Holden Cruze Problems

You're a member of a large club. I would approach Holden with the view of having them replace the gearbox for free as they have done with many other Cruze owners. Because of the age of the car, they might not replace it for free; they're more likely to make you an offer to cover part of the cost of replacing the car.

The symptoms are exactly as reported by other Cruze owners and the first step is to get it to an authorised Holden dealer to have the diagnosis confirmed and reported to Holden. At the same time you should contact Holden customer service at Fishermans Bend and report the problem with full vehicle details.

Go back to the dealership you bought it from and ask them to repair it, and seeing that it is a common problem with that model suggest they approach Holden to cover the costs of the repairs. It’s hard to say what your chances are because you bought it secondhand, but you did buy from a Holden dealer, which makes me a little more optimistic about your chances.

Firstly I'm surprised an auction house gave you a warranty, it's usually a case of buyer beware. The transmission problem is well known; that you had the secondhand transmission fail doesn't surprise me. Go back to the seller's warranty document and thoroughly read it to understand what it entitles you to claim. Holden won't help, given that the car is well out of the new car warranty and the transmission that was fitted was a secondhand one. You need to go back to the seller and try to negotiate a resolution with them.

We have had numerous reports of transmission failures on the Cruze and you would suspect that yours has suffered a similar failure. You could try and recoup your money, but I would guess it's too late and you wouldn't be successful. If you do choose to do it talk to your Holden dealer and ask them to submit a claim to Holden.

The car with the lower kilometres can be an attractive proposition, but it's a Cruze and should be avoided as they have a terrible history of unreliability. The Yaris is smaller and it has done more kilometres, but it would seem to be a much better bet.

The most common transmission problem that affects the Cruze relates to the automatic transmission, not the manual. As yours is a manual it isn’t affected by these issues. I would suggest you have a mechanic check your car to diagnose the problem for you before you go any further with a claim against Holden. If the noise you are hearing happens while you have the clutch pedal depressed in the process of changing gears it could be a worn clutch throw-out bearing, but if it is a crunching noise when selecting gears it could be either the clutch isn’t fully disengaging, or it could a synchromesh problem.

I would like to think you have a good chance of having the transmission replaced out of goodwill. The car is only just out of warranty, the failure is a well known one, I can’t think of any reason Holden should object to doing the repairs at its own expense.

Take it back to the Holden dealer who replaced the first water pump and ask for an explanation. You're right, three water pumps in 30,000 km is unacceptable. You would have to ask if there was a problem with the Cruze water pump, not something we have heard about, or did the dealer mechanic do something wrong when fitting the pump.

We aren't getting reports of problems with the latest model, the reports we have had relate to 2010 models or so. That said, I would be wary of buying the Cruze, the best thing about them is the cabin size. I would go for the Lancer first and Pulsar second, the Cruze a long last.