Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and … everyone knows how that jingle ends. The bowtie brand has been Ford’s number-one rival for the
working man’s car buying dollars since Louis Chevrolet and William Durant founded the company in 1911. As General Motors’ top-selling
brand, Chevy’s responsible for a string of iconic American vehicles, including the Corvette, Corvair, Impala, Monte Carlo, Suburban and
Camaro. Once the mainstay of police departments and taxi operations across the nation, the 1990s Chevrolet Caprice and Impala are now
enjoying a second life at the hands of urban customizers.
Even after proving that it can share platforms between its divisions without resorting to vehicles that are distinguished solely by grilles and badges, General Motors still made me skeptical with the introduction of its new range of full-size crossovers. The new vehicles are shared between GMC, Saturn, Buick and now Chevrolet's got a version as well.
You've seen all of the hype, and the North American Car of the Year awards, and all of the praise coming from the automotive press. You're fully aware that the new Chevrolet Malibu is no longer your grandfather's cheap rental car. Thanks to a ground-up redesign, the Malibu single-handedly gives hope that the American auto industry ain't dead yet, and is in fact healthier than it's been in years.
‘OK, let‘s see -- clutch in, throttle to the floor, engine boiling at 5,100 RPM. Clutch out, slight wheelspin, mad acceleration! Wow. Time to shift, foot still to floor, clutch in, bang -- second gear -- slight tire chirp, backfire, STILL accelerating seamlessly. Time to shift again, foot still to floor--clutch in, bang -- third gear -- another backfire, even MORE accelerationnnn ...
It‘s a raw deal, being the smallest and least-expensive car on the market. The Crosley, Kaiser Henry J, Nash Metropolitan, Yugo GV can all attest to this fact. Being cheap makes a vehicle attractive to buyers of limited means, but also tends to raise the question, ‘Couldn‘t you have afforded something better?‘
Sport-utility vehicle or pickup truck? When the Chevrolet Avalanche debuted in 2002, it cleverly and conveniently combined a bit of each vehicle into one multi-useful package. Like most good ideas, it even spawned imitators, and now we‘ve got half-truck, half-SUV hybrids of all sizes.
You want to talk about living large? This truck is definitely rollin‘ biggie style. Unlike your average Hummer, Chevrolet‘s C4500 Kodiak is built for serious work. We‘re not talking about carrying a four-wheeler in the bed once in a while, or towing Jet-Skis; the Kodiak will haul your entire garage. We used it to rip a small building off of its foundation. And it looks good while doing
Even though the sixth generation Corvette has been around for almost two years now, the car still manages to turn heads. Better still, the car turns tires too, quite vigorously. Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, the current Corvette is the performance bargain of a lifetime. Add a folding roof to the equation and the cool factor jumps up by a multiple of eight.
Chrysler‘s PT Cruiser made a big splash when it hit the market in 2000. Its retro style, SUV-versatility and commuter-car manners were an unheard-of combination that helped to launch the current crop of compact, do-all tall cars. In fact, the PT Cruiser‘s impact was so great that six years later, the Chevrolet HHR has hit the same mark and vanished under the PT Cruiser‘s ripples.
General Motors is in somewhat dire financial straits these days, but we‘d like to point out that we don‘t think the problem is necessarily in the product. GM can build top-shelf products, even if you don‘t hear about them much. As Exhibit A, we‘d like to present the 2006 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx SS.
