I’ve been renting a 2005 Cavalier for the past 4-5 days, and I am not impressed. In fact, I am seriously unimpressed.
Why? Read on …
Noise
This thing is NOISY. Everything makes noise – and not nice noise. The brakes make noise. The air conditioning makes noise. The tires make noise. In fact, I squealed the wheels pulling into a parking spot, if you can believe it. The engine of course …. the engine sounds like a tinny little turbine that whines it’s way up to 20 or 30,000 RPM. Wind noise is excessive, and road noise on anything approaching a poor road surface is incredible. And plus there’s little ticks and pinging noises all the time …. this on a vehicle with less than 5000 miles on it!
My 1994 MX-6 is MUCH quieter than this. 1994!
Unusable design
There’s weird things all over this car. The door, for instance opens to about a 60 degree angle, then immediately rebounds to a 40 degree angle and will not, just absolutely refuses to stay open at the wider angle. Why open that far at all then?
Every other car I’ve ever been in, when you push the power window buttons either down or forward, the window opens. Not this one – that’s to close them. Of course, every other car I’ve been in has the button for the window on the door that supports the window. Nope – they’re in the center console. I’m still reaching down for them by the door …
Naturally, a nice feature like push once and lift up totally open the window without having to hang on to the button, a feature that my MX -6 has (did I say it’s a 1994?) is not supported on this car.
No pull for the trunk, nor for the gas …. I could go on.
Dangerous
I suppose the car is OK for an economy vehicle, but it’s really only safe for city driving. Take this thing out on the freeway in any kind of wind at all, and it’s a serious danger. The thing is so light that the least amount of wind on the sides blows you a foot or two to the left or the right. I found this reliably when I was at freeway speeds of 70 MPH or so.
I’m sure it’s very inexpensive, but it’s not even that great on gas …. I’ll need to fill up twice in a week, and I haven’t done THAT much driving.
Long story short: check for other cars!