Met an unhappy Aveo owner today
 

The guy's a tradesman. Uses the car to haul around tools & supplies for small home reno jobs. (Back seat is out of the car).

It's a small town: I had actually offered to buy this guy's 95 Metro over the phone when Ivan and I were searching for ForkenSwift host vehicles this winter. (But he wanted too much for it at the time - $500 - and of course ended up selling it to someone else for only $125 grrr... but that's another story...)

ANYWAY... he bought the Aveo because the Metro was getting rusty, had a bad axle, and he wanted A/C. And he's sorely disappointed he did.

"Tractor transmission" is how he describes it. Geared way too low, engine screams at highway speeds, he says. Really disappointed with the FE (though he really shouldn't be, if he did the research in advance).

RH77 says:

The problem is gearing.

And the better way is simple: an optional, taller final gear for those of us willing to SHIFT occasionally when needed for acceleration or hill climbing at top gear speeds.

For the masses who apparently aren't willing to ever shift out of top gear once they get there, fine. Stick with the "original" too-short gearing.

EDIT: of course this option puts the onus on the sales people to adequately explain the pros and cons of each choice, and that's where the idea falls on its face.

RH77 adds:

just found this thread, glad i didn't get an aveo.
"D" for "dat way ->" lol.

oohh lookit d time. krapkrapkrap.

My son has a 07 Aveo 4 dr. Your right the 5th gear is way too low. I took the car last Fall to Salt Lake City from Cincinnati, OH. I averaged 38 MPG going 70-75 all the way. I feel if the car was geared taller it would get very respectable numbers.

I liked car other than that. Yea, it is a small car. I had a Metro from 1993-2000 and it is put together nicer than my 93 Metro IMHO.

Also the price was right. He bought the car out the door for $10,500 air included. This included $800 discount for my GM card, no trade and tax and registration. The Yaris was about $4000 more out the door where we live. The Aveo also had the 100,000 drive train warranty.

The hatchback would be a great candidate for a Basjoos type of aeromod if you could get a taller 5th gear.

bestmapman -

In 2006 I was in Europe for work and I rented a Chevrolet Kalos, which is the European Aveo. I didn't push the car to any limits, but it seemed fine on the freeway to me. There is the possibility of a 5th gear swap IF the transmissions are otherwise physically the same.

Now for some googling ...

Chevrolet Kalos model comparison spreadsheet (PDF)
http://media.gm.com/gb/chevrolet/en/...d_kalos_en.pdf
Soooooooo, there is a different 5th gear. I have no idea, however, if these are swappable gears. I am just looking at the ratios. Also, I can't tell what the benefit would be. The ratio difference looks negligible to me.

Now, here's an enticing post. There might be an even better Aveo 5th gear lying around :

Topic: gear ratios
http://aveoclub.proboards26.com/inde...ead=1127678655
If the above information is accurate, then it *appears* that if you have a D16 manual transmission, there is the possibility of swapping the SOHC 5th gear into a DOHC Aveo. I assume that this would result in a 7%+ drop in RPMs in 5th gear (0.707/0.763 = 0.926; 1 - 0.926 = 0.073 => 7.3%).

CarloSW2

Yeah If I was to get a chevy it'd be a Cobalt. Isn't EPA about the same on both it and the Aveo? Plus it looks sportier.

50 mpg is very doable in the Aveo. A taller gear would be nice though

homeworkhome53

my step dad bought the 5 door liftback when it first came out, of course with the 5 speed. He has been getting 39-40 in it since day one

i was wondering why the fe rating was sooooo low, 24 is pretty small city for a car of it's size. would be better off with yaris lower msrp and better fe.

"would be better off with yaris lower msrp and better fe." I don't know where you are shopping, but when I looked into a Yaris the msrp was $4000+ more than an Aveo. Yes, the Yaris has a better EPA mpg, But turning in my aveo for what may or may not be better mpg with a $4000 penalty? I don't see many yaris owners beating my mpg. Last 3 tanks over 50mpg. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"

homeworkhome53

2008 Toyota Yaris | New Toyota Coupes — Yahoo! Autos 2008 yaris msrp $11,550 - $14,650
2008 Chevrolet Aveo | New Chevy Sedans — Yahoo! Autos aveo msrp $12,170 - $13,920

they are both 2008's 2009 yaris wasn't listed yet.
the yaris can be had for lower but also has a bigger range, but that may be because of extra options chevy doesn't offer.

When the first Aveo came out in Canada it was rated only .1L/100km better that the midsize Malibu... Now I see that the Aveo is rated lower, so maybe they've changed the gearing a bit or something. I shouldn't criticize people who got one but it seemed to be a car for people who didn't do their homework if you actually bought one anywhere near MSRP. As posted above, getting a small car for $4000 less buys alot of gas and makes a much smaller payment so maybe getting the Yaris of a Fit isn't such a no brainer.

The really sad part is that Suzuki is selling the Aveo as their Swift here instead of bringing over the real Swift. It is supposed to be many times the car that the Aveo is. I guess us north americans are not capable of appreciating a good small car...

I think it's more of a marketing/dollar revenue issue. My impression is that in the U.S. and to some extent Canada, they car manufacturers largely are moving in a implicit direction of putting the 4 speed automatic, torque lockup into larger vehicles with taller gearing/lower final drives, while leaving the smaller cars with less tall/higher final drives, either for torque response.

Ultimately the overall direction is to create, largely, a circumstance where they can still sell SUV's or larger vehicles because they are finally moving them towards getting better effectiveness and by their manipulation of the market, there isn't as large a gap between them and smaller vehicles. Since they can charge more, they can make more $.

The general scuttlebutt is that the Aveo gets lousy mileage.

Contrast that with homeworkhome53; he gets better mileage in his Aveo than I get in my Metro 1.3L, 5 speed.

There was a fellow on GMinsidenews.com named Wolfman who also mileage well over 40mpg regularly.

It's all very anecdotal, but at least its fair to say it's possible to get decent mileage with an Aveo.

I get this impression too, especially now that many SUV's are basically cars, or the wagon version of a midsize car. It is a way to charge $15k more for $3,000 of equipment.
I think this is why more people are buying smaller imports as well, GM, Chrysler, and Ford would really have you buy one of their SUV's instead of small car and I think it shows in the quality of their small cars.
Also it was so sad during the NHL playoffs, Ford payed big bucks for premium ad time and played the same stupid Ford Super Duty truck ad 100's of times when gas prices were going through the roof... How many people watching need to tow 20000lbs? How many wish they could get better mileage tomorrow on the way to work?
If they sell 2000 of those trucks in Canada they will be lucky, meanwhile their Focus sales are being destroyed by Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, KIA even...

bigger tires to make all the gears a little higher? (plus recalibrate speedometer)


for example, changing from (stock) 28.9" tire to a 31" tire "changed" my axle ratio from 3.73:1 to 3.48:1. drops the rpm's about 250 going down the road at the same speed

I find this article very interesting as I bought a 06 aveo to replace my 97 metro. My aveo is going to cost me around $3000 less when I am done rebuilding it, it was a total loss car before I had it. I work for a large auto salvage yard and have found out by running vin numbers through the local GM dealership final drive ratios for a possible swap out of gears. A Chevy optra has final drive ratio of 3.56 compared to an Aveo's 3.94 I am going have to wait though until I can try them out in core transmissions before I will try them out in a good one. I'm sure that that swap would help with my fuel mileage.

The american aveo and astra were both inaccurate representations of their original counterparts. This is why I would not buy either. My ion, with a bigger engine, gets better economy than either, while being much quicker. Part of this was gearing (aveo), the other the engine (astra). Both cars have versions superior in both acceleration and economy (because both can be had simultaneously). Too bad gm can't bring a proper econo hatch over here.

I think the reason GM doesn't bring an excellent economy car to the American market is because they know it would cut into the sales of their more profitable lineup. So disappointing, they have no idea what it is like to have the means of the average working class family. Especially since that average dropped when we exported so many of our middle class jobs.

Interesting! Do you know if the final drives are actually interchangeable? You should definitely start a new thread about this if you're going to do it.

---

Since this thread was originally started nearly 3 years ago, the fuel economy competition has really ratcheted up. Even the Aveo's fuel economy improved quite a lot - from worst in class 23/32 in 2004 to middle-pack 27/35 for the 2011 5-speed. Different engine, slightly taller gearing, aero tweaks. Nothing to write home about for sure. But nothing to sneeze at either.

The next gen Aveo (2012 model in North America, 2011 model year in Europe) is likely to get around 40 mpg (US) highway and will have a 6-speed manual transmission option. In Europe, it will be offered with 2 diesel engine options for the first time. Of course the diesels won't show up on this side of the pond.

I think it's just a matter of time before a new non-hybrid subcompact hatchback ties the Metro's old highway fuel economy rating of 44 mpg (US) (per the 2008 EPA rating).

I am following up on this. Unfortunately it takes time to find core trannies to compare them side by side.

I'll post more when the info come available.

Aveo Diesel is on sale in India. New one will come with FIAT Multijet - another car to add to my multijet engined option list.