This is so much better than the Cavalier, it’s little wonder the name was changed, and those who say it’s just the next-generation Cavalier need to take the blinders off. But, no, that's not the Lutz way.WILSON: While everyone else was playing with the Cobalt SS, I was driving around in this fetching little automatic coupe number. It would have been cheaper to use the same balance shafts in both engines, at a small sacrifice in smoothness. Opting for the SS version gets a bored-and-stroked Ecotec with variable cam timing, giving 170 horses from 2.4 liters. The standard engine for both is a 140-hp, 2.2-liter Ecotec four. The looker of the family is the coupe, with its smartly curved rear glass and cute butt punctuated by four round taillights. Chrome touches are back, in the bezels and door handles. The exterior is a yawner, one more 'universal small sedan,' but the interior is a mini-Lexus in its shapes, tones, and textures. They get a package that's big for the class at 180.3 inches overall for the four-door, about halfway between the shorter Toyota Corolla and the longer Cavalier. It has the Korean-made Aveo to serve up low, low prices, allowing the Cobalt to move up to the cream of the skinflints. Chevrolet is no longer trying to cover the whole bottom of the market with one model. The Cobalt has to be better than competing small cars to get the market to notice. Lutz says being competitive isn't enough. Even the oil pump is being finessed to damp a pulsation in the bypass port. There's a low-noise tensioner for the cam-drive chain. Actually, the trans now bolts to the block and the pan. It didn't have the stiffened transmission attachment, either. Our noisy Ion didn't have the cast alloy oil pan that stiffens, and therefore quiets, the engine's structure. In so many words, Parks says Lutz told engineers not to hold back on the good stuff and how they'll get that money back and more in reduced rebates. (Yeah, right-Ed.) GM has an evangelist for good cars-Bob Lutz-and he has a vice-chairman's clout. Boy, did we do a butt plant on that prediction!īut things are different this time. You may even remember our 15-page hallelujah following the preview of the 1980 Chevy Citation, Pontiac Phoenix, etc., line of X-cars. We were impressed by the Chevy Vega in a 1970 drive of engineering cars much like this Cobalt jaunt. Moreover, our record on these pronouncements has some dents. It's easy to dismiss this pre-preview tub thumping for what it is, GM's attempt to manage the news. They cost 0.3 to 0.4 mpg of fuel in EPA mileage, but they please the driver. He describes the special Cobalt tires that have just the right combination of stiffness in the sidewalls and damping in the tread to achieve sharp steering response and low noise. He tells of the laminated steel fire wall and cowl plenum, new since the Ion. He nods toward a large and deeply sculpted plastic cover over the Ecotec four, backed by noise-eating foam. He points to the comprehensive arrangement of seals around the Cobalt's doors. Cheap R Us has been GM's business plan since the Cavalier was young.īut no more, Parks and others assure us.

He knew everything, because he's been 30 months on the job trying to fix all of those. When we mentioned our Ion misgivings to Doug Parks, Cobalt chief engineer, he groaned. That's a fact, not an impression, so we can blurt it right out. Now the post-drive synopsis: The Cobalt has been to charm school. The Cobalt has a lot to live down with us. It was also a rackety little bastard of a four-door that our road-test editor passed around to staffers as penance for past offenses. Uh-oh! An early Ion proved to be amazingly durable in our 40,000-mile long-term test (March 2004). The menu included two black 140-hp Cobalt sedans that were about 90 percent baked and a white 170-hp coupe that was more like 80 percent.Ī little background: The Cobalt is built on GM's Delta platform, which was new with the Saturn Ion in 2003. 'Bring it on,' we said, and checked in at GM's desert proving ground in Mesa, Arizona. The aging Chevrolet Cavalier, born in 1982, will be replaced this November by the Cobalt, and Chevy has been so eager to tell us about this new line of front-drive coupes and sedans that it offered the following deal: If we'd hold off writing about our 'driving impressions,' we could have seat time in a few engineering mules and talk techno with key Cobalt engineers.

2005 chevrolet cobalt