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CAP Blog > CAP Blog > Martin's Blog
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Dec
23
Written by:
Martin Ward
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
 We have had this test car for the past few days and it goes back to Chevrolet today, so we haven’t had much of a chance to really try it out. This five door, five seat car from Chevrolet replaces the Matiz, which was a great success for Daewoo originally and then Chevrolet took over the name. The Matiz was one of those cars that never won admiration or awards; it just got on with being a small, economical car with no frills, but it did the job that it was designed to do.
The Spark goes one step beyond and during the short time that we have had the car, it has proved to be a very competent vehicle that has a much better design than the Matiz and much improved quality. The interior especially has changed dramatically and is now on level terms with many other cars in this sector; this improvement really should be credited to the designers, engineers, suppliers and everyone responsible with bringing this car to market.
 Despite it being such a small car, there is still enough room for five adults to travel in relative comfort and with having a high roof line, there is plenty of head room which means that you don’t feel claustrophobic. It would be ideal as a family’s second car and for transporting children around as there is a lot of space in the rear. The boot however, is tiny; it would take just a few supermarket bags of shopping to completely fill it up and getting in two suitcases would be out of the question. Even one might be a struggle.
 The car we tested is powered by a 1.2 litre petrol engine that produces 81ps, goes from 0-62mph in 12.1 seconds and has a top speed of 102 mph. It has CO2 emissions of 119g/km and a combined fuel figure of 55.4 mpg. This little car has more than enough power around town, but I didn’t get a chance to see what it was like on the motorway, to see if it ran out of steam on some of the inclines. I took the Spark out in some fairly heavy snow and ice and it was just brilliant because this car seemed to go where even some £40,000 large 4x4 vehicles would fear to tread. It went up some snow covered roads with ease and the wheels didn’t spin once; it just seemed to keep going, which is quite amazing. Even when driving down some fairly steep roads that were quite slippery, it used the ABS system to keep control and it stayed in a perfectly straight line. I was genuinely staggered by this car’s competence in those conditions.
The cost of the test car is £9,845 on the road, with prices of the Spark starting from £6,945 for the car with no name. Chevrolet really should have given their entry level model some badging.
I was pleasantly surprised by this new offering from GM’s Chevrolet and they have proved that cheap doesn’t always have to mean poor quality and poor styling.
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