waste of iron unless you must have the most fuel-efficient sedan under a given price point. Even then, though, you are buying one of the most statistically reliable cars on the market, and one, and one with very good fuel economy, to boot.

The hatch, on the other hand, is the car that enthusiasts everywhere seem to clamour for when they go off on their collective rant about how much better than a modern car a Geo Metro or sixth-or-earlier-gen Civic is: a basic car without much frills, under 2400lbs, still with decent power, and with a manual and a hatchback body. Again, you get a car that doesn’t break, uses next to no fuel and is actually kind of fun to drive due to the lack of mass.

I don’t think the Yaris is, functionally, much better than the Aveo, but if I buy a car in this market I want it a) not to break on me and b) to get great mileage. That (and the awful stick-shift) is really the only place the Aveo falls down.

The Fit and Versa are a cut above the rest of the class and it’s tough to compare them. The Fit’s chassis, functional space, base features and price are all much higher; the Versa is simply a bigger car all around. Both are what I’d hesitantly call “semi-premium subcompacts”, and you pay for that premium.

if i remember correct, Holden actually now owns a controlling percent of GM Daewoo so the new models coming out of there (ie Cruze) should be substantially better than anything Daewoo currently supplies the GM world with

It seems to corner ok at lower speeds, but it was shaking and rattling badly at 70 on a slightly rough hwy. We used to have an early 90’s corolla that is a better car in just about every regard, even after many years of use (and abuse by me).

I guess what really peeved me was how inferior it is to a jazz/fit, which I wouldn’t mind owning if I had to choose from that bracket. Expectations color perception so maybe if I go test an aveo for kicks with a 1-star mentally I would be pleasantly surprised.

You’ll be scraping asphalt off them afterwards, but still…

I had a rental yaris (sedan, wtf? why?) once and thought it was terrible enough. Hard to imagine there are worse cars out there. A Fit OTOH, is fairly nice.

Buying crappy cars for around $10k new defies logic. You can get used four wheeled transport for half that price which doesn’t feel like it’ll fall apart if you drive it too hard.

Others got MPG in the teens in traffic. GMDAT belatedly came out with a reflash to fix this… raising economy from incredibly bad to almost liveable. Didn’t cure the engines of their endemic lack of power.