In the morning if it's cold out the car (03 HCH) will creak over every bump and imperfection in the road, and on tight turns. Kind of like those days when I wake up stiff and take some time to warm up myself.

The sound comes from the front of the car. After a while it goes away -- i'd say at least 10 minutes of driving is required. Usually if I drive in the morning it's only for 5 minutes. Some mornings I've let the car warm up but that doesn't help. On warm days it doesn't do this at all.

It never did this before this year. Car has 100K miles on it.

Googling turns up bushings and various other suspension things as the culprits. other sites just say it's fine.

Maybe some part of the suspension just needs to be lubed?

I have the same condition on my '05, but have yet to look into what the particular cause is. If I can make it stop I'll post back with particulars.

P.S. I do not expect to find an alarming problem (harbinger of catastrophic failure), most likely a dry bushing on sway bar or strut spring creak. We'll see....

Yeah I need to make an appointment soon -- problem is I have to leave the car at the dealer overnight, and right now we only have one car (and live 40 miles from the dealer)...In a week or two we'll have my stepson's car so I'll take it in then.

I have the same problem with my 2003 with only 32,000 miles. It does make the noices above freezing but below it gets worse the colder it gets. I don't worry about it, has to do with contraction/expansion with temperature

Just reporting back with a report of some of the things that are not causing the squeaking/creaking front end sounds:

• sway bar bushings and links
• lower arm bushings

It might be:

• Shocks
• Damper mounting bearing (top of strut under mounting flange)

Remaining suspects involve removal or replacement of front struts and re-alignment; not worth the effort and expense as far as I'm concerned, since suspension function, steering and handling seem not to be affected at all. I guess I'll just learn to live with the noise until the shocks need to be replaced.