This may sound unbelievable now but, once upon a time, car makers took chances on small cars. When they didn’t make a butt-load of money they stopped pretty quickly, but the few customers who could appreciate something a little different were able to purchase a small taste of joy. One such car is on sale right now in Wisconsin; It’s a hatchback, a diesel and yes, a manual—the holy trinity. And can you believe it, it’s also a Chevy Cruze.
GM started offering a diesel engine in the Chevy Cruze in other markets when the car launched in 2008, though the company wouldn’t bring the option to North America until the tail end of the first generation’s production run in 2014. For $25,695, you got a turbocharged, 16-valve 1.9-liter oil burner. While it only made 151 horsepower, torque was impressive at 264 pound-feet, 250 of which was available from 1,750-3,000 rpm. An overboost function gave an extra 16 lb-ft of torque for 10 seconds. Gas mileage was decent, with EPA ratings putting the Cruze Diesel 27 mpg city, 44 mpg highway and 32 mpg combined.
Not only was it a diesel, it was only available with a six-speed manual transmission. You couldn’t go halfway with this Cruze—it was either be a manual diesel hero or get off the pot.
When GM redesigned the Cruze in 2016, Chevy continued to offer the diesel in North America for the 2017 model year with a smaller 1.6-liter engine shared with the short lived Equinox Diesel. Power and torque decreased to 137 hp and 240 lb-ft of torque, but Chevy did make up for it with the inclusion of a hatchback option. Chevy also offered a boring automatic on the Diesel Cruze now, but we aren’t here to talk about that.
While these were nothing special to drive according to folks lucky enough to review the Diesel Cruze, what true enthusiast could pass up a cheap, diesel-powered manual hatchback? This Cruze Diesel is a one owner example for sale at a dealer called Schoepp Motors in Madison, Wisconsin.
New, these things went for $26,395. Six years of depreciation and 89,878 miles means Schoepp is asking just $14,500. The Cruze Diesel was the most fuel efficient, non-hybrid vehicle GM ever made; testing by Car And Driver saw its mileage ratings best its direct competitor, the VW Jetta TDI with ratings of 29 mpg city, 48 mpg highway.
These are fairly rare, as it takes great courage and purity of heart to buy such a vehicle. Diesel sales were less than two percent of total Cruze sales, according to MotorTrend, and the manual option only ran for one year and was dropped after 2018. If this rarity doesn’t scare you off, you better grab your check book (do people still use checks?) and head to Schoepp before this Cruze Diesel is gone.
