Futureshite - Chevrolet Spark

[rml2345]

I know it's a new car, but I've never really reviewed anything before, and since it won't be staying long I thought I'd pop one up for something futureshite.

 

 

This is a Chevrolet Spark+... At the time of writing I've done about 50 miles in it. Powered by a 995cc engine it's manufacturer claims on their website, "The Spark is fun to drive: nippy and nimble around town, yet comfortable and smooth on the open road. As well as great handling characteristics..." and yet somehow I disagree with that. I know it's just a hire car and at £9300,00 (checked it earlier) not a desperately expensive one and yet it suffers from faults that the Yaris didn't.

When picking it up, the man went over a few things and then left me to settle in and get on with it. Finding a seating position that is comfortable should be easy as the seat adjusts for height, fore and aft and the backrest adjust, all very simple stuff really. However it's completely academic as the seating position that gives the least pain also gives the least visibility... A considerable achievement considering how little glass there is to begin with. So I'm sitting where it's easiest to see and thankful that it doesn't have to go very far due to the pain experienced in my hip, knee and ankle after about 10 minutes driving. Other than that, the cabin is reasonable, although the seat is also rather on the narrow side without much support for shoulders and a bit firm too.

 

 

The rest of the cabin is... Alright looking actually, although all surfaces feel like hey were made by the lowest bidder, with the consequence being that they feel incredibly nasty and quite cheap. I do like the little instrument pod though, and the dials are back lit blue at night which is pretty cool. It's pretty roomy in the back, although the windows are so small that it seems a pretty dark place to sit if I'm honest. The boot space is crap though, the aperture is an awkward shape and the sill is daftly high too. The Yaris sill was high enough, but this seems to be taking the mickey. Seats are 2/3 split and appear to fold though. I wonder if it'll take two pallets...

So enough of this interior waffle, what's it like to drive? Well...

When I picked the car up, I did about 5 miles before stopping for a really good poke about. The first thing I did was check the fuel flap as I was convinced that it was a diesel and that the man from the Rent-A-Car had got it wrong. I'm afraid it's not a diesel... It does however claim to have 4 cylinders and 16 valves, although from the driver's seat you'd never tell. Jab the light and lifeless throttle an, eventually the engine will give a gruff bark to acknowledge that it will do more than 600rpm.

So into gear and depress the feather light clutch. Normally this sort of thing would be a boon, but the travel is extensive and gives little feel for where the biting point really is. The brakes don't do feedback either, in case you were wondering. On the move, it's a competition between deafening road noise in the cabin or the gruff and grumbly 1.0 litre engine doing diesel impressions. At some points it whines like a turbo too, but if there's one of those I can't find it.

Acceleration is lethargic, as I suppose you would expect from a 864kg car with only 67bhp. I've noticed that the engine does very little before 3000rpm, then goes batshit mental between 3 and, say 4500 before another gear is required to shut the deafening thing up. I imagine that, if it wasn't for the leg cramp (see above) that this would become tiresome on a long journey. All journeys are long when accompanied with the Chevroleyt Spark.

Handling is best described as lifeless. At worst it corners like Bambi on roller-skates. There is a great deal of body roll (more than the Yaris) yet it is much less comfortable as the suspension seems incapable of dealing with ruts, speedbumps and potholes in a way that could be described as comfortable.

This isn't a car to go blezzing down B roads in, or even one that's particularly enjoyable to pilot from point to point.

Am I being harsh? Well... If it was my money I'd expect a car to at least make me smile when I drive it. It doesn't necessarily have to be good (my old 740, for example) for this to happen but it must happen. The Chevrolet Spark does not make me smile. Even a tiny bit. There are things I like. It's not a bad looking car really, and the interior looks dead funky but the cheap feel and the woeful driving experience really put me off it.

It's almost certainly futureshite, but I won't have one.

[Ross_K]

Nasty.

 

I'm guessing it's a thinly disguised Daewoo Matiz?

[vulgalour]

Many of these complaints could be levelled at my housemate's Peugeot Aygo (or whatever it's called) but that at least feels and looks less cheap than the Chevrolet pictured above. It looks a bit like someone's thrown a tin of black gloss at a Fisher Price toy and by the sounds of it, drives like it too. What a miserable thing, I don't even think the styling is redeeming, it looks like it tried rather too hard to drive between two walls.

[rml2345]

Apparently it's the replacement for the Daewoo Matiz although I'm not sure how much they share underneath...

According to Wikipedia it's still sold in some markets as a Matiz.

[Guest]

Urgh.

 

This would get pinged off the limiter in second every day until they came to collect it. Cold or otherwise. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN BWARRRRRP.

 

That's pretty much what happened to the Shatiz I got given by Enterprise. They gave it me with £6 of fuel in, covered in crap and filthy inside. Pretty shit for an insurance policy that promised you a replacement car equivalent to the one you crashed.......

 

The 4 pot Matiz will do 57 in second, for anyone who wanted to know. They took it back early because some idiot had given them 5 grand for it. Fuck knows why. Also, the staff whinged I hadn't filled it up when they collected it.

 

I told them to fuck off and shoved the keys through their letter box later that day.

 

Arseholes.

[willswitchengage]

Yep, but with more "world-car"ness as it's sold in the States too.

 

These things are pretty pointless when you can get an Up! or Aygo for £500 less.

 

edit - Volks - I liked the C1 Aygo thing, they pulled off the "less is more" thing brilliantly, it's a cheap car marketed as a cheap car - not a fisher price car marketed as something more exciting. Fun to drive as well..

[Shep Shepherd]

I'd rather have 10 knackered Volvo 740s than one showroom-fresh one of those!

[ashmicro]

I drove one a Spark a little while ago ( a mate had one as a courtesy car). I wanted to like the car, as I think it's not bad looking. Alas, it was shit, for the reasons RML has stated. It also just felt cheap and nasty, the paint was pretty ropey for a factory job and it made an irritating noise (the engine). I don't know what dealer discounts are like, but if you take the list price, it's way way too much money for what you get.

 

A used Hyundai Getz (or 2 for the price of a new Spark) is a great deal better.

[M'coli]

Another fantiastic victory for User Centred Design...

[vulgalour]

edit - Volks - I liked the C1 Aygo thing, they pulled off the "less is more" thing brilliantly, it's a cheap car marketed as a cheap car - not a fisher price car marketed as something more exciting. Fun to drive as well..

 

Don't get me wrong, the Citropeugota C107go is actually a pretty good car for what it does and is put together well enough. I'm not sure I would have one personally but my housemate has never really been let down with his - apart from some front brake issues which mostly seem garage service related than anything fundamentally wrong with the car - and it does everything he demands of it with the barest amount of love. To me, they're very much what the BMW Mini should have been as in the contemporary car market, they do everything that Issigoni's masterpiece did back in the '60s. For once, it's a car I would recommend to people, providing they're aware of the shortcomings, much as I would have with the Mini back in the '60s and '70s. I'll also say that my housemate's Mini-Pug out corners and out accelerates my '85 Polo, or at least it did on the Snake Pass when my car was loaded with stock... he also didn't cook his brakes on the downhill bits.

[Guest]

The C1 - Aygo - 107 is a top little car, the only thing that counts against them IMHO is a stupid boot. The triple sounds fantastic for such a small engine. I'm stunned nobody's turboed one, it would be a riot.

 

I'd much rather have a second hand one of those over a Spark or Matiz.

 

Also, Mk 2 Polo brakes are shite as standard. My mate Nev has a mad bike carbed one four sixteen valve bread van and he managed to hoy a Mk 3 Golf servo and some larger front discs on to it. It's not doing much stopping at the moment because the engine is shitting oil out of every possible orifice. Upgrades are available though.

[gricer]

The old Matiz was called the Chevrolet Spark in China. GM has standardised away from the Daewoo names, except for Korea where the cars are still all Daewoo-badged. However it's considered cool to rebadge with Chevy badges, so I guess the Daewoo name will disappear in a few years.

[Cavcraft]

If you don't like the note from the engine or the dashboard plastics then FFS don't ever try a 1.0 3 cyclinder Coarsa. The (Spark) dashboard looks bloody awful, what the hell is that thing to the right of the speedo, it actually looks like the barcode reader the Iceland delivery man uses but with no buttons or screen?

 

Hire car companies are pretty crap as Jon has suggested. When my beloved Calibra was written off by some MIWLTF I ended up with a year or so old Fiesta which was great for about the first fifteen minutes then the novelty wore off entirely, not helped by having a cramped cabin.

[rml2345]

The barcode reader has got the rev counter and fuel gauge in it. There isn't even a clock FFS!

[Ross_K]

Are real people actually buying these spark things, or are they just going into rental fleets at massively discounted prices?

 

Surely Hyundai/Kia have this end of the market sewn up with the i10/i20/Picanto/Rio* and their 5-year/7-year* warranty?

 

*Delete as applicable