Noticed the tailpipe is rusty orange color, not silver and 48 hours ago started smelling sulfur/rotten egg thru vents.
First you have an exhaust leak that needs addressed. Then have your engine checked for codes (free at many parts stores and post them here.
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We had the water pump replaced not even 6 months ago: bought this car 2 years ago with only 8000 miles on it and have put 20+K on it in 2 years. Transmission whines like it doesn’t want to change gears sometimes…so I was doing mostly manual
driving on Saturday, day the smell started. Last night the car was dead: engine wouldn’t crank to put the windows up. Wondering if I have a lemon….
Just way too many things at once.
It appears you have multiple issues here. The battery and charging system needs to be taken care of before any other issues are dealt with except maybe the exhaust leak. Nothing electronic, including transmission performance can be diagnosed without a working battery and charging system. Anytime when you buy a used car there is going to be repair issues, especially if you didn’t have a mechanic do a prepurchase inspection. I’d suggest bringing it in to a reputable independant auto shop and get these problems taken care of. You probably have a nice car that can give you many more miles, but you won’t know until you have it looked at by an experienced technician.
Update @tcmichnorth: if you can believe it, there was just one issue - original battery from 2011. We had bought the car about 2 years ago and it only had 8K miles on it! Older woman had only driven it from home to church and grocery
store. The shop said that because the battery couldn’t work anymore at full capacity, the catalytic converter was getting too hot causing the orange look to the tailpipe and the sulfur smell! I’ve had about 8 cars in my lifetime that have had batteries die,
and I’ve never come across this before. Just counting my lucky stars it wasn’t a leak, since we’d already just replaced the water pump. Wanted to share with the Chevy Cruze community: love this forum!
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I’m glad things worked out. 8 years on a battery is good. Some people change the battery after 5 years regardless so they know that they are reasonably safe from being stranded due to a worn out battery. Others might have the battery checked twice a year after the battery warranty expires. I’m a tightwad, so I used to just wait for symptoms before I check or do anything about it. My method may leave me stranded someday. Now I have a battery tester so that may help prevent that.