CarComplaints.com Notes: The 2012 Chevrolet Sonic is fairly new & is already showing an early trend of transmission problems.
Owners report hesitation when shifting & grinding/hard shifting into gears. Some dealers are calling the condition "normal". Another owner reported his dealership replaced the transmission under warranty, but the new transmission had the same exact grinding problem. Design defect?
The radio began to turn itself on/off while driving whenever hitting a bump on the road or when touching the radio to turn the sound up/down.
By November 2015 the radio began to turn itself on during the night while parked, and it would stay on until the car battery died. Needed to have battery jumped to start the car.
Stereo turns on after Car is shut off and locked. It initially turns off with the car but then about a minute later it turns back on with key removed and locked. This is very annoying sense I'm worried about the battery being drained. Takes the reliability away!!!
I was driving down the road and the radio shut off. I turned it back on and it shut itself back off about 10 minutes later. I turned it back on and won the battle for the day. This is just one manifestation of the ghost in my electrical system.
I was at work, needed my jacket out of the car so I unlocked the car from inside the building, threw my keys back into my purse and threw it back under the counter. I went out to the car, discovered my jacket was in the backseat, so I unlocked the back door, opened it and the stereo came on. I shut it off by pushing the button, closed the doors and went back to work. When I left work at the end of the night the stereo came on when I started the car, despite the fact that I had turned it off. I am just waiting to come out to a dead battery because my car is rocking out all night on its own...
I ran around town all day, got home, turned off the car, opened the door, and the radio was still on. Everything else was off, but the radio still had power going to it. I happened to have my camera with me at the time and immediately recorded the problem. I noted that the key was out, the door was open, the driver's side console was off (wouldn't even display the current mileage), the lights in the middle console (heating controls) were off, but just the radio alone was lit up and still running. I pushed the power button off, which displayed the date and time, but still had power going to it. I did this several times, turning it on and off. Then I closed the door and reopened it. Finally the radio turned off, along with everything else as normal, only showing the mileage on the driver's side console briefly, as it should be. When I took the vehicle and showed them the video of the issue, they joked that there must be a "ghost" in my vehicle... ha... ha... ha... I'm not amused. They couldn't duplicate the issue, so they shrugged the problem off and did nothing further to fix it or look into the problem.
I hope the car DOES have an electrical problem, or a short, and that the whole car burst into flames... THEN MAYBE THEY'LL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
The radio began to turn itself on/off while driving whenever hitting a bump on the road or when touching the radio to turn the sound up/down.
By November 2015 the radio began to turn itself on during the night while parked, and it would stay on until the car battery died. Needed to have battery jumped to start the car.
- lzolinski, Cudahy, WI, US