Fooling around on CL last night turned up a Cobalt with manual windows and stickshift. Makes me wonder about test driving one of those, used of course, to see if it is not a bad car. Best I can tell, they need timing chains about as often my car needs timing belts (every 80k?); watching on youtube it did not see massively bad to do the job. And I thought I saw something about a sketchy waterpump design which can let water into the crankcase... And of course the infamous ignition switch debacle. Which drives their value down (a good thing). [What I don't know is how hard it is to replace this bad switch, nor just how dangerous it really is to drive with a "bad" one--push come to shove, I could just have a third key made up which is left in the ignition the majority of the time, removed only if I run into Walmart or whatever.]
Are Cobalts, say 08 though 10, ok cars in stick?
Moving on, I see a local dealer has some stickshift 1.8L Cruzes. $17k MSRP is out of my range, but it's worth a test drive to see how I like, and at least jotting down some notes for later, in case I want to find used in a couple of years. I hear good reviews about Cruze, but then again, I heard good things about Cobalt too, and today they seem panned and disliked.
Personally, I'm after manual trans, few options, ok power, high economy, low operating costs and low noise. An appliance of a vehicle. Just in case anyone wonders what my goals are.
Are Cobalts, say 08 though 10, ok cars in stick?
Moving on, I see a local dealer has some stickshift 1.8L Cruzes. $17k MSRP is out of my range, but it's worth a test drive to see how I like, and at least jotting down some notes for later, in case I want to find used in a couple of years. I hear good reviews about Cruze, but then again, I heard good things about Cobalt too, and today they seem panned and disliked.
Personally, I'm after manual trans, few options, ok power, high economy, low operating costs and low noise. An appliance of a vehicle. Just in case anyone wonders what my goals are.