New car review: 2014 Holden Cruze SRi
This is the Holden Cruze as it’s never been before.
That becomes obvious the moment I start braking for an extremely tight hairpin on one of Australia’s most technical pieces of tarmac.
The Cruze SRi blips down from third to first gear so that its larger 1.6-litre turbo four is primed and ready to fire it through to the next corner.
As the nose lifts when I feed on the throttle, there’s a muted hiss from the turbo under the bonnet before the reinvigorated Cruze pulls out of the bend and touches its redline and then selects second gear with a whiff of wheelspin from its front tyres.
It’s still not quite up there with the hottest hatches, but both its temperature and tempo have risen significantly over the original Cruze, which Holden admits wasn’t even luke warm.
It was so keen to point out the changes made under the skin of its home-grown small car that it sent four senior engineers and three cars to Sydney to give Drive an exclusive test through Galston Gorge, the Putty Road and Bells Line of Road, routes familiar to motorcyclists and Sunday Schumachers across NSW.
Anthony McCormack is Holden’s chief engineer for compact cars. He has an impressive resume that includes leading the engineering on Chevrolet’s recent Camaro coupe as well as the performance side of Holden’s VE Commodore line.
McCormack’s team gave the Cruze SRi a 30 per cent power boost thanks to a new 1.6-litre turbocharged engine which makes 132kw and 230Nm. The car has also come in for sweeping chassis changes, including a new torsion beam rear suspension unit that now has a Watt’s linkage and lower, stiffer springs to help it generate more grip and driver feedback.
The $4000 more expensive SRi-V gains a reversing camera, 18-inch wheels and 235mm wide Bridgestone Potenza tyres that give it no small amount of grip when pressing on.
“We wanted to take the SRi-V to the next level. We wanted to give it a little more driving spirit,” he says.
“It just lifts the car into an area where you’re getting into the warm-hatch-cum-hot-hot hatch territory in terms of a driver’s car.”
The plan worked. While nowhere near as sharp as a Ford Focus ST or Volkswagen Golf GTI, the Cruze SRi is capable of entertaining drivers thanks to its added grip and go.
Then again, at $22,490 plus dealer and on road costs, the manual Cruze SRi is around $15,000 cheaper than its more focused hot hatch rivals, and presents stirring value. Holden used the $31,490 Mazda3 SP25 as a benchmark for the Cruze, which even in its most expensive form, the range-topping $28,690 SRi-V auto, still holds a price advantage.
But there are compromises which remind you that this isn’t a premium car, and one of them sits front and centre in the cabin in the form of a little storage cubby on top of the dashboard with a lid that looks like it belongs in another car.
Holden insiders tell us that the container’s lid comes from South Korea, while the rest of the dash is made in Melbourne. The plastics have a slightly different colour and fit poorly together, which has been a continual source of frustration for quality control gurus.
The Cruze SRi has snug sports seats and a smart leather steering wheel that separate it from the base model Cruze equipe.
The focal point for the upgraded interior though is My Link, a high-tech seven-inch touchscreen infotainment system which connects with smartphone apps for internet radio services such as Pandora and Stitcher. Holden says Apple’s Siri voice recognition service will soon be integrated with the system, and that satellite navigation will be available mid-year.
Adam Shaw is a lead development engineer who helped calibrate a revised six-speed automatic gearbox for the Cruze SRi and SRi-V. The transmission has a new sports mode which gives the car a more aggressive character – it will rev out without shifting up early, hold gears going downhill, and change down on the approach to corners so that the engine is ready to perform when needed.
Shaw’s CV includes stints test-driving for Aston Martin at Germany’s infamous Nurburging Nordschliefe, as well as working on the performance of the V8-powered Chevy Camaro.
He says this update would address concerns that the Cruze did not offer enough performance.
“We’re fully aware that previous iterations of the model needed work,” he says.
“We’ve done our bit this year to address those complaints and issues that we had from customers.”