Being the fully-optioned version of the 2010 Chevrolet Malibu, our long-term LTZ tester also comes with the best stereo available in the range. It is seemingly unbranded and doesn’t look like much, but for the first time ever, we had the time to delve deep into the entertainment system of a test car, and were pleased with the new tech on offer.
Our long-term 2010 Chevrolet Malibu had been taken away for more than a week for an agency photo shoot, during which time we cruised around in a courtesy Cruze. Our Malibu is back now, with about 500 additional kilos on the clock. As interesting as the Cruze is, upgrading to a Malibu again is like getting bumped up to first-class. In fact, on the day we got it back, we took it along when we returned the Accord Crosstour to the Honda Middle East HQ. We gave a tour of the Malibu to a person from Honda, and he uttered the words “wow nice”
The Chevy Malibu LTZ has now become my main mode of transportation, as my Jeep and BMW start gathering even more dust than usual. The Mallu is proving to be a rather comfortable ride, while also keeping up appearances. It looks like a luxury car after all, and behaves like one too.
I first asked General Motors’ old PR agency for a long-term test car back in 2005. At the time, they couldn’t comprehend why anyone would need a test car for more than 2 days, let alone some start-up website. Since then, we’ve asked others, and they all rejected us, mumbling something about the “quality” of our audience. But things have changed. Online is in. Chevy design is in. The new GM is in. And the new GM now has cool new PR people. They recently started a long-term test program, and we are only the second people to get a long-termer from them,
Something rather weird happened with my 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. After the starter motor blew out late last year, I got a brand new one fitted from the dealer. Then over the winter, my fuel consumption started dropping dramatically. As stated by the trip computer, it went from hovering above 17 litres/100 km down to as low as 15.5 litres/100 km, all without any change in driving style. One could attribute this to many other things, like winter weather or a dying trip computer, but neither can be proven definitively. This wasn’t my first winter with the Jeep, and the trip computer seems to be otherwise working fine.
After selling our 2005 Peugeot 307 XSI to my buddy, I had made a deal with him to fix the non-working windshield washers and replace the lost remote key. That turned out to be a bit of a hassle.
This is actually the first update on our 2005 Peugeot 307 2.0 XSI since we bought the black 3-door hatchback back in late 2008. Driven by a woman in its earlier life, some of the things that she did came back to haunt us over the past year, although the car did prove to be reasonably reliable. Oddly enough, my first update is also my last update. Largely driven by my college-going brother, I’ve now sold the car to Diego, my former PR guy.
So the Jeep has been running reasonably for the past year. I was also happy that I had a lifted vehicle with full-time all-wheel-drive during the recent rainy weather when many cars crashed and drowned. We have more or less kept up with maintenance, as we will list below. And then a problem started cropping up, with warning signs that we ignored until it was too late.
Every time I test a brand new luxury “crossover” 4×4, I realise just how brutish, noisy and unrefined my aging Jeep is. But then I remember that none of these new-fangled “crossover” thingies can even think about going off-road. And that should count for something. The 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee is chugging along rather decently in its 7th year.
Our BMW M Roadster soldiers on, having spent more than one year with us, racking up only 3000 km since we bought it at the beginning of 2008. Driving a hardcore-tuned sports car in daily traffic isn’t easy, so we fell back on our other automatic cars for city driving. Even then, costs came up during the year, some involving expected repairs, some just general maintenance, and some because BMWs have the durability of ice cream in the desert.
