It doesn’t take much of a genius to figure that the designers held the upper hand in the interior design than the engineers. So much so that “Wow” will be your exclamation once you get in- you’re meeting Dr. Jekyll on entry, but a half hour into the journey, you get rudely introduced to Mr. Hyde. The steering compound is a bit too hard, especially for hands not used to masonry or rock climbing.
But then, we should not forget what Dr. Jekyll is trying to do here: we Indians love chrome, so the generous helpings of it on the tacho, the speedo, the fuel gauge, the temp gauge, the gear knob, the hand brake, the everywhere, is good and in the thank-you-so-much category.
Also the first car that GM India sells with the indicator stalk on the right and wiper control stalk on the left, instead of the usual left hand drive orientation. The parking sensors are top notch, detecting everything, right from metal cages to thin poles to people standing at the back – more than compensating for the Mr. Hyde rearview mirror and reversing lights.
The AC is good, and the sound system is also in the Dr. Jekyll realm. Rear passengers in the Cruze are treated great, with 39.4 inches of headroom in front and 37.9 inches in back. The rear seats can be folded down, and trunk space is decent at 15.9 cubic feet. In the case of sudden lockup of the doors there is an emergency exit behind the rear seat which can be opened after folding the rear seat. Less decent though is the fiddly, hard-to-reach lever that adjusts the front seatbacks.
The key (literally) to all this is actually not a key – except for an emergency attachment if your batteries die down – it is a sensor. Anybody can open the doors with a mere pull of the handle if you are within a two-meter range of the car. Once you move away from the car, the Cruze will lock automatically; the touch sensor on the chrome driver’s door handle also can lock the car.
