Cruze Owners' Discussion Thread

[HOWQUICK]

Reckon you guys are missing the pick off the bunch...the 2.0L turbo diesel. Check out the power and toques figures against the petrol. Bought the Mrs one 12 months ago and are now programming it. Picked up 15% more power from 1800rpm. The thing is on tap near on off idle. We have the manual cog swapper but a mate has auto and with the converter, there is no waiting for power.

[mjrandom]

Have any of you guys noticed that the side mirrors are bleaching where they attach to the doors? The base of the mirrors on my Son's Cruze CDX (TD manual as well so I agree with HOWQUICK after driving them all) has gone all mottled and not from the lack of 303 protectant. Will ahve to see if it is considered a warranty issue. The car does sit in the sun a fair bit but it is only 18 months old. Be interested to hear if anyone else has the same issue.

[Waughy]

Service done, update NOT done. After mentioning it half a dozen times it wasn't put on the job sheet so wasn't done. They didn't even understand what the update was about. Quite disappointing after waiting nearly 6 months.

[Smashfist]

Service done, update NOT done. After mentioning it half a dozen times it wasn't put on the job sheet so wasn't done. They didn't even understand what the update was about. Quite disappointing after waiting nearly 6 months.

Do you mean the Mylink update for voice control? They should know about that - but just FYI it's not a free update, it's either customer charge or the dealer to pay for it - Holden' won't as the early Mylink vehicles weren't advertised with the feature. Nothing was "stuffed up" during production, it was a running change added later on.

Have any of you guys noticed that the side mirrors are bleaching where they attach to the doors? The base of the mirrors on my Son's Cruze CDX (TD manual as well so I agree with HOWQUICK after driving them all) has gone all mottled and not from the lack of 303 protectant. Will ahve to see if it is considered a warranty issue. The car does sit in the sun a fair bit but it is only 18 months old. Be interested to hear if anyone else has the same issue.

Yep take it in, it's a known issue - get both replaced with the revised parts under warranty.

[Waughy]

Do you mean the Mylink update for voice control? They should know about that - but just FYI it's not a free update, it's either customer charge or the dealer to pay for it - Holden' won't as the early Mylink vehicles weren't advertised with the feature. Nothing was "stuffed up" during production, it was a running change added later on.

That's the one. I'm aware it's not free (anymore, it was at first but Holden put a stop to it). I'm just annoyed that after saying I wanted it done they didn't do it, then still played dumb (not sure they were playing actually). I'm an hr from the dealer so not like I can book it in any day. Will get it done eventually.

[Smashfist]

That's the one. I'm aware it's not free (anymore, it was at first but Holden put a stop to it).

It was never free. The same bulletin that advised dealers it was available specifically stated that it was not to be claimed as a warranty item.

[EddieVE06]

Have any of you guys noticed that the side mirrors are bleaching where they attach to the doors? The base of the mirrors on my Son's Cruze CDX (TD manual as well so I agree with HOWQUICK after driving them all) has gone all mottled and not from the lack of 303 protectant. Will ahve to see if it is considered a warranty issue. The car does sit in the sun a fair bit but it is only 18 months old. Be interested to hear if anyone else has the same issue.

Same as my wife's sri hatch. She mentioned this to me just now and I remembered your post. Her car is almost 2 years old. Ill have a look in the morning. She is ringing holden tomorrow.

[Waughy]

It was never free. The same bulletin that advised dealers it was available specifically stated that it was not to be claimed as a warranty item.

At first some lucky owners did get the update for free, there's a Cruze owners thread on the whirlpool forums where it's discussed. There looks to have been a small amount of time between the update being available and the bulletin coming out.
I'm happy to pay for it, it's just annoying that the dealer had next to no idea about it so I missed out. Seems owners are more clued up than the people giving the service.

[EddieVE06]

Same as my wife's sri hatch. She mentioned this to me just now and I remembered your post. Her car is almost 2 years old. Ill have a look in the morning. She is ringing holden tomorrow.

Took these pics this morning. Might be hard to tell bit definitely looks like something isnt right.

[super coach]

thanks for giving me the heads up about the mirrors, will keep an eye on it and will mention it to the new car manager as I have a good relationship with him and will tell him I will be looking out for this if it starts to happen. I ordered the factory fitted DRL on the Cruze so am interested to see how they will look, i hope they look half decent and not shitty/tacky.

Hopefully all is well on the production line and no updates or anything like that needs to be changed. ETA 28 Nov was suppose to be today the 15th!

[mjrandom]

Son's Cruze mirrors are quite a bit worse than that. We will follow up with a dealer.

thanks to all.

Michael

[super coach]

I had a look at my build sheet for my Monaro and I think I worked it out that 34 is the car has just entered the body shop. Went for a drive on the weekend to Elizabeth to see what we could see sitting in the yard but didn't see any white SRiV Hatch sitting there, but we saw a few SRi SRi-V Cruze sporting a new colour which looks like will be added to the range, colour looked very similar to Hothouse Green. so keep an eye for this new colour coming on Cruze/Commodore

[super coach]

How long have you guys had to wait for your cars to be built?

Seems Holden don’t build them like they used to anymore and now they build them in batches which is stupid. Placed my order and order received by GMHAL 1/10 I rang Holden again today and they said its still at Milestone 34 with the target build date of 28 Nov, so I looked up what 34 is on my Monaro Build sheet and its Framing schedule which means it still hasn’t gone into production and it has only just clicked that Target build date is for when production on car is meant to start and not meant to finish like I thought.

So I have worked it out by the time its finished and delivered to the dealer it will be around the 5-7 December which makes the wait 10-11 weeks for a car that we were looking at back at the end of September.

I would expect a 3 month wait from a car that is coming from O/S not a car that is just built up the road from me. Its kinda poor form from Holden behalf why not just build them like they used to which is on when the car gets ordered or preference orders over dealer stock? Ims ure it wouldn’t hurt to put on another shift again to keep up with demand???

Dealer was telling me a bloke placed an order for a SSV Redline and had to wait 3 months for it, another bloke came in 2 months after the first bloke placed his order and ordered the same spec car only had to wait 1 month and his car arrived on the Tuesday and the guy who was first to place his order and had to wait the longest his car arrived the next day.

Im sorry but that is really bad form!!!!

[surfwagon]

We’ve had our Cruze for about a month and 1800km now; long enough to post some first impressions for anyone interested. Ours is a MY14 SRi manual hatchback, six speed manual.

Fit for purpose?
Our purpose was to buy a second car primarily for my wife to drive, that wouldn’t be miserable when I needed to drive it or if I end up with it as a daily at some later date; it’s proving to be excellent at that. She’s very happy with it, and I like it.

It has a decent amount of space inside, a good sized boot, and is very easy to drive. Unusually for a small car, I’m 195cm and I don’t have the seat all the way back. An adult couldn’t sit behind me while I’m driving and be comfortable, but my three year old can. With my wife driving, there’s a stack of space left over and it could easily serve as a family car for four people.

So how does it go?
Well enough. It has a 1.6 litre turbo four with 132kW and 230Nm, and weighs 1400kg or thereabouts so it’s not the quickest thing you’ve ever driven but it’s decent. There’s not much happening below 2000rpm but things improve dramatically over about 2500 until it runs out of top end a bit over 6000. You could rev it to 6500 but there doesn’t seem to be much gain; better off changing gear. You only notice torque steer when you’re flat out at the higher end of the RPM range; otherwise there’s not really enough torque for this to be a real problem.
There’s only very mild turbo lag of less than half a second and it’s not noticeable unless you’re foot to the floor. In everyday driving you just wouldn’t notice.

Around corners it’s also decent. There’s a slightly odd sensation of a moment of ‘float’ before it turns in – I’m guessing that it’s a bit soft in the first part of its suspension travel in the interests of ride quality – but once past that it’s fine. It’s not noticeably nose heavy unlike bigger engine FWD cars. The steering ratio is very quick so it feels quite darty and changes direction quickly.

Brakes are very decent with a good firm pedal.

Put together properly?
Yes – I’ve had personal experience with a number of cars built at Elizabeth and this is the best I’ve seen. I’m a fussy bastard with this stuff but the only fault I’ve been able to find is a really minor pin-prick sized paint blemish on the bonnet that would probably polish off if I tried hard enough. Everything lines up properly and has been properly attached with the exception of one minor plastic trim panel which I snapped into place with my hand.

It feels solid, really solid. There’s no reason to think, with this car, that Australian made somehow means not properly put together.

There’s not much in the way of soft plastic inside (in fact, none) but while there’s lots of hard plastic, it feels solid rather than flimsy. The bits you touch regularly are leather anyway so it’s not cheap and nasty like a Mazda 3. The door trim fabric continues across the dash and that makes it a bit nicer than just acres of plastic (but the versions with full leather trim have the same nasty leather across the dash which makes it seem worse than the cloth-trim models).

Value for money
Outstanding, I reckon. We put ours on the road for $23,250 (manual, non-metallic paint) which is with the full complement of safety equipment, the MyLink infotainment system (which is very good, but a bit slow to respond to changing tracks from USB/Bluetooth), rear parking sensors, 17” alloys, cruise control, power everything other than seats.

We looked at everything in its class for about the same money and there wasn’t much that came near it. Everything else is either more expensive, slower, or doesn’t come with as much equipment.

Things to improve
Coming from a mindset of someone who likes performance cars, I reckon it would be dramatically improved with 30% more power and torque, and I think the steering, clutch, and gearshift are too light. I also think it’s too quiet. But in the context of this being a small family car with a bit of a performance aspect to it, rather than being a performance car per se, it’s fine.

Rear visibility is not terrific. A reversing camera would have been good, but that meant stepping up to the SRiV for another four grand or so; it wasn’t worth the extra money just to get that and some low-grade leather trim.

I don’t like the seat adjustment much – it has one of those lever arrangements where you can only move it to set angles. I drove it 200km or so to Cooma and back on Friday and couldn’t quite get the angle I wanted, and was constantly fiddling with the seat adjustment. It doesn’t help that you can’t adjust the angle of the seat base, only the height.

Conclusion - should I buy one?
I drove a couple of Cruzes when they hadn't been on the market long - a 1.8 petrol and a diesel - and both were awful to drive. I wouldn't have bought either, and I've bagged those models in many threads over the years. It was a good sized, comfortable car begging for a decent drivetrain and suspension to be put in it. They've now done that.

So - if your needs are similar to ours, I'd happily recommend this car. Similarly, If you must have a new car and only want to spend about this much, yes.

On the other hand, if you want a car that will blow your mind, or a car that you walk out to on your driveway and think “hell yeah, let’s go for a drive just for the sheer fun of it”, no. This is a warm hatch, not a performance car.

A very good read, have been looking at one of these for my wife.
You say that these would be better with 30% more power/torque, have you looked at the Walkingshaw upgrade for the Cruze.
From memory the older 1.4 turbo goes up to 140kw so wondering what sort of power they would get from the 1.6L.

[Marco]

How long have you guys had to wait for your cars to be built?

11 weeks to delivery (9 weeks to build). Ordered 30 July, built somewhere between 25 and 30 September, delivered 14 October. It's a bit much for a car coming from two states away, not two continents away.