Well, for those of you that are not familiar with my style of reviews, please check my Scion TC review a while back here:
http://forum.ohioscions.com/showthread.php?t=2979
In reference to my break-in found here, http://uselessforum.com/showthread.php?t=6189
I had to pick up a rental car. Since my insurance could afford me it, I upgraded from an Aveo to the Cobalt.
As some background info, I was expecting this successor of the Cavilier to be somewhat special. This is the new platform GM is using. They tweaked the Saturn Delta platform and "fixed" its issues when they made the Cobalt. This is a European inspired design and is used on a myriad of car options. I thought to myself that this would be the pinnacle small car from GM for the foreseeable future.
I wanted a 4-door because I was going to travel to Canada that weekend with some people and I thought I would get something a bit roomier than the Aveo. What I got was the Cobalt 3LT. The features list is here: http://www.chevrolet.com/cobalt/features/
Let me start by saying this car looks very bland. Now this not a totally bad thing. This could mean the design won't look much older as it ages. It certainly isn't bold or beautiful, but I am driving a compact car, I didn't have high expectations for the style.
And then we get into driving this train wreck.
Just getting into the car is a bit of a hassle. The door sills are unusually wide, forcing the passenger to hit his/her shins on the dirty body panel or by doing a gazelle-like leap into the seats.
The seats are hopeless. Very uncomfortable with silly lumbar support. The head restraints are very effective because they crane inward on the driver or passenger forcing them to look down. I guess GM didn't think people's heads actually had depth to them. The hieght adjustment just moved the back of the seat so the lumbar changed with the seat hieght.
Speaking about hieght adjustment, I don't know why it is even needed on this car. I am only 5'7" but my head was almost hitting the ceiling with the seat in the lowest position. My 6'1" friend had to crane his neck to fit. This model had the sunroof, but Chevy designed this to move the sunroof out away from the ceiling so as not to take up precious head room to the passengers. How thoughtful that it is still a useless amount. The low ceiling made looking at high stop lights difficult because the roof overhang to the front prevented clean site lines up high. Since the driver is craning his/her neck down, though, I guess looking up at lights is a moot point. And since the ceiling is so badly constructed, it pushes the sunroof back a fair bit on the car, making it useless for front passengers to enjoy.
There is woefully inadequate space for human beings to inhabit the interior. I am only 150lbs and I felt cramped. My 6'1" friend who is about 190 was painfully cramped. The rear seats have literally 0 leg space if the front seat passanger moves the seats all the way back, which they will to make some more room. Also, the rear has inconvienent cup holders that take up valuable leg room for the unfortunate center passenger. This is very surprising because this car is not small. In fact, the Aveo has more interior room in almost every dimension than the Cobalt and it is over a foot shorter.
The seats themselves are quite uncomfortable, no matter how they are adjusted. And adjusting them isn't the easiest given the location of the handles to do the adjustment. They are very hard but still lack support in key areas. Riding back from Canada was a painful adventure.
If no one is sitting in the seats or using the seat belts, they just lay badly on the seat. They don't tuck away or even just stay on the side. They are draped over the edge of the seat with a twist. And the car makes an annoying beep later in the journey while driving if the passenger has not buckled up yet. Since there is a nice dash marking stating that fact already, the use of a beep is annoyingly redundant. And it isn't such a good idea because there is no notification if the rear seat passengers are buckled or not.
The sideview mirrors are awful. They are large then taper quickly near the outside. This isn't very good at all because the visible area that most people would use is the smallest.
The front A pillar was almost a safety hazard how large and intrusive it is. Many times I feared for my life making a soft left turn because I could not see anything ahead of me. The rest of the views out of the car, however, are surprisingly unobstructed and clear. Most new cars are building the body lines higher for added crash protection at the cost of reduced visibility, but Chevy has figured out how to keep a low body line intact.
The center console is a joke. Not only is it small, but it completely obstructs the useless coin holder, the difficult-to-modulate hand brake, and the partly blocked outlet. The cover over the outlet opens on the top, blocking cables that are plugged in.
The showering of hard plastic is almost painful to look at. Will someone please tell GM that painting their low quality plastic silver does not make it seem more stately and opulent?
The climate controls for rearview defogging (which was partly broken) and such were very low in the dash. The climate control dials were not very readable. They are chrome with a white dot indicating the direction of the knob. At any time during the day, this is fairly unreadable. And speaking of the climate control, there is no way to stop the flow of air from the vents, nor is it easy or convenient to move the position of the vanes on the vents. The AC was quite weak when the outside weather was only 80F. More people in the car just made it worse.
The sound system was easy enough to control and sounded decently well and got louder as the speed increased, but the duplicate controls on the steering wheel made the wheel another blind spot. The driver cannot see the gauges in mid turn very well at all and there is nothing to grab onto easy because the spokes are so wide to accomidate all of the controls. I have always questioned the use of them because if the car is in any slow turn or in mid turn, the driver cannot use them anyway.
Rather than opting for gauges, Chevy chose to use an informational set of LED to "diagnose" the car with coolant temperature, fuel range, tripometer, outside temperature, and other bits of information. This is rather annoying because the meaningful data needs to be navigated to in order to be seen. Also there is a way to hack into it (just pressing the reset button and the navigation button simultaneously) so the driver can change settings such as the requirement to press the brake pedal before shifting out of park and other settings like that. This could be dangerous if caution is not heeded.
The washer sprayer for the windshield wipers keeps the wipers on longer than it should, leaving streaks.
Opening the windows and sunroof was surprisingly slow.
The door pockets are fairly shallow so maps might not fit. The glovebox is deceptively small. There are few cubbies and such to hide other things around the interior.
Opening the trunk from inside is a bit annoying. The button to do so is hidden from sight by a very flimsy door low on the left side of the dash. This was involuntarily but promptly ripped off in the attempt to open the trunk. The trunk itself is fairly large with few intrusions, but the opening is so small, even grocery bags would have small difficulties fitting in and the sill is quite high. This combination makes lifting suitcases in and out a chore.
The key fob signal was quite weak and it took a firm press to use it.
And now the worst part about the car, driving it.
This car scared me. The roly-poly handling was supposed to be reserved for 80's Chryslers and modern Cadillacs, not for a 21st century compact car. Yet somehow Chevy manages this feat. The ride is nice enough and surprisingly responsive to different obsticles, but inspiring confidence in a corner it did not. Even simple turns moved the body side to side alarmingly. More people or luggage, however, tamed this upright ride some.
The steering is completely useless. Totally vague and effortless to a fault. It was responsive enough, but at high speeds was alarmingly drifty and light. There was just no feel. This combination along with the very good sound insulation masked high speeds, but only in a straight line. This car is meant for cruising on an interstate, not for dropping kids off to soccer practice. The lightness of the steering was beneficial, however, in the city when parking.
At highway speeds, the car got fairly decent gas mileage. The acceleration is horrendous with anything more than the driver in it, but a solid 60mph will give approximately 40mpg in an empty car. This is due to a severe overdrive gearing; 60mph is just 2200rpm as opposed to the 2600rpm or so my Protege is spinning. Unfortunately there is no way to turn off the overdrive from what I saw.
The transmission itself was fairly slow and lethargic when shifting. Most shifts were smooth enough, but some were quite rough, especially at 70% throttle. Shifting into gear was unusually rough.
In the end this car is an expensive (about $3000 more than a comperably equipped Mazda3), heavy (about 600lbs heavier), and fairly useless automobile.
I have driven this, which means I have driven about one third of GM's lineup and was disappointed. I have driven a Dodge Stratus, which is about one fifth of Chrysler's lineup and was disappointed. I looked into the Ford Focus at the Cleveland Auto Show and was surprisingly disappointed. I have lost all respect and hope for American automobiles. Everyone else does everything else better.
http://forum.ohioscions.com/showthread.php?t=2979
In reference to my break-in found here, http://uselessforum.com/showthread.php?t=6189
I had to pick up a rental car. Since my insurance could afford me it, I upgraded from an Aveo to the Cobalt.
As some background info, I was expecting this successor of the Cavilier to be somewhat special. This is the new platform GM is using. They tweaked the Saturn Delta platform and "fixed" its issues when they made the Cobalt. This is a European inspired design and is used on a myriad of car options. I thought to myself that this would be the pinnacle small car from GM for the foreseeable future.
I wanted a 4-door because I was going to travel to Canada that weekend with some people and I thought I would get something a bit roomier than the Aveo. What I got was the Cobalt 3LT. The features list is here: http://www.chevrolet.com/cobalt/features/
Let me start by saying this car looks very bland. Now this not a totally bad thing. This could mean the design won't look much older as it ages. It certainly isn't bold or beautiful, but I am driving a compact car, I didn't have high expectations for the style.
And then we get into driving this train wreck.
Just getting into the car is a bit of a hassle. The door sills are unusually wide, forcing the passenger to hit his/her shins on the dirty body panel or by doing a gazelle-like leap into the seats.
The seats are hopeless. Very uncomfortable with silly lumbar support. The head restraints are very effective because they crane inward on the driver or passenger forcing them to look down. I guess GM didn't think people's heads actually had depth to them. The hieght adjustment just moved the back of the seat so the lumbar changed with the seat hieght.
Speaking about hieght adjustment, I don't know why it is even needed on this car. I am only 5'7" but my head was almost hitting the ceiling with the seat in the lowest position. My 6'1" friend had to crane his neck to fit. This model had the sunroof, but Chevy designed this to move the sunroof out away from the ceiling so as not to take up precious head room to the passengers. How thoughtful that it is still a useless amount. The low ceiling made looking at high stop lights difficult because the roof overhang to the front prevented clean site lines up high. Since the driver is craning his/her neck down, though, I guess looking up at lights is a moot point. And since the ceiling is so badly constructed, it pushes the sunroof back a fair bit on the car, making it useless for front passengers to enjoy.
There is woefully inadequate space for human beings to inhabit the interior. I am only 150lbs and I felt cramped. My 6'1" friend who is about 190 was painfully cramped. The rear seats have literally 0 leg space if the front seat passanger moves the seats all the way back, which they will to make some more room. Also, the rear has inconvienent cup holders that take up valuable leg room for the unfortunate center passenger. This is very surprising because this car is not small. In fact, the Aveo has more interior room in almost every dimension than the Cobalt and it is over a foot shorter.
The seats themselves are quite uncomfortable, no matter how they are adjusted. And adjusting them isn't the easiest given the location of the handles to do the adjustment. They are very hard but still lack support in key areas. Riding back from Canada was a painful adventure.
If no one is sitting in the seats or using the seat belts, they just lay badly on the seat. They don't tuck away or even just stay on the side. They are draped over the edge of the seat with a twist. And the car makes an annoying beep later in the journey while driving if the passenger has not buckled up yet. Since there is a nice dash marking stating that fact already, the use of a beep is annoyingly redundant. And it isn't such a good idea because there is no notification if the rear seat passengers are buckled or not.
The sideview mirrors are awful. They are large then taper quickly near the outside. This isn't very good at all because the visible area that most people would use is the smallest.
The front A pillar was almost a safety hazard how large and intrusive it is. Many times I feared for my life making a soft left turn because I could not see anything ahead of me. The rest of the views out of the car, however, are surprisingly unobstructed and clear. Most new cars are building the body lines higher for added crash protection at the cost of reduced visibility, but Chevy has figured out how to keep a low body line intact.
The center console is a joke. Not only is it small, but it completely obstructs the useless coin holder, the difficult-to-modulate hand brake, and the partly blocked outlet. The cover over the outlet opens on the top, blocking cables that are plugged in.
The showering of hard plastic is almost painful to look at. Will someone please tell GM that painting their low quality plastic silver does not make it seem more stately and opulent?
The climate controls for rearview defogging (which was partly broken) and such were very low in the dash. The climate control dials were not very readable. They are chrome with a white dot indicating the direction of the knob. At any time during the day, this is fairly unreadable. And speaking of the climate control, there is no way to stop the flow of air from the vents, nor is it easy or convenient to move the position of the vanes on the vents. The AC was quite weak when the outside weather was only 80F. More people in the car just made it worse.
The sound system was easy enough to control and sounded decently well and got louder as the speed increased, but the duplicate controls on the steering wheel made the wheel another blind spot. The driver cannot see the gauges in mid turn very well at all and there is nothing to grab onto easy because the spokes are so wide to accomidate all of the controls. I have always questioned the use of them because if the car is in any slow turn or in mid turn, the driver cannot use them anyway.
Rather than opting for gauges, Chevy chose to use an informational set of LED to "diagnose" the car with coolant temperature, fuel range, tripometer, outside temperature, and other bits of information. This is rather annoying because the meaningful data needs to be navigated to in order to be seen. Also there is a way to hack into it (just pressing the reset button and the navigation button simultaneously) so the driver can change settings such as the requirement to press the brake pedal before shifting out of park and other settings like that. This could be dangerous if caution is not heeded.
The washer sprayer for the windshield wipers keeps the wipers on longer than it should, leaving streaks.
Opening the windows and sunroof was surprisingly slow.
The door pockets are fairly shallow so maps might not fit. The glovebox is deceptively small. There are few cubbies and such to hide other things around the interior.
Opening the trunk from inside is a bit annoying. The button to do so is hidden from sight by a very flimsy door low on the left side of the dash. This was involuntarily but promptly ripped off in the attempt to open the trunk. The trunk itself is fairly large with few intrusions, but the opening is so small, even grocery bags would have small difficulties fitting in and the sill is quite high. This combination makes lifting suitcases in and out a chore.
The key fob signal was quite weak and it took a firm press to use it.
And now the worst part about the car, driving it.
This car scared me. The roly-poly handling was supposed to be reserved for 80's Chryslers and modern Cadillacs, not for a 21st century compact car. Yet somehow Chevy manages this feat. The ride is nice enough and surprisingly responsive to different obsticles, but inspiring confidence in a corner it did not. Even simple turns moved the body side to side alarmingly. More people or luggage, however, tamed this upright ride some.
The steering is completely useless. Totally vague and effortless to a fault. It was responsive enough, but at high speeds was alarmingly drifty and light. There was just no feel. This combination along with the very good sound insulation masked high speeds, but only in a straight line. This car is meant for cruising on an interstate, not for dropping kids off to soccer practice. The lightness of the steering was beneficial, however, in the city when parking.
At highway speeds, the car got fairly decent gas mileage. The acceleration is horrendous with anything more than the driver in it, but a solid 60mph will give approximately 40mpg in an empty car. This is due to a severe overdrive gearing; 60mph is just 2200rpm as opposed to the 2600rpm or so my Protege is spinning. Unfortunately there is no way to turn off the overdrive from what I saw.
The transmission itself was fairly slow and lethargic when shifting. Most shifts were smooth enough, but some were quite rough, especially at 70% throttle. Shifting into gear was unusually rough.
In the end this car is an expensive (about $3000 more than a comperably equipped Mazda3), heavy (about 600lbs heavier), and fairly useless automobile.
I have driven this, which means I have driven about one third of GM's lineup and was disappointed. I have driven a Dodge Stratus, which is about one fifth of Chrysler's lineup and was disappointed. I looked into the Ford Focus at the Cleveland Auto Show and was surprisingly disappointed. I have lost all respect and hope for American automobiles. Everyone else does everything else better.
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