View Poll Results: Do you like the 2016 Cruze with a six speed manual ?>multiple choice:
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= 2016 Chevrolet6- speed >Manual =
#1
05-02-2016, 01:14 PM
= 2016 Chevrolet6- speed >Manual =
Can a stick shift make the Cruze sporty?
- Apr 2016
- By ALEXANDER STOKLOSA
- Photography By MICHAEL SIMARI Car & Driver
First Drive Review
Those seeking a compact car with a stick shift usually fall into one of three categories: Budget buyers on the prowl for the best deal (perhaps subscribing to the theory that manual transmissions yield better fuel economy), game-show winners, and those looking for a more involving, fun driving experience. We fall into the last camp, and the excellent driving dynamics and transmissions in the Mazda 3, the Ford Focus, and the new Honda Civic make them natural targets for our affection. Chevrolet not only has the price shopper covered with the manual-only, base model of the Cruze (the path chosen by Subaru, among others), it deserves credit for also offering the stick on nicer models at upper trim levels. Either way, for the purposes of this review we’re more interested in the transmission’s fun potential.
When it’s equipped to please the widest swath of American drivers—i.e., with the available six-speed automatic transmission—we found the second-generation Cruze is a darned good car in a recent test. It is a quiet, refined, roomy-feeling conveyance for the everyman’s everyday mission. Tuned for comfort, it is hardly zesty to drive, but there is promise in the turbocharged engine and the fundamentally well-tuned chassis. With a clutch pedal and a lever working through six gates onboard, does the Cruze wake up and break out of its conservative mold?
Nope
The manual adds a modicum of driver engagement over the Cruze’s available six-speed automatic but little else. The clutch is light and communicates its bite point well through the pedal, but the shifter’s action is light and offers only vague feedback when moving into or out of gear. Also, those who like to cover rock with paper in a game of rock, paper, scissors—or who awkwardly wrap an incoming fist bump in a handshake—will love the shift ****. It’s about the size of a baseball. The interface simply isn’t fun to use, and neither is it as effective as we’d hoped as a tool for extracting more zip from the Cruze’s well-behaved 1.4-liter turbocharged engine.
The transmission’s tall, widely spaced, fuel-economy-oriented gear ratios put the final kibosh on things. Chevrolet fits the manual with a shorter 3.83:1 final-drive ratio (the automatic uses a 3.53 final drive), but accounting for each forward speed’s ratios, only in first, fifth, and sixth gears is the overall gearing shorter. In second, third, and fourth, where most around-town driving takes place, notably taller overall gearing in the manual model leaves the Cruze feeling breathless when tasked with more than a steady cruise. During our drive through Nashville, we often found ourselves one gear lower than should be necessary, and even moderate grades required a downshift or two to climb smoothly. On several occasions, we even downshifted into first gear at speeds above 10 mph just to avoid lugging the engine in traffic.
Drivability issues notwithstanding, it’s puzzling that Chevy would saddle the Cruze with such tall gearing through most of the gears, yet leave shorter ratios in both the lowest and highest gears, a move that assuredly has an effect on the manual model’s 1-mpg hit on the EPA’s city and highway cycles (which are still solid at 29 and 41 mpg) relative to the automatic. Why not blanket the spectrum with sky-high ratios and match the automatic on the EPA test?
Of course, the easy workaround for tall gearing is to shift more and to hold lower gears. However, the Cruze’s ratios also are widely spaced. So much so that the engine’s 177 lb-ft torque peak, on a nice plateau between 2000 and 4000 rpm, doesn’t help all that much when the revs fall off hard after part-throttle upshifts. The turbo four’s 153 horsepower don’t pick up the phone until 5600 rpm, with power dropping off precipitously after that. The driver’s shift point, effectively, is at a 1980s-like 5600 rpm, there being no evident payoff in holding on to the 6500-rpm redline. The gap between first and second is particularly wide, with the 1-2 shift pancaking engine speed to just over 3000 rpm, where the engine makes about 100 horsepower. So the driver holds down the accelerator and waits for the turbo to start its long, slow march toward the next shift.
That’s where we did find a compelling, if unorthodox, use for this 900-rpm black hole between the horsepower peak and the redline—as a cushion for no-lift shifts. The dearth of power at max rpm softens the driveline shock to almost tolerable levels when holding the accelerator to the floor, clutching in and selecting the next gear, then popping the clutch. Driven this way—which we don’t recommend and acknowledge that few Cruze owners will employ—the engine stays on the boil and doesn’t suffer as much lag after upshifts. It feels quicker, but the practice is also more abusive.
Same Cruze, Busier Right Arm
It’s too bad the manual isn’t set up for fun—or even flexibility in traffic—because Chevrolet has taken the uncommon step of offering the transmission on three-quarters of the Cruze lineup. (In other circumstances, we’d be thrilled to report such widespread stick-shift availability on a single car line.) Outside of the base L, the stick is standard on the mid-level LS and the well-equipped LT, where it also comes paired with the RS appearance package (a more aggressive grille, a red-colored “RS” badge, fog lights, and a mild body kit) that’s optional on other Cruzes. The LT can even be optioned with a $900 Convenience package that includes heated cloth front seats, a power eight-way driver’s seat, and a proximity key with push-button ignition. Every Cruze, manual or otherwise, comes standard with an intuitive 7.0-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto phone integration. Pretty much the only must-have feature that’s missing is some kind of sport tuning for the suspension, but given this powertrain combination’s limits, maybe the Cruze’s cosseting ride is more of a consolation than a liability.
Rarely do we suggest that a buyer skip the manual-transmission option; after all, we’re the Save the Manuals people. In this case, though, a relaxed engine character that’s such a boon when paired with the automatic transmission, where it chugs the car around smoothly and contentedly, is ill served by the manual’s gearing. Entertaining stick-shift compacts exist elsewhere, but at least the decently equipped $17,495 L base model has plenty to offer the budget buyer outside of a fun drive.