Ack. Burn it with fire. I had one of these and it was the biggest money pit. That Ecotec engine is not something you want if you can't prove the maintenance has been kept up on (and even then...).
Just a cheaply made car with cheap interior plastics. The motor uses an oil pressure tensioner chain system - it requires oil pressure to push out the 2 different timing chain tension plastic pieces in the engine and the oil pressure comes at the very front end of the motor after crank and rods are pressurized. Which is fine as long as the oil is kept clean and the passages are not clogged and the bearing tolerances remain in clearance. After 80-100k miles of 10k mile oil changes, the main bearings are starting to get sloppy. So it takes longer to pressurize but will still run. But if you run that oil low or the bearings continue eating themselves, it will eventually de-tension the chain while driving and the engine loses time. And guess what - the engine is an interference engine. So not only do you have to take it apart and re-align the chain to get it back in time, if it happened above about 1700RPM there's a good chance you bent a valve or cracked a piston head. Make no mistake, this is an expensive-to-buy poor person's car that makes the cardinal sin of not staying running on minimal maintenance like a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. There's a reason these cars are not super common anymore and that's because they fell apart. When they were newer they ran decently and got good fuel economy (the other half got upwards of 40MPG in hers with a manual transmission) and had enough power to not feel like you were driving a complete hoopty or anything, but they were stupid expensive (~$18k in 2005-era dollars which is close to $30k today) for what they were and most people dumped them at the first sign of major repair trouble.
