I’m by no means a car expert, but with all the issues my 2011 Chevy Cruze LT has been having the last year I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit.

Let me give a little background on this car: She only has 80,000 miles on her, and I’ve had the car for 2 years. I drive mainly locally, I check my fluids quite often, change the oil when it’s time, so you could say I baby this car. When I got the car from the dealership it had a clean bill of health (although at home repairs won’t necessarily show up on a car fax), and despite having like 7 recalls I believe they were all taken care of by the past owner(s).

The first year I had no issues. About 3-4 months ago I was stopped at a light and my car stalled completely, and it took about 3 long minutes to get it restarted again. That was an isolated incident. Then I fixed a massive coolant leak over a month ago and the car was fine after. Until a week ago I backed the car out of my parents driveway, put it in drive and got halfway down the street and the car stopped driving. Everything was still on, it was in drive, and when I’d press the accelerator you could hear the engine revving but it wouldn’t go. We put it in neutral and tried pushing it, and we also tried it in manual mode and neither would work. It only moved when it was in reverse, so weird.

After reversing it all the way back to my parents house (thank god it was after midnight) and parked it there. My boyfriend and my dad scanned the codes since the engine light came on after starting it again and they got like 10 codes. I don’t have those at this time but I can get them if anyone wants to see them. My boyfriend thinks it’s the transmission control module (based off the codes) which would makes sense since that is what tells the car what gear it’s in. My dad sent them to a friend of his (he works for GM and is a certified mechanic for over 20 years) and he thinks something is wrong with the transmission.

I got it towed to a shop (the tow truck driver didn’t believe me when I said the car doesn’t drive forward lol) and the mechanic called us after an hour and couldn’t believe my car wouldn’t drive forward (he didn’t believe me either!!) and they’re slightly stumped by the codes it’s giving them as well. Everyone I’ve talked to (mechanic or not) they’ve never heard of a car only being able to drive in reverse and not drive forward, without clear transmission problems (trans is not slipping).

Sorry this is a long post, obviously it’s frustrating because I didn’t foresee a major car repair right after Christmas, but I really would like some fresh thoughts and opinions on what’s going on. Has anyone else gone through this? One thing is sure, I’m fixing the car, hopefully selling it to pay off what I still owe, and getting a more reliable car.