Quote Originally Posted by zchandran View Post
There are people who install 5.0L V8's into tiny cars (look up Monster Miata). But those kind of engine swaps require incredible knowledge of automotive engineering, and insane levels of attention to detail. Not to mention, you better have a full garage. Not the usual socket/ratchet stuff, but welding equipment, lathes, grinders, etc etc.

That said, an Aveo is a horrible choice for a project like that. An Aveo is built cheap. Real cheap. The way I explain my car to people is like this - imagine GM told its engineers to build a car for $10,000, and those engineers spent thousands of hours designing the absolute cheapest car, with the cheapest parts, that they could.

Then imagine that an MBA came in behind them, and took another 5% off each part. "OK" bolts became bolts that would become brittle in 5 years. The cheapest metal thermostat housing became a plastic (?!) thermostat housing. Metal radiator drain bolt became a cheap plastic one. They got rid of the transmission drain bolt to save $2. No user replaceable fuel filter. Etc etc.

That's your starting point. There are far better cars to use if you want to do an engine swap that's worth talking about. An Aveo is a great car to keep running at rock bottom prices - mine has 130,000 miles, and while requiring a steady stream of parts, is cheaper than my Subaru overall. But the only reason I could see to do an engine swap would be to take on a ridiculously difficult project for the hell of it.
actually the aveo is a higher end subcompact out of eastern asia.. meant for that market and brought here by GM. Your reasoning is 100% correct about how the cobalt was built. But the aveo was not. This is also one of the reasons why the new cruze and spark are so much better than the cobalt. They were both designed and built for countries that don't consider cars disposable.