Good afternoon /c/cars.
I’m looking to get my first car and I want to get some opinions. I’m thinking of buying a 2008 Chevy Aveo with safety certificate and the price is $2500 CAD. I’m interested to see what you all have to say about this particular vehicle, if you have any personal experience with it or any gripes.
Any help is appreciated
Thank you
That’s an awfully old badge engineered Daewoo. Unless there are compelling reasons why you’re looking at that particular car, you’d probably do better getting something Japanese or Korean. If you want domestic, go for a mid size sedan or a depreciated semi luxury sedan like a Buick.
Unless you really need a car, save up and get something newer.
My main reason is that it was the cheapest thing I can find that comes with a safety. Most hondas and Toyotas of the same year are double the price without a safety.
What is a “safety”?
There’s a reason the Hondas and toyotas are double.
Safety is having to pass a multipoint check in this province to be able to be registered.
https://www.ontario.ca/page/safety-standards-certificate#section-2
Look at the Korean makes. As good or better than the Japanese, but they don’t have the premium the Japanese ones do.
And just because it has a safety doesn’t mean it doesn’t need work. It just means it’s road worthy at the moment. Especially at that price.
I used to work with a guy who bought one of these. He was very hot on it being his “dang old red blooded American working man’s Chevy on a budget” and was not best pleased when I proved to him that it was just a rebadged Daewoo, and specifically from the era before Korean cars were any good.
He had the transmission replaced three times under warranty, and when it conked out again after the warranty was up, the replacement and labor was several times what the car was worth and he wound up junking it. It had a myriad of other weird problems before then.
I’d rather own a bicycle.
I remember test driving a bunch of new cheap cars in 2009. I felt like the Aveo was the worst one. I ended up with a Ford Focus of that generation, if that helps. The Focus was great for me until I traded it in a couple of years ago. It was still running great.
I would say don’t get a newer Focus with the dual clutch transmission, get a manual if you can.
Skip that thing. There’s a reason why you don’t see many on the road anymore and it’s because they were all junked and crushed long ago.
Unless you have the skills to do major repairs yourself, buying the cheapest car you can find is a mistake that will cost you many times more than if you’d just bought a more expensive car to begin with. Imagine dropping $2500 on this car and then the transmission goes out and a shop wants $5k to replace it. You’re either spending $7500 on the Aveo or losing your $2500 and putting yourself right back in the situation you’re in now but $2500 poorer.
I don’t know shop rates in Canada, but in the US you’ll easily be spending $150/hr for labor plus parts so even small repairs can balloon out of control if you can’t do them yourself. I was quoted $800 to replace a fuel pump in an Explorer probably 10 years ago now even though it’s fairly simple to do (I just didn’t have the proper jack to drop the fuel tank but just bought one and did it myself while still saving $600. 10 years later, that quoted price is probably double now.
