general problems of the 2013 Chevrolet Spark

There is no illumination of the cruise and communication controls on the steering wheel. This is particularly dangerous driving at night as there is no way to see the controls at all.

The steering wheel controls do not illuminate when you turn the lights on the car and makes it difficult to turn off/on the cruise control of the vehicle. You have to take your attention off the road to see the buttons at night.

This vehicle does not illuminate the steering wheel controls. With absolutely no ambient lighting, the interior of the car is extremely dark, and visibility of the controls is non existent. This presents a severe driving hazard, as there are no alternative controls for the cruise. In order to use the controls, you must take your eyes off of the road and blindly fumble, trying to determine which of the ten mounted controls you need to use, thus averting your attention from your surroundings, momentarily. Chevrolet is aware of this problem, as they started illuminating the Nov. 12 builds, consequently neglecting a fix for the pre Nov. 13 builds. Of which I am one. I am not comfortable driving under these conditions after dark. An intervention is clearly needed here, as Chevrolet will not act, and even denies the fact that they did indeed perform the upgrade. Hopefully something will be done, before we orphans wind up paying the consequences.

The steering wheel controls (cruise control, audio etc) do not illuminate. After some research, I have found that gm has remedied this issue with models manufactured after November 2012. This is a safety hazard at night because if I use my cruise control, I have to turn on my dome light to see what button to push. I complained to gm and was told that gm is simply not going to do anything about models manufactured prior to Nov 2012.

The controls on the steering column are not illuminated. At night this presents a problem as the controls can not be seen and if pressed inadvertently can create and unsafe situation as it is virtually impossible to determine what has happened. Other vehicles in this model year have illuminated controls. Vehicle's manufacturer refuses to take action. Updated 06/04/14.

Buttons on steering wheel that work the cruise control, hands free phone, and radio controls do not light up when lights are on at night. This creates a dangerous situation as the buttons can not be seen in the dark. Gm is aware of the situation and has repaired it in models built after October 25 2012, but will not fix it in the models built before then. When I purchased the vehicle in November of 2012, I was not informed of the change before the purchase, leading me to believe that gm and its dealers intentionally mislead me into buying a car that they had already deemed as having an unsafe feature or they would not have changed it.

Lack of button illumination lights for the cruise control, hands-free phone control and audio control on the steering wheel for night driving. The lack of illumination lights on these buttons creates potential safety issue when attempting to use the cruise control, phone call or audio functions from the steering wheel at night. This problem seems to be only for 2013 Spark models with production prior to October 2012.