Chevy Cruze Spotted in Wild, Camo Free

by Justin Berkowitz

September 15th, 2008 2:26 PM

Chevy’s upcoming Cobalt replacement sibling replacement, the Cruze, has been spotted out in the wild wearing New York dealer plates. In rental white and with black door handles, it looks pretty generic and just a little strange. Compared to the original press photos, it also looks pretty large, which is not necessarily a bad thing. As we’ve said before, the key for this vehicle will be whether GM can live up to their 40+ mpg promise for this car. If it can, that may be enough to cut into sales of vehicles with immense intertia, like the Civic and Corolla. The Cruze will ride on the Delta platform that is also set to underpin the Volt, which oddly enough is also targeting 40 miles as its range on a full charge. Maybe. And while the Volt is set to cost some $40,000, this Cruze should be available for well under $20,000 when it hits dealers in the summer of 2010.

Comments

Join the conversation

2 of 45 comments

Mud on Sep 16, 2008

Not that great a color, but I think it looks alright. Remember that TTAC represents the pinnacle of automotive best and brightest and therefore no detail goes unnoticed (unpunished?). For the majority of the folks out there looking for basic transportation needs at an affordable (financiable) rate, what's so bad about this car?

Like Reply
Joeaverage on Sep 16, 2008

Styling = "meh..." Hopefully otherwise it will be really good - troublefree, really good mileage, quiet, drives good, or whatever. Doesn't have to be all those things but the durability and mileage is important.

Like Reply

Recent Comments

Stuart de Baker This is depressing, and I don't own one of these.
Stuart de Baker Chris! When asked for car advice, I just ask 'em what they want out of a car. And I have my prompts: fun to drive, safety, economy, longevity (I have Consumer Reports annual auto issues going back so I can help people with used cars, too), road trips vs in town, etc, and what sort of body style do they want and why. (If they want an SUV because they think it's safer, I'll suggest they consider large sedans, but if they put major emphasis on safety, I'll check the latest safety stats for whatever cars might satisfy their other desires.
Stuart de Baker I don't speak to Jeeps and I don't approve of driving off road, especially in places like Utah where the vegetation won't come back for years.
Kanu Actually, I think this makes a certain amount of sense.The average age of light vehicles in operation in the US is now 12.2 years. This means that the typical useful life of a light vehicle is around 25 years.The big virtue of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is that the infotainment system in your car uses the relatively up-to-date technology of your smartphone rather than the vintage technology that existed when your car was built.But the useful life of EVs is nowhere near 25 years. It’s more like 8 years. That’s when the battery needs to be replaced, and that’s when you discover that the price of the new battery is more than the market value of your eight-year-old car with a new battery.So if your EV has built-in infotainment technology, that technology will still be relatively up-to-date when your EV goes to the scrap yard.
Deanst I like most things Peugeot recently, along with Skoda wagons and, for practicality’s sake, a Toyota Corolla hybrid wagon. And the Honda e.