2004 CHEVROLET AVEO User Comment / Complaint

No crash, no injuries; incident began with regular maintenance of vehicle after i purchased the aveo used; my fuel economy continued to decrease from about 33 to 34mpg down below 30mpg even though i was continuing to drive the same way every week. economy was about 33-34mpg at 26k miles and eventually at 28-29 mpg by 34k miles. after changing fuels, adding injector cleaner, checking tire pressure weekly, checking spark plug wires with no obvious damage or abuse to any component, i finally pried open the black air cleaner box by breaking two of the rusted bolt/flanges on the cleaner. the air cleaner was almost completely plugged. i changed the filter and the fuel mileage was back to 35 to 37 mpg. but unfortunately i had to break two bolt/flanges on the cleaner box to get the cleaner open. i noticed one other flange was already broken. i believe that the original owner never changed the air filter. the filter is inaccessible once the bolts are rusted to the nuts. i asked the dealer about this and found i cannot get reimbursed since i damaged the cleaner. i believe that the dealer would not be able to access the filter either. i did notice that the bolts are steel/iron because of the rust color and the flange has a captured nut made of brass with bluish-green rust. the use of two dissimilar metals under the hood of a car where salt and corrosion are highly likely is extremely dissatisfied to a consumer. i have to pay money out of my pocket for a filter box replacement when the filter box should have never been engineered this way. this seems like this issue should be an emissions issue since my fuel economy was severely affected. please let me know what my options are.