Huff and puff: Chevrolet Cruze WTCC race car heads to auction
It's a decade since Chevrolet, in its best Homer Simpson voice, said ‘that's it, I'm getting outta here’ to the European market. GM blamed poor sales, better opportunities to invest elsewhere, and a failure to differentiate Chevrolet and Vauxhall-Opel products.
Few tears were shed when Chevrolet left the UK. Its relaunch in 2005 was a rather muted affair and built on a range of mildly facelifted Daewoo products. New reheated cars followed, this time based on Vauxhall-Opel vehicles, but the likes of the Captiva (Vauxhall Antara), Orlando (Vauxhall Zafira Tourer) and Spark (Vauxhall Viva), failed to, er... spark much in the way of enthusiasm.
The Chevrolet Cruze had the potential to be the best of the bunch. Launched here in 2009, it was based on the Astra and designed to go into battle with the likes of Hyundai, Kia and Skoda at the bottom end of the market. A four-door saloon came first, followed by a five-door hatchback and an estate (called SW for Station Wagon).
Reviewing the Cruze in 2009, CAR labelled it ‘good value’, but added that it ‘[didn't] quite hit the mark’. Car Enthusiast pointed to the ‘huge effort’ and ‘significant stride forward’, but added that the Cruze ‘needed to be better built [and] better to drive’. It may have been fine a decade earlier, but its arrival coincided with with an upshift in overall quality from the so-called budget brands.
At the time of writing, there were 32 for sale on Auto Trader, mostly hatchbacks, with prices ranging from £750 for a ‘spares or repair’ hatch, to an optimistic £3995 for a 2012 car with a description written by AI. A Cruze SW would be a decent choice for dog owners or those who like to spend their weekends at the recycling centre, but the Cruze's biggest problem is the number of better alternatives available for a few grand.
And does anyone actually dream of owning a Chevrolet Cruze? They might if they all looked like the former WTCC race car that's going under the hammer at the Silverstone Festival in August. This is the actual car driven by Rob Huff in the 2011 season, when he won eight of the 24 races and finished second overall to Yvan Muller in another Cruze.
It was a dominant season for the Chevrolet RML team, with either Muller, Huff or Alain Menu winning all but three of the races and amassing a total of 973 points – way ahead of BMW in second (583 points) and SEAT in third (522).
In the hands of Menu in the 2012 WTCC season, the car achieved six victories and helped the Swiss driver to second place in the championship, a dozen points behind teammate Huff.
Whether this success on the track translated to sales in the showroom is unclear, but it gives the Cruze some unlikely motor sport credentials. Enough to convince you to spend £2k on a saloon and call it Tom or Penelope? Probably not, but a 1.6 LS or LT would look good with a massive rear wing and a pair of Union Jack door mirrors.
Alternatively, you could spend an estimated £65,000 to £75,000 on the ex-Rob Huff car at the Iconic Auctioneers sale – it's significantly cheaper than the Sierra RS500s available at the same auction, not to mention 100 percent more Petrolbloggy.
All images © Iconic Auctioneers
