Yikes, reading about the Aveo nearly makes me soil myself. O.K. then my question(s). When should I be checking/changing the brake pads and with what type? How in the world do I get those spark plugs outa there? I’m feeling old and lazy are multi-pronged plugs that I don’t have to gap a good deal? Etc, maintenance advice graciously accepted. Thank you.
First, start by reading your owner’s manual maintenance schedule. That takes care of the etc part.
Brake pads: I like to check them every 30K miles and get an estimate from my trusted mechanic as to when I should check them again, based on the wear. Then I go from there. I have had good wear out of ceramic pads so far.
“GM bought Daewoo’s assets, made some slight modifications/improvements to the original design, slapped a Chevy badge on it, and began marketing them.”
I disagree. The car is substantially better than the Daewoo version, even though they are built in the same factory. MSN Autos finds minimal problems with all subsystems in their reliability ratings from 2004 through 2007. There is no 2008 data yet. Edmunds True Cost to Own shows that the estimated 5 year cost for repairs of a 2008 is 8% higher than the Yaris or Fit. They get their information from Intellifix, a company that makes it’s money from auto repair shops looking to get the big picture on repairs. The shops also share repair information with Intellifix to create the database. Where did you get your information from?
P.S. Maybe I shouldn’t have included a Toyota in the analysis! 
It is probably better than the original Daewoo version.
However, if you look at the Consumer Reports rankings of small cars, the Aveo is listed dead last, with an exceptionally low numerical score. “Better” does not necessarily mean that it is a good car.
O.K. Thanks y’all. Well it seems clucky to me and I’ve taken notice that because it’s a hatchback with very little tail people behind appear frightenly close. Good grief! Totaled my car, rented from Enterprise a car that smelled of weed and then bought this thing from them. I will never again buy or rent from them. Engine light came on and it needed coolant. Checked the oil and it had an extra quart, which a friend and I dropped out after loosening the over torqued drain plug. They sent me away without even filling the window washer fluid with zero cost water. Now they’ve got me angry and I will bad mouth them where ever I go. Evil-Enterprise I dub them.
What kind of warranty do you have with this purchase? The low coolant issue could be a foreboding of a head gasket issue. For example, my cars use little to no coolant between their 30K interval changes. Need to watch this and if your warranty is still in effect, worth investigating.
The other items are things that happen, and Enterprise isn’t the only offender. However, it does call into attention how thorough the maintenance was while in their fleet.
Keep your cool, particularly if you do have a possible warranty issue with the coolant loss.
"the Consumer Reports rankings "
The top to bottom in CRs ratings can be quite shallow, as apparently is the case here. But you’ll never know unless you look at other resources.
My advice to you is to stop reading about the Aveo. Have the maintenance perfomed as per the owner’s manual. If you have an automatic transmission, have the fluid repalced at 30,000 miles. Brake pad replacement depends on thetype of driving that you do. If you check them every 5000 miles or so you can’t go wrong. You may be able to go 50,000 miles or so on the pads if you aren’t doing a lot of stop and go driving. On the other hand, if you do a lot of stop and start driving and see how fast you can start from one traffic signal and how fast you can stop at the next signal, you may be lucky to get 10,000 miles.
I drive a 2006 Chevrolet Uplander minivan that doesn’t exactly get stellar reviews from Consumer Reports. The Uplander works well for me and I have had no major problems. It has been as reliable as the 2003 Toyota 4Runner that we also own. The Toyota has a much nicer interior and seems to fit better, but it cost almost twice as much.