I am pretty sure my wife's car has gone more than a couple of months at a time with the light on. We are at about 37,000 miles and just had it into the dealer for the 7th time yesterday for a variety of CEL. The service writer tried to make a case about how important a CEL was when it was going on and off vs. just staying on. The car has always run ok, but this would not be the one you would pick for a long out of town trip. You never know when the CEL is going to come on. I can read the codes, but that isn't much help really because you still don't know the severity and if it is going to kick into slow mode at some point. We just did the latest recall 17809 got the car back and one week later we had the CEL again, this time for something related to the turbocharger (P2598). They had the car all day yesterday and supposedly went after it with a fine tooth comb, worked with GM and didn't find anything significant. So now we will get the car back again and just wait for the next CEL. My wife is turning in the loaner car this morning to pick up the CTD and I don't have the work order to read the gibberish yet.
We have alway bought new vehicles to avoid having these kinds of challenges. We live out of town and need reliable transportation. I have always sold my own cars when we were ready to trade them because I could confidently say there were great running rigs and had been well maintained. I am pretty sure we are going to have to take a big hit when we go to sell this car, since I for sure can't say that about this Cruze TD.