Transcription
Here we have a pre-owned 2018 Chevy Cruise. This one comes in the LS trim level in Silver Ice Metallic, and then we have jet black cloth interior.
For the powertrain, we get a 1.4 L turbocharged 4-cylinder engine that's mated to a six-speed automatic transmission. And this one in particular has around 72,000 miles on it, so we're going to see how it's held up.
As we come to the front, we have halogen headlamps. With this amazing LS, you don't have those optional LED headlamps or LED daytime running lights, excuse me, but still like the body lines and such. Just a little bit of road rash on this whole front bumper here, but nothing too bad. Little dent there, but for the most part, it's held up pretty good, especially for the mileage.
Down here, we get 15-inch steel wheels and those wheel covers there. And I want to give a big shout out to Chevrolet Buick GMC Murphy's Boro for allowing me to review this car today. I'll leave a link below in the description.
But power door lock controls, power mirrors, power windows. We have an electronic rear window lock there, and then trunk release, headlamp controls. Hit this twice to pop the hood, and then we do have a foot pedal parking brake there. Pull this latch here, and we can tilt the steering wheel. And there's our manual driver seat there.
But I have that seat up front adjusted for some of my size, being 6'3" with longer legs, my driving position. So I'm going to sit behind myself in the back seat here, just to show the rear legroom. So certainly couldn't fit back here long term, but I mean, my head is, my hair is barely touching the roof liner or the headliner here, and my knees, you can see where those are there. But no seat back pockets, no folding middle seat or anything like that.
But we do have the nice sturdy hanger hooks there if you want to hang your shirts or uniforms or whatever. They're like the ones we get in the full-size trucks, so I like how they did that.
Just a quick look in the trunk space, and we do have a release if you want to pop the trunk from back here. So I'm glad we still have that. And there we have a look at the cargo space itself. So it's actually pretty deep down, and it's actually a pretty good space, I think. And then if you want to get to the spare, you pull this up here. And then when you have it, there would be this one might have had an inflator kit. And then it looks like your battery is back there. So interesting setup. Sorry about the brightness this morning, nice glary day.
But there's a look at the back end exhaust. We're going to come around to the rear passenger side. I'm going to show you how these seats fold down. So you just pull here. I don't know what's going on here. All right, I guess you got to pop it from both sides because this is all one piece, and that whole seat, that whole seat will fold flat. So I haven't actually tried to do that, so that's pretty interesting. And just make sure the seat belts are out of the way. You can actually put them there, so that makes it easier. And you can lock the whole seat back. So yeah, I definitely didn't see that one coming.
And then here's our front passenger seat here, and that's manual. Glove compartment there. And then as we come around to the front end once again, there's that 1.4 turbo four-cylinder.
But next, let's go ahead and hop in the driver's seat. So with this one being the most basic model, I should be able to go through this interior pretty quickly. There's the horn sound. Vinyl wrap steering wheel. Over here to the radio, I believe this is a 7-inch screen. We get AM, FM, Bluetooth. We have an AUX input as well, and then you have the wired CarPlay, Android Auto compatibility too. Change your language in here. You also have Teen Driver and a Rear Seat Reminder, which is interesting to have on this more basic model, but it's a, it's definitely a plus. Backup camera's there, guidelines follow you as you turn the steering wheel. Shortcuts down here, volume, click there to mute, hazards here, and then we have single zone manual climate controls, USB A, AUX input, 12-volt. And then for the six-speed, just pull the lever, reverse, neutral, drive. You have that limiter down there, you can manually shift, and it'll show you what gear you're in that bottom right-hand corner. Traction control, bottle holders, little storage compartment, center console cubby space. Look at the back seat from up here. OnStar, and we do have a vanity mirror, no light, but it's there.
And then blinkers are here to control your gauge cluster. That middle part, you actually use this to go through each submenu, and then you can go through the submenus themselves by doing that. And then that's the center button or enter button, excuse me, right there. And then your high beams, when the lights are on, toggle those on or off, and flash there. Then your intermittent wipers, one time, off, intermittent, low, high. You can adjust that intermittent there. And then key is in the ignition there.
And next, let's go ahead and take this 2018 Cruze LS out on the road for a test drive.
Starting the test drive in this Cruze LS, the 1.4 turbo, it has some pickup to it. But it is a 1.4 L 4-cylinder engine, so it's definitely not anything crazy. It's not tuned to necessarily perform, but it is meant to be very efficient. These were EPA rated to get, I think, 30 MPG city, 40 MPG highway. And for what they are, I just always consider them to be quite a bargain because you could fit five adults in here. Now, someone taller like myself wouldn't be as comfortable in the back seat. Up here, I'm perfectly fine because I'm able to adjust my seat. But just for the money, these are always cheap cars to have, cheap cars to maintain, and cheap cars to put fuel in. We're going to give it a little pull.
So pretty good pull from the turbo four and the six-speed shifts pretty seamlessly. Now, one thing that this LS does not have is cruise control, so that's kind of a letdown. But if you're trying to save as much money as possible, not really a big deal. And what I have seen over the years is a lot of these that get aftermarket cruise control put on them after the fact, and that seems to work pretty good with these too. So if you find one of these and it doesn't have cruise, you can see about getting an aftermarket cruise control system put in and you should be good to go.
But with this being a smaller car, it does feel it's taken just a bit by the wind being out here on the interstate doing about 75. So it's certainly not dangerous, but I can feel kind of the environment trying to blow me away here. But keep your hands on the steering wheel as you should, it won't be an issue. But overall, I mean, sound acoustics in here pretty good, ride quality is pretty good, and driving dynamics for this kind of vehicle are very good.
Now, to get this one in particular, I think it's on sale for 12, 13 grand, which isn't bad for something like this because at Chevrolet Buick GMC of Murphy's Boro, they do offer a lifetime powertrain warranty on this car in particular. So any catastrophic failure from the engine, transmission, drive axles, things of that nature will be covered under the warranty that's included. So if you do plan on keeping this for a long time, certainly if you want to finance it for five, six years, you'll be covered by that warranty for at least until you pay the car off, which is always nice.
But honestly, these aren't bad. I've seen quite a few of these with higher mileage and they're still running the streets just fine. And this one in particular, just having 72 and a half thousand miles, nothing out of the ordinary here. Feels like a new Cruze. Now, obviously, with this one being the base model and it's a 2018, you don't have your standard Chevy safety assist that comes on a lot of the LS trims in the '23, '24 model years. But not really a big deal if you're going to be driving this around town. Just, I always like having blind spot monitors, you don't get those here. But again, not really a big deal, you need to be paying attention to the road anyway.
But I do think again, this is a great economy car, especially if you need something to commute back and forth to work, to run around, get groceries in, and it doesn't break the bank in terms of gas, maintenance, and then just getting one private party from a dealer. So just an impressive car again if you're looking for a bargain and something that's cheap to to keep on the road.
But with all that being said, this brings me to the end of my review of this 2018 Chevy Cruze in the LS trim level.