The aveo is really roomy everywhere except the trunk. I always joke and say you can only fit 3 gallons of milk in there.

The SVM dosen't come with ac, but I assume you must have ac on yours living in kansas and all.

My previous car (a 2 door '87 Cavalier) had neither a working AC nor windows that would roll down, just the back windows that popped open outwards a bit. Just being able to roll the windows down on my Aveo is a miracle. :D

I plan on trying out a grill block on the lower "grill" on the bumper and leave the much smaller upper one open during the summer. During the winter I bet it can get by without either opening as there's a bit of an air dam or scoop behind and below the bumper that also directs air into radiator.

Welcome aboard! I'll be curious to see what kind of mileage you can pull out of your Aveo. I'm leaning towards a Yaris for a business vehicle, but the Aveo is definitely worth considering.

Sounds like the same arrangement as my VW Cabrio. A comment I read here was that it's more efficient to pull air across the bottom of a radiator, so I'm going to try the reverse of you: block off the upper grille first, leaving the bumper grille open. Depending on how the engine responds temperature-wise, I'll then try blocking off the bumper part. It'll be interesting to compare notes to see if we can determine any difference between the two approaches.

By the way, my bumper grille is split into a wide central part for the radiator, flanked by two smaller ones. The one on the driver's side is a dummy (not unlike the driver, hah! :D) and is blocked off by the factory. The passenger-side grille is nowhere near the radiator. It's not clear what it's for yet -- the airbox is on that side so it might be the CAI, but peering through the grillwork doesn't reveal any ducting. I can also see the end of something pulley-driven; alternator, maybe? Anyway, I plan to study the situation some before deciding to block that one off. You might want to check to make sure the Aveo doesn't have anything similar. It'd be a shame to watch your temperature gauge like a hawk thinking everything's okay while your power steering pump or whatever slowly cooks itself to death!

Thanks for mentioning that! The Fit is also on my list, but I'd been wondering about its gas mileage being a little lower than the Yaris'.

Rick