Aveos catching on fire?

[Satty]

In the last month I have seen two '07 Aveo sedans on the side of a highway with smoke billowing out from under the hood. The first was here around Springgyfield, it was on the side of the road yet traffic was still backed up, and you could see flames poking out. The second was yesterday up near Jefferson City, where people apparently know how to drive, since it was on the shoulder and traffic was moving over, but not slowing to a creep. No flames, just thick smoke.

It seems the new Aveo is indeed red hot.

[vonVeezelsnider]

Interesting.

I haven't heard anything of this up in Canada...

[CARBIZ]

Same here. Sounds worrisome, though.

I had one customer cook their Aveo engine at 150k km because they had never had the timing belt looked at. I think GM has spoiled its customers with timing chains for many years (now that Honda and Toyota have finally caught up), so anyone who is used to driving GM products and has not looked in their owner's manual (which is all too common, I am afraid) is in for a shocker. This customer ragged on my head, but I pointed out that I had never sold him that vehicle (his wife had leased a Cobalt from me a year earlier) and GM was not to blame.

The GM-DAT product has belts, so that may be a cause for a smoking engine if proper maintenance was never done.

Edited October 14, 2007 by CARBIZ

[caddycruiser]

Same here. Sounds worrisome, though.

I had one customer cook their Aveo engine at 150k km because they had never had the timing belt looked at. I think GM has spoiled its customers with timing chains for many years (now that Honda and Toyota have finally caught up), so anyone who is used to driving GM products and has not looked in their owner's manual (which is all too common, I am afraid) is in for a shocker. This customer ragged on my head, but I pointed out that I had never sold him that vehicle (his wife had leased a Cobalt from me a year earlier) and GM was not to blame.

The GM-DAT product has belts, so that may be a cause for a smoking engine if proper maintenance was never done.

That's an interesting point, at least with some vehicles. There are different maintenance items that a lot of people may not even think of, but crop up.

Kind of like all the Saturn Vue's that are around with the Honda 3.5L. Everyone always remarks how fantastic of a powertrain it is in the Vue, but if they're GM die-hards, there are small things like the timing belt, etc. differences that need to be noticed & remembered.

I think it's just a weird coincidence that 2 were seen by Satty on fire/smoking, and not traced to a certain problem--I stay up to date with common problems of a lot of vehicles, and have never heard a thing about this. But, you never know.

Edited October 14, 2007 by caddycruiser

[staceface]

Satty - may be related, I've had three customers (all driving different vehicles) come in within the past two months because they ran over a plastic bag, it got stuck somewhere under the engine and caused a god-awful amount of smoke (and the smell!) so do Aveo''s catch on fire or just ride lower and double as trash collectors? :AH-HA_wink:

[Satty]

I'm just assuming these are two isolated incidents until I hear otherwise, still kinda weird.

[Sixty8panther]

I've not heard anything, I hope those little south korean

econoboxes do not give GM a bad name.

[vonVeezelsnider]

I hope those little south korean econoboxes do not give GM a bad name.

I've been concerned about that since 2004. Except in Canada we got the unreliable Epica, whose engine would screw up but make codes... Haven't heard anything bad about Aveo or Optra though.

[CARBIZ]

I think there were some early electronic problems with the Epica in '04 that were difficult to pin down in the begginning, but they were software related. Being a wholly new car line, I suspect the dealers and dealer equipment had a hard time dealing with them at first.

I leased and sold a lot of them back then and with only 2 exceptions the people were happy. In fact, one customer just bought out his 4 year lease that he got from me and they are thrilled with the car.

The Epica suffered from two problems: 1) it was underpowered (but very smooth) for a 6 cylinder and 2) salespeople were lazy, preferring to sell the more known and (at the time) equally known Malibu.

The Aveo and Optra have sold in far bigger volumes than GM has ever had here with any previous (lackluster) attempts, like the Metro, and has brought an entirely new breed of customers to GM's door. For better or worse, there are bound to be teething problems, both from the design and build side, and the sales/service side.