Lordstown, we have a problem

Time to eat a bit of crow.

About six months ago, I waxed poetic about the first new Chevy I’ve ever owned in more than a half-century of life. Red Cruze impressed me with being solid, quiet, quick enough, a good handler and some cool tech features, but not so much that I’d need to try to pass that engineering program at the University of Cincinnati that beat me three decades ago.

Then, winter set in. Red’s shiny paint was covered in the layer of salty grime. Would he be just another car or earn his stripes as one of my favorites?

Under the grime, he never put a wheel wrong. He heated up on sub-zero mornings within a few minutes, keeping me warm. He tracked true through ice, wind, snow and idiots with pickup trucks passing in the dark on icy Route 7. My driving mojo, missing since I spun Enrico the Cruiser in the snow a couple years ago, had returned.

In short, I was ready to heap buckets of praise on this little red car with the grumbling, rumbling little turbocharged motor and the zippy six-speed automatic transmission.

But, and here’s my out on this crow thing, I was reserving praise because it is still, unfortunately, a GM product, and GM still has a lot of stripes to earn. So when I’ve written about thiis little car, I’ve always said, “So long as he truly holds up over the long run,”or words to that effect.

The long run, apparently, doesn’t include prolonged subzero weather.

The annoying buzz started with the first really, really cold day.

Somewhere around 2000 rpm, the growl became a herd of nasty hornets, the sound of some high-school kid’s fat open exhaust-piped ’99 Honda Civic. You know. Flatulent exhaust sound. Not performance. Nails on a chalkboard annoying to my gearhead ear.

I waited. Maybe, I thought, it would get better when it warms up outside. No. Not even the rare 50-degree day abated the flatulent-exhaust sound entirely. Right at the speed the engine turns on the highway. Right at the shift points around town, the shift points that I used to love listening to so much that I never cranked the stereo in this car yet.

Turns out, thanks to great mechanics at my dealer, folks who actually cared about the customer’s complaint, even if the car wasn’t making the sound very loudly by the time I got to the dealer, that Red Cruze has a quality problem. A big one.

His engine mounts, the heart of the reason Chevy is able to build such a smooth-feeling little sedan, are rattly loose. Right from the factory. Maybe the UAW doesn’t let the folks at the Lordstown factory outside Youngstown use torque wrenches or something.

The dealer tightened the mounts and Red sounds like an old Indy Car again, little bit of turbo sound, some rumbling, burbling and growl. Bliss. For now.

They ordered new engine mounts for him, and they’ll be installed soon. Because Red’s mounts will work loose again, thanks to their apparently goofy installation in the first place.

Now, the noise I have to hear is from the anti-American car crowd. The (Dr.) Boss, she who drives the iPhone appliance of cars, the personality-less but perfect nonetheless Honda Civic, said, “Hmm. Mr. Sulu never had this problem.”

Grrrr. Enrico the Cruiser did, as I recall, giving a big thwack! every time we stopped him about two or three months after my dad bought him back in 2004. I think the USS Moby Grape, the Dodge Intrepid, did the same thing in the 1990s. Loved that car, too. Still have Enrico, though he may not be starting now, having been frozen in the garage for a month (that’s a tale for another day).

So, I have confidence that the mechanic who took the time to listen and find the issue, even to study technical service bulletins to find out if the buzz was another issue with Red (it wasn’t), will repair the Chevy and get him back to good as new for good. Or until the next American car problem causes me to eat more crow.

I sure hope that won’t be the case.

Lordstown, we have a problem