#ChevroletCruze

No, you aren’t seeing things this morning. Chevrolet announced late Wednesday night a five-door version of their staple compact Cruze will be heading to Detroit for the 2016 North American International Auto Show — and they published some photos to prove it.

The first-generation Cruze, while available as a hatchback in other markets, was never marketed as a five-door in North America. The addition of a the new hatchback looks to fix that for the Cruze’s second generation.

As a current owner of the long-forgotten Saturn Astra, this intrigues me.

Leasehackr has a screaming deal on a 2016 Chevrolet Cruze Limited (the old body style) 1LT Automatic if:

1) You can sell it for more than $13,000 after two years;
2) You’re were a Costco Auto member before Sept. 30;
3) You can get $1,800 off of MSRP, or thereabouts;
4) Max incentives;
5) You’re a current lessee of another automaker;
6) You don’t mind driving a Chevrolet Cruze Limited 1LT Automatic for two years.

If you ticked every one of those boxes, congratulations! You can lease a 2016 Chevrolet Cruze for $40 or less*** per month for 24 months.

General Motors is re-jigging its assembly footprint for the Chevrolet Cruze, adding assembly at a Mexican facility as other plants, like Australia, wave goodbye to GM’s global small car.

Although all-new versions of the Chevrolet Cruze and Malibu are set to debut by the end of the year, GM will retain the current versions as fleet-only vehicles, dubbed the “Cruze Limited” and “Malibu Limited”.

Looking for a new Cruze, LaCrosse or Terrain? You might have a bit more money left thanks to some undercutting by General Motors.

Across the vast and majestic gulf of time and space, the jimmies rustled softly when I had the nerve to review a rented FIAT 500L with four thousand miles under its affordable alloy wheels.

“OMG,” I was told, “after that monstrous amount of vicious rental abuse, which probably included everything from ‘sparking’ to ‘mudding’, there is no way any car would be anything but a floor-pissing mess.”

Imagine my terror, therefore, when I arrived at Louisville’s airport three days ago and saw this:

The next Chevrolet Cruze – at least the one sold in China – will be getting a snazzy new interior.

While our Chevrolet Cruze gets a re-style to look more like the Malibu, China’s Cruze now looks like a 2015 Subaru WRX in the back, with a Dodge Dart-like front end.

The back of the 2015 Chevrolet Cruze is largely unchanged. The front has sadly been messed with to look more like the Malibu. A shame, since the Cruze was a rather handsome car.

In advance of its debut, these pictures from a Chinese website purport to show the Chevrolet Cruze, sans camouflage.

Reuters is reporting that the next iteration of the Chevy Cruze, originally due at the end of 2014, will not go into production until December 2015, as a 2016 model year car.

Now that Chevrolet has revised their EPA mileage estimate for the Chevrolet Cruze Diesel, from 42 mpg to 46 mpg, we need to revise our own estimates.

Polk released their list of 10 best-selling nameplates in 2012 – and while the list led to a bit of a spat between Toyota and Ford over who won had the race – the rest of the list gives us a picture of what’s popular around the world. While Bertel is claiming that Toyota came out on top, I am merely reporting the Polk data. Any disputes or accusations pro or anti (insert nationality here) bias can be meted out in the comments. I’ll go grab the popcorn.

Some rough, back of the napkin calculations based on available information suggest that the Chevrolet Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel has a break-even point fit for Methuselah

In a few hours, we’ll have live shots of the Chevrolet Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel (what a mouthful), but in the mean time, here’s a preview of the long awaited oil-burning Chevy.