Holden Cruze – not such a small car

You may have seen the ads on TV recently about Holden's new car, which is an adapted model from the Opel family of GM cars. It has been billed on these ads as a 'small car' which from first glance confused me no end. I looked at its long length on the commercial and on the road and thought how it that a small car, their tag line is "the small car just got serious".

So I set about getting the low down on the dimensions of this car and sought some reasoning other than cashing in on the buyers choice being a small car. Here's the run down on what I found.

The Holden Cruze is 4597mm long x 1788mm wide and 1477mm high, which means nothing on its own, but compared to the larger Commodore its very close to being a full sized family car. Holden Commodore is 4897mm long x 1899mm wide and 1476mm high. There is only 300mm in the length which you could attribute to a smaller boot or less bumper bar. Then the width which is a huge factor in small car dimensions places the two only 111mm apart and the height is simply the same. But there is another small car in Holden's fleet known as the Barina (yet another overseas GM model), it comes in at 677mm smaller in length and 108mm smaller than the Cruze. So if the Cruze is in fact closer to the Commodore than the Barina, wouldn't you assume its a medium sized car at the very least?

I thought a little more out of the box and decided to check how the Corolla from Toyota stacks up. Being promoted proudly as a medium sized car from the Japenese manufactuer, it got me thinking just how close it might be. The Corolla is 4540mm long x 1760mm wide and is 1475mm high. Which means its shorter in length, narrower in width and just smaller in height than the Cruze. Thats even more proof the Cruze is in fact a medium sized car.

The reason why this boils my blood is that car manufacturers choose very clever tactics when promoting their range. Obviously people are once again shopping for small cars, because they are generally better on fuel economy and easy to park. Holden figure they will get you to the dealership by telling you its a small car and then hopefully sell you the other features when you get there.

On another point, Holden has begun to claim its new SIDI injection technology allows it to push a Commodore from Sydney to Melbourne on a single tank. This is all good and well in 2009 but I have experienced this as late as last century (1999). I remember going from the eastern suburbs of Victoria to the suburbs of Adelaide on a single tank of fuel in a 1997 Mitsubishi Magna TF V6, that's 850km and that's no laughing matter. In fact I was once again in a 1990 Toyota Camry 2.0 Litre, when we went from the same suburbs of Adelaide to the city of Melbourne on one tank, which was 800km (in 2007). So Holden's glory of doing its recent trip to Melbourne is a little late coming.

If you want to clarify my findings check out www.holden.com.au or www.toyota.com.au and check the specs listings.