Holden Viva 2007 Problems

Symptoms like this one are often traceable to a faulty stepper-motor which is a small electric motor that controls the position of the car’s throttle and, therefore, the speed at which it idles. If this little electric motor goes awry, the idle speed can stay too high, which is precisely the symptom you’re reporting.

The other likely culprit is a vacuum leak from somewhere on the inlet side of the engine which is allowing too much air into the engine and causing the idle speed to increase. Check for split hoses around the engine bay and don’t forget to check the plumbing associated with the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) valve which can also crack and allow excess air into the intake manifold.

They are very different cars, the Viva is small, the Falcon big, so it comes down to what you want from them. The Viva is newer and will have done fewer kilometres, the Falcon is getting old and is likely to have done lots of kilometres. That said, Falcons tend to be relatively reliable at high kilometres, so if you are after reliability that's probably the better bet for you.

I couldn't recommend the Viva. It was made by Daewoo in Korea and rushed to Australia to plug holes in Holden's model line-up and the market shifted away from traditional big cars. Owners mostly slam it for its unreliability and problems with electrics and transmission. I would urge you to consider a small model from one of the Japanese manufacturers, or a later model from Hyundai or Kia.

HOLDEN claims 7.4 litres for 100km for the Viva with the manual gearbox. The auto will be a couple of tenths of a litre higher. That fuel consumption figure is a combined city/highway figure that comes from its testing and isn't necessarily what you would get in the real world. It's main purpose is to allow you to compare make to make, or old model to new model, to see where it sits in the car population. That said, you should get something close to the published figure and yours does seem to be higher than it should be. You should also see a significant difference between the fuel consumption you get in town and what you get on the highway -- the latter typically about 2 litres/100km lower. I would expect an engine to be run-in and achieving optimum fuel consumption within 2000km at most. I would suggest you have your dealer do a thorough check of the engine and systems. If that fails to find a fault, and your car continues to return high fuel consumption, go straight to Holden's customer assistance people and demand action.