Cruze proves popular in UK
July 10, 2009 by Matt Brogan
The Chevrolet Cruze, better known to us as the Holden Cruze, is proving a popular seller in the UK even before its official launch.
Following huge dealer demand for the Cruze, Swedish-Norwegian carrier Wallenius Wilhelmsen, the ‘Tijuca’ docked in Bristol to deliver 2133 new Cruzes ahead of the car’s showroom debut this month – the largest ever deliver of new Chevrolets to Britain.
More than half of the Cruzes on board have already been sold to customers (1133) with the remaining to go in to dealer stock.
“We’re thrilled to see such a large batch of cars arriving here,” said UK Chevrolet Managing Director, Mark Terry. “We’ve seen demand grow massively with three successive months of sales increases, and our stock levels were lower than normal as a result. The fact that over half of the cars on the ship were factory-ordered vehicles, already sold to customers, shows just how popular the Chevrolet brand has become in the UK. And as these cars become more visible on the roads, we should expect that popularity to grow further.”
And in case you’re wondering the ‘Tijuca’, which entered service earlier this year, is the biggest ship ever to bring Chevrolet cars to the UK. It has five separate loading decks and has an unladen weight of more than 30,000 metric tons.
- For our first impressions of the Holden Cruze, click here.
- For a full review of the Holden Cruze, click here.
- To see how the Holden Cruze compares to its rivals, click here.
Print it: 
my point is no body cares what your point is
Tomas79:
“Deawoo, is still at the arse end of the spectrum when compared to other Korean Cars such as Hyundai and Kia…”
I agree 100%, just look at the sales comparisons, the safety rating of the all round model ranges of all car makes from Korea, not to mention fuel economy. Daewoo is the lesser of those makes, Kia released the Cerato (TD) which does look really quite nice, has really good fuel economy, which is supposedly 6.1Ltrs/100km. Hyundai have the semi-new i30 (SLX), despite it’s lack of power (which is still more than the Cruze) is still a nice car with really good fuel economy 9.3Ltrs/100km. Both of these car makes are leagues ahead of Daewoo. The only reason GM wants anything to do with them is because they are cheapest thing they can get, and make a profit on.
And yes I am aware that having said that, the Cruze’s fuel economy is also 9.3ltrs/100kms, but I’m sticking with what I said, as it is across the whole model range from those car makes. That and the Cruze’s engine size is smaller than the comparison.
Yep, owned a Holden once, yep owned a Mitsubishi as well, both crap and luckily for me the late 90’s holden caught on fire because of poorly installed fuel injectors and the Mitsubishi was killed in a hail storm.
I wish some commentators here would stop making out GM is competent and worthy of saving or even deserves people handing over hard earned cash for its under engineered tatt. If they made a decent effort in the past you would give them a chance, but how long do you give them?
You can make a bad cake look nice with nice icing, to me it (Cruze) seems nicely painted and even reasonably well finished on TV, as a new model, but suffer the poor joker who buys it second hand or even third hand and the thing needs a full overhaul because of the poor components used or you might be lucky like me that the poor quality components were poorly screwed in and the thing catches on fire and you pocket the insurance and purchase something from a manufacturer who has an idea about quality.
Just because it is Korean, Australian, Brazilian, Thai etc does not mean necessarily mean poor quality, it depends on the core engineering of the individual company who screwed it together, GM is bankrupt and will sell you a camel if it could get away with it. I pity those who think it will last, its not the first time people have baught cars by a dying car maker and found the first few years OK, after the warranty expires the tune will change, GM are known for their top shelf warranty programs – NOT!!!!!