After reading this thread, I went to check out the opinion at Edmunds. The following makes the car not worth it, IMO:
"Speaking of the "American Revolution," it's interesting to note that while this car wears a Chevy bow tie on its grille, it isn't actually built here in America. In fact, the Aveo is based on the Daewoo Kalos platform, which sold quite well in Korea and Europe before the company went belly-up and was incorporated into the GM empire."
"On the road, the small hatchback can best be described as basic transportation. It will effectively take its occupants from the proverbial Point A to Point B, but that's about it. The only engine available is a 1.6-liter inline four that cranks out a paltry 103 hp at the very top of the power band (5,800 rpm) ? and unless you're willing to severely sacrifice fuel economy by running the engine hard, you'll have to make do with significantly less than that."
"Our tester came equipped with a five-speed manual transmission that suffered from long throws, an imprecise shifter and the bizarre tendency to pop out of third gear while the car was in motion. To make matters worse, GM/Daewoo engineers apparently decided to use very wide ratios in the transmission in an effort to cut shifting to a minimum around town. While this would have worked in an application with a little more horsepower, the Aveo was severely underpowered going up most hills and inclines, causing us to run in third gear on the freeway on more than a few occasions. Therefore, the fuel mileage suffered greatly and we only managed to achieve an average of 23 mpg ? quite low for a car in this class."
If I were in your shoes, even for the price, the Aveo would probably be the last thing I would consider. If you could spend a little more, I would advise looking at a Pontiac Vibe. They're more expensive, starting around $14k I think, but you can get Toyota build quality in a compact sport (mini)wagon that gets ~30mpg in town, and nearly 40mpg on the highway, with more horsepower and, I would assume, more space all around.
Beyond that I would probably look into something used for around $7k. I'm sure you can find a decent used car for around $7k that would be bigger and better than the Aveo. When I was looking around cars a few months ago, I was pricing lightly used '00 to '02 Ford Focuses and Dodge Neons for around $5k. I ended up with a '95 Accord wagon with 80k miles for $6k, which was a thousand less than sticker and a few hundred lower than the TMV that was listed on Edmunds.
