Daily, GM Canada, Photos, Reviews

Chevrolet Cruze review

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As you all know, for the last week I’ve been driving around and reviewing the 2012 Chevrolet Cruze LT Turbo in the fun Crystal Red color.

One of the first things I noticed when investigating the car’s features was that it had Satellite Radio for us to tune into! As I mentioned before I haven’t stopped listening to the Satellite XM radio.

I’ve been loving three stations and have been switching between them. Note that the satellite radio isn’t free and has a fee for subscribing to it. I’m not sure how much it would cost if you’d like to have it for your car, but it was a nice feature to have in the press car.You can see all of the buttons on the steering wheel here. I primarily used just the volume control. The steering wheel is quite lightweight meaning that it’s not a sporty hard-to-turn wheel. It was a bit difficult to get used to since I do quite a bit of highway driving and I had to get used to trying to keep the car straight. Any little movement with the wheel and the car would steer in that direction.

The car has a lot of neat bell’s and whistles. For instance, when you turn the ignition off and take the keys out, the music continues to play. Even if the passenger doors open. Only when the driver’s side door open, does the music stop. Often times before work I sat in the car listening to the music.To get comfortable driving the car for the week I had to adjust the driver’s seat. Adjusting and tilting the seat is fine, but the lumbar handle is almost like you’re reaching to the back seat to grab someones feet. It feels further back than it should. I couldn’t find it for the first few days. I also tested out the back seat to see how well adults could fit back there. It wasn’t the most roomiest but it was comfortable for me and I’m at 5’6″.

One thing I was really a fan of in this car was that there wasn’t any getting used to the blind spots. I felt like nothing was blocking my way at all when I looked over my shoulder to change lanes. With other cars I’ve taken a few days or even weeks to get used to the blind spots. Plus one for Chevrolet on that one!

I have to drive about 15km to work every day. Some days I take the highway and other days I take the typical stop and go traffic. While I’ve only got the car for a week I feel like it’s pretty decent on gas on both scenarios. On the website the fuel consumption for the 2011 model is 5.5L per 100km. I used a total of about 3/4 of a tank in the week and I did a significant amount of driving. I put around 350km’s on it.

I noticed that you can personalize what you see on the dash board when you twist this lever.Shown above are most of the options to choose from.

I’m used to driving fairly medium to large sized cars. The car I own now is similar in size to the Cruze, and my parent’s car is a nice big boat. So I feel like the Cruze is a modern mid-sized vehicle fit for a family of four. Or in my case, a family of two.

Little things on this car excite me. I love having a clean and clear windshield. I’m used to spraying the wash up onto the windshield only to have it wipe 2-3 times and leaving dry streak marks left from the wipers. Which can be an annoyance while you’re driving and sometimes would need to re-wash it. Not on this car though! It you just squirt the wash gently it’ll only use your wipers once. If your windshield needs a crazy thorough cleaning and you hold the wash wand for longer, it’ll wipe more times than just once.

Things I enjoy about the Chevrolet Cruze:

  • The soft suspension makes for a comfortable ride since it cushions the bumps that may be in the road.
  • It was surprisingly quiet on the road. Even though it had winter tires on.
  • Gets up to speed on the on-ramps to highways quickly.
  • Satellite radio! Usually I’d listen to the radio and rarely my CDs that I always have in the car. But this past week I’ve been rocking out to the satellite radio stations. So much better selection!
  • On-Star services (though it did lead me astray once).
  • Comfortable seating and steering wheel.
  • Blue tooth to make hands free phone calls.
  • USB ports to plug in your cell phone charger or even iPod to listen to music if you wanted.

Things I’d like to see changed:

  • I’d like to see illuminated either cup holders or in the key fob area where you can put spare change (see photo above). I park in an underground parking lot and I sometime fumbled to find the key when it’s dark out.
  • Wish it had more of an arm rest for the driver. I like to drive mostly with my left hand and my right hand still on the wheel but have my elbow resting comfortably on something. There was an armrest, but it would’ve been more comfortable if it were longer.
  • The lumbar adjustment is awkwardly too far back.

Thanks again to GM Canada for letting me drive and review the Chevrolet Cruze for the week, it’s been fun. Let’s do it again sometime soon!

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GM Canada, Photos

Lost with OnStar and a blogger meetup

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Saturday morning I drove to Toronto to return the Chevrolet Cruze that I had for the week. It was a little pain in the butt to deal with the last final things though. When I got out of my parking garage, I used to OnStar navigation to tell me how to get to The Queensway. I probably mentioned Queensway without the “the” added in there. The OnStar woman trying to help me out couldn’t find it and I was mentioning that it intersected with The East Mall and it was just off the 427.

Anyway I moseyed on my way with the directions failing to realize it was directing me to Queensway Avenue. I didn’t realize this early enough, until I was on a residential street telling me that I had already arrived at my location. I knew I should’ve ignored it when it told me to keep going on the highway when I saw what exit I needed to take, I ignored it lol.

I called OnStar again a little frustrated and telling them about my little rendezvous with trying to find this dealership to return the car. Thankfully I was only 9km’s away. The nav wanted me to go back onto the highway – this time the Gardiner Expressway, but when I went to get on, there was a cop car blocking the entrance way so I had to keep going on this main road. The nav box was beeping at me telling me to do a u-turn, do a u-turn. Til I finally just ignored it and tried to find The Queensway by myself. Thankfully it was actually on that street, just at the very beginning. So I stayed on that street for a good twenty minutes of driving until I found the dealership.

I have to say though, you should really map out where you’re going in advance, as anything like this could happen to anyone. I kinda knew I was going in the wrong direction when it told me to veer left, instead of get off the highway when I saw my exit. Navigation systems aren’t brilliant scientists and they’re not the be all end all. But they will help you find where you are going if you have the correct directions. Obviously. 

So that was all fine and dandy. After that I ended up shopping downtown at the Eaton Centre. I had original plans to go up in Yorkville and shop at Anthropologie but I didn’t want to bear the windy freezing  cold day walking around outside. I shopped til I dropped, literally. I think I’ll be filming a haul video on my YouTube because those are always fun to watch.

Then it was time for the blogger meetup that Morgan had organized!A few new faces, a few familiar faces. I love going to meetups because I get to meet the bloggers that I’ve been reading daily. For instance, I’ve been creepin’ Jess’ site for a while and we’ve now met offline! So fun!

Back row: Robyn, Krysten, ME!, Sam, Christina, Jess, Sara, Sheryl, Kristin, Steph, Kate

Front row: Morgan, Lisa, Kristin, Megan, Therese

A list of the bloggers who attended, just stealing all of the blogger links from Samantha’s site. No big deal.

Here’s Stephanie and I. She’s now living in the same city as I am!

We were introducing ourselves to the group and when it was my turn to speak up I said something along the lines of Hey my name is Nancy. Totally normal. I said I blogged over here at spiffykerms.com and what I had planned to say was that I blogged about Food, Fashion, Fitness. But what came out was that I blogged about Fatness. A mixture between Fitness and Fashion? Whoops! I started laughing super hard and could barely finish what I had to say. Next!

The Toronto area for bloggers is pretty huge, and the last time we met we had a great turnout as well. We need to do these meetups more often!

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GM Canada, Photos, Reviews

On-Star. My new favorite button

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As you already know I have the Chevrolet Cruze for the week, to review on my blog. Two days ago my co-worker Julie and I drove to her house for lunch. I used the On-Star button for the very first time to navigate to her place. The On-Star button is located on the mirror of the vehicle.

I pushed the button semi-knowing what to expect.

The Satellite radio was on, and the volume lowered itself and the phone started ringing just like an ordinary hands-free telephone. I’m always tuned into either this radio station or BPM. I love upbeat tuneage. ;)

A gentleman came on the phone and I wasn’t sure what I was expecting so I immediately blurted out the details of Julie’s address. It took about 30 seconds for him to find the location as we were driving towards her house and he asked if there was anything else he could do for us. I started giggling and thanking him saying that On-Star is my new favorite feature on a car. He laughed as well then thanked me for using On-Star. I can’t get over how neat this feature is. You don’t need an extra GPS attached to your windshield, you can comfortable chat to a person over satellite and they can find you instantly on the road, and know where you are.

He then hung up, and just like that the directions popped up onto my screen where I’d normally see what music was playing on my dashboard. It literally was a step-by-step route to her house like if you were using a GPS system. Turn right in 400 meters… and so on.

The On-Star feature isn’t just for directions. You can call them from your cell phone if you locked your keys in the car. You can even call them to blink and toot your horn if you can’t find your car in the mall’s parking lot (oh my word), and even call for the closest location to a Tim Hortons. Come to think of it, I kinda just feel like calling them up for a chat but I don’t want to waste their time.

On Friday or Saturday I plan on writing a pro’s and con’s list of everything I thought about the vehicle. Such as the size of the car, gas mileage, how I thought the Cruze drove, and little things that I’d like to see added.

Is there anything in particular you’d like me to blog about? It’ll be interesting to see how it handles the rough roads tomorrow morning. It’s supposed to snow 5-10cm overnight, then freeze and then snow again tomorrow.

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