For ease of maintenance and shear stopping power would take drums any day. Ever see disk brakes without power brake assistance? Disks also used that way overprice combo parking and service brake caliper, instead of being a ten buck job, can be as high as a 600 buck brake job.
For appearance, good guess as to what looks prettier, a drum or a rotor, drums can be painted, rotors cannot. Besides on my Cruze, have to get down on my hands and knees to view the difference.
In terms of conversion, would get a shop manual and a parts book to learn the difference and even a second mortgage, new cables, lines, do these things even use proportioning valve, ABS wheel sensors, cabling, parking brake cables, rear axle components, hubs, backing plates, and even some esoteric stuff like ABS module programing.
Just saying, this has to be done, and really don't know until you dig into it. 2LT came with disks, for me a negative, but been putting up with these things for over 30 years now, so why not a few more years! With the extreme high price on calipers, did look into converting to drums, that was far more complicated than a quick glance.
See at least the calipers on the Cruze are plated, so maybe won't be near the problem as previous GM products. Then this road salt that is suppose to save lives, eats those calipers like they are ice cream, and for a so called expert, can't do a single thing to save a pile of rust. Now I hear they are coming out with a new kind of liquid that is even more corrosive, but haven't verified that yet.
Then we have reasons for having a car, in our case, without one, would starve to death and reliability is is key. If you want one for show, don't play with your Cruze, get into building a custom job so you can spend thousands to win a two buck trophy. Ha, been there, done that, always someone a lot richer than you. But may get an honorable mention.
