Jaco’s Random Writings

This is neither current nor related to anything important. However, I feel like I must share my experience. A while back, my sister had gotten into an accident. Messed up her car pretty badly. So while her car was in the shop being reconstituted, the insurance company paid for a rental. There’s just one problem. My sister at the time was under 21. She couldn’t legally drive that car. So guess who had to sacrifice his car and drive the rental. This wouldn’t be that bad of thing… except that the rental was a 2007 Chevrolet Aveo.

Before I jump right into this, I’ll explain what brought about in me the need to recall this. My dad’s looking for a new car. His is pretty old and he needs a good car to last a long daily commute. So I started thinking about what kind of car I would replace my venerable Toyota with (2000 Toyota Corolla LE). I was looking at sub-compacts, as I’m a bit of an environmentalist/cheap bastard. And I ran across a review for the new Chevy Aveo. This brought back a whole torrent of repressed memories and bottled-up rage. So much so that I was filled with the immediate urge to share my experience with this car.

The version I had was the 4-door hatchback. My immediate impression was that “Hey, this car doesn’t look too bad.” Got in the car. I was immediate uncomfortable. The seats were uncomfortable. The way the inside was laid out mean that the left side of the center console was jamming into my right shin. While tolerable for short trips, anything longer than 15 minutes is painful. There are international laws against this kind of torture. Besides that, the interior was generally chintzy, with everything covered with hard plastic. The driving experience was… meh. A Toyota Yaris is more exciting than this for the same fuel economy and the same price. Besides being weak, the engine had one aspect to it that drive me up the wall. When the car idled, the engine would vibrate so much that the entire car shook. This is at idle, not when you’re moving. And since this is a recent model (relative to when I drove it), it doesn’t speak much for the quality.

Turns out that the Chevy Aveo is actually a Daewoo Kalos that’s been re-branded. A little disappointing to see that GM didn’t even care enough to design a sub-compact for the American market. Well, needless to say, at the end of those 2 weeks, I was so happy to be back in my Toyota. I hugged it and kissed it and called it all sorts of loving names.

So there. That rant was completely pointless and served no purpose other than to allow me to rant.