Faults:

The high pressure hose went out about 3 months after I got the car. Cost $300 to replace. I'm pretty sure this was my fault. I purchased the card from a used car lot and didn't do a good job at checking the engine. Turned out the power steering fluid was low. I added some fluid, but accidently added way too much. I tried to scoop some out, then just stuck the cap back on. Very stupid on my part. A couple months later there was a puddle of steering fluid underneath the car.

Alternator went out after a year. The repair was $600 to replace the alternator and the battery.

General Comments:

I might have avoided this car if I did some research on it. The reason is simply that it is very expensive to do any work on this car. The engine is wedged in tight. Just to reach the rear 3 spark plugs you have to remove one of the engine mounts and tilt the engine forward.

That said, I am very happy with the car. It has good power, good internal space, and gives a very smooth ride. I have read horror stories about the reliability of this engine, but it's been very solid for me. I don't drive the car hard though.

Most of the sites that I read about this engine have come from fan sites, where I assume the drivers of these cars run their cars hard. That might explain why I havn't had a major problem short of the alternator in 3 years.

Faults:

The only trouble I had with the car is that the head gasket went at 90,000 miles.

General Comments:

This is the best car I ever bought. I went 50,000 before doing any brake work. The motor has plenty of power and the ride is great. If I would get in an accident I would buy another.

Faults:

We have had basically two significant problems with this car. During the second year of ownership, with less than 20,000 miles the car developed an oil leak on the intake manifold. It was still under warranty so we took it in to the dealer to get it fixed. It took two attempts by the dealer to get it right. Then the following year it started leaking again. This time, we had to take it back three additional times before the dealer got it resolved. Thankfully it has not leaked since.

The second, and most troubling problem, has to do with the brakes. Last summer, we had to replace the front brake pads and rotors having driven less than 40,000 miles on the original equipment. Then, again this year, at about 45,000 miles we had to replace the front, pads and rotors again as well as a significant pads and something else (I don't recall) on the rear brakes. This is outrageous. Why is it that GM could not have done a better job on the brakes for this car. To make matters worse, we had to take the car back to the dealer after driving it for one day on the most recent brake repair because they would not stop the car. This could have been tragic. We have two big problems here. 1) poor design on behalf of GM and 2) poor quality repair work at the dealer.

General Comments:

My family is an exact match in terms of target market for Chevy products. Married with 2 kids. GM really missed the mark on this one. As a result I will not buy another GM product. This is true even though I have racked up $3,000 worth of GM bonus dollars on my GM Credit Card. I will buy a new car in the next 30 days and it will be from a Japanese manufacturer. I have given up on our domestic auto-makers.