2007 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx SS - The Road To Hell (Revisited)

What was pre-bankruptcy GM thinking, right? Well, the road to hell has always been paved with good intentions and nothing bespeaks of that more than the 2004-2007 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx. I stumbled across this pristine copy of what's either a 2006 or 2007 "Maxx SS" recently outside the gym my wife and I belong to on Cleveland's west side.

To understand the Maxx we have to remember the times it was produced in. Chevrolet introduced the Maxx in that now long-ago time before the explosion in popularity in crossover sport utility vehicles. You know, those visual blights on our roads today that are making sedans as relevant as Buick Electra convertibles. Honestly, some of them are the best and most interesting designs out there today. Anyway, the Maxx combined all the practicality of a small SUV with all sensibility of a car. In many ways it was a crossover but instead of emulating a truck, it emulated a car. Wait, wouldn't that make the Maxx a station wagon? Well, yeah. But don't call the Malibu Maxx a station wagon. For that matter, don't call it a hatchback or crossover either. You may recall, back then, "wagon" and "hatchback" were four letter words and calling something a "station wagon" was really sacrilegious.

Oh, but let's not kid ourselves. The Malibu Maxx was a station wagon and an ugly one too but "five doors" they were and damn good ones too if you ask me. The best part about them was their rear seating and cargo areas. The rear seats were on tracks that had seven inches of travel fore and aft that opened up the rear cargo area large enough to hold 41 cubic feet of stuff. That's not full-size SUV big but compared to a typical sedan trunk's 15 cubic foot capacity it was cavernous. What's more, with the seats all the way forward, you still had enough rear seat leg room to be somewhat comfortable. At least enough to give the kids enough space. Move the seats all the way back and you had the best rear seat leg room this side of a limo. Brilliant stuff. So, what happened?

Unfortunately, GM wrapped the trick engineering in the dorkiest sheet metal of the Bob Lutz era. That's saying a lot too considering Lutz' Chevrolet SSR, the HHR, Pontiac GTO, G6..et al. Just look at this thing. Actually, the hatchback design, yes, that's a hatch not a trunk lid, is not the worst thing about this stubby little porker...

It's the stretched wheelbase with the tiny and tall rear overhang and funky long rear doors that butcher any semblance of design cohesion. Sorry, this is a horrible design and my picture here makes the car look less awful than it actually is.

The Maxx "SS", which was available only on 2006 and 2007 Maxx', got horsepower starved owners a then prolific 240 horsepower, 60 degree, 3.9 liter OHV V-6 with cam phasing. That's pretty neat technology for a "cam in block" engine - Corvette didn't even have that yet back then. I'd spent a weekend back in New York years ago and a Maxx with a 217 horsepower, 3.5 liter V-6 was my steed; they must have been out of just about everything else at the rental counter at Laguardia That thing could really move although I do remember an inordinate amount of wheel spin and torque steer so I have to imagine this more powerful Maxx SS torque steers and dances in place more than my rental did.

The Maxx with its wonderful rear seats went into the dumpster of automobile history following the 2007 model year as Chevrolet ushered in a new, ahem, world-beating Malibu for 2008. Just as the economy crashed and burned taking GM as we used to know it with it too. A much better GM rose from the ashes of "The Great Recession" and with it said explosion in popularity of crossovers. Are these events somehow related? Good question and history will answer that one for us. 

1970 Buick Electra Convertible - Harvest Gold

Like Ralphie in a "Christmas Story" when his mother asks him what he wants for Christmas, I feel compelled to yell out, "harvest gold Buick Electra two door hardtop!" whenever someone asks me what my favorite car is. I normally don't instead preferring to let "Hemi Cuda" or "1969 Camaro Z28" slither out of my mouth lest people think I'm some middle age, 1970's luxury barge loving, disenfranchised republican. Well, as we like to say here, "if the brake shoe fits..."

I've been enamored of Buick's 1970 Electra since I first ran into a "harvest gold" four-door Electra hard top during my parent's car shopping misadventures during the summer of 1977. I was wandering around the "discount" section in the back of the used car lot at long-gone Conway Motors, which was a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, on Sunrise Highway in Baldwin, New York. I was transfixed by its elegant, old-school charm and grace; it was everything that I thought a luxury car should look like and be. Even in brown. Little did I know at the time that it was an example of the great Bill Mitchell at his finest. Being the fan that I am of two-door automobiles, it's not surprising that I'd be even more enamored of the coupe version of the 1970 Electra. Even though Buick made more than ten times as many two-door hardtops than convertibles in 1970, they're tougher to find these days than these overrated, overvalued and overpriced convertibles. 

Buick made only about 6,000 Electra convertibles for 1970 so our Dayton, Ohio based black beauty's asking price of $12,000 is driven by its rarity and what appears to be solid condition. GM seeing how poorly these sold, when they launched their redesigned C bodies for 1971, they nixed the convertibles. Just as well. Again, I was never the biggest fan of them anyway.

I'm not sure where my personal prejudice comes from towards convertibles. I'd love to say it's from my experience driving them but that's not altogether true. They can be quite fun to drive although I'm not a fan of the wind pounding you get in many of them with the top down. Not to mention the claustrophobia I experience with the top up. The mechanism for the top almost always cuts down on head toom. I'm also not a fan of the loose, shakey and shuddering structure of convertibles either. 

I think it more than likely stems from the fact that I don't think most convertibles look as good as their hardtop versions. Which is ironic considering that hardtops were supposed to emulate the look of convertibles. Nowadays we have "hardtop convertibles" where the hard roof swings together on hinges, "clamshells" together and gets tucked into the trunk. It's an engineering marvel but one that while provides the best of all worlds, to me, is a gimmick that sooner or later will stop working. And just like back in the old days, it will get stuck open or in mid way between opening or closing. 

Click here for the listing for it. It's had a lot of work done to it that might be driving the price up too. All stuff that I'd rather do myself and have bought this car for $4000-$5000 less than I'd be willing to spend on it. Let me know if you contact the owner or better yet, make me green with envy and actually buy it. Oh, and do me a favor if you do buy it, get it painted "harvest gold". 

2018 BMW M240i - Blake is a Good Friend

BMW's are expensive to purchase and service but they give you a loaner when you drop your car off to have work done on it. Least they can do, right? Recently my buddy Blake dropped off his 2009 BMW 330i for some front end work and the loaner they gave him was this brand new M240i. Blake, being the wonderful friend that he is, stopped by my house on his way home, threw me the keys and said, "have fun".

And...much fun was had. The BMW M240i is one of the strongest performing, most fun automobiles, this side of a Ferrari 458, I've ever driven. Just like the 458, the M240I left me with the feeling that I was unable to fully experience everything the car was capable of. It feels...limitless. What's worse, its sheer greatness making me feel inadequate as a driver. Even if I had a race track or road course to really open it up on I doubt I could do the car any justice. This is quite an automobile and I would wholeheartedly recommend it were it not for one serious fatal flaw. I'll get to that in a moment.

The heart of the M240i lies under this innocuous engine cover; a 3.0 liter, twin-turbocharged inline six-cylinder making 335 horsepower and 369-pound-feet of torque. Now, those are not herculean, out of this world specs but somehow this engine is able to yank this 3,500-pound little porker from 0-60 miles per hour in an astonishing 4.4 seconds. That tells me either the engine's power is underrated, for certain on paper, a power to weight ratio of 10:1 wouldn't warrant such neck straining performance, or the 8-speed automatic it has is just that good. Cars equipped with it are .2 of a second faster to 60 than cars with the optional six-speed manual. This wouldn't be the only car out there today that's faster with an automatic than a manual. Reason being today's high performance transmissions can out shift even the most fleet-footed of drivers. 

Fast cars get boring real quick if that's the only thing they have going for them and the M240i has handling and braking prowess on par with its stellar engine. Although the steering lacks the tactile feel of BMW's of yore, the car feels completely unshakable - even over railroad crossings not to mention the pothole-pocked stretches of asphalt and concrete they call roads here in Cleveland.  Then there's the track inspired front seats that coddle you so well you'll feel as though they were custom made for you. The BMW M240i also has the sickest sound system I've ever heard in a car. 

About the only problem I had with the interior was the transmission gear selector. It's one thing that many cars today have electronic shifters but the shift pattern on this thing is counter-intuitive. Reverse is forward and park is up, down and around. Actually, I forget what it is but it's not something that's obvious to figure out. Had Blake not showed me how this thing worked I think I would have put the car into my basketball pole rather than backing it up. 



So, is the M240i the new name for the "M2"? No. This car is a 2 series that BMW's Motorsports division has liberally breathed on. In fact, there's so much "M" in this thing that it all but negates any reason to spring for an M2 and blow $9,000 more. Why BMW would make a car that competes with something else they're selling is beyond me but I'll never own either so I don't care. Still, makes me wonder.  

Now for the fatal flaw. It would seem that the BMW M240i has it all. Hellacious performance, comfort and...well. It doesn't have it all. The one thing it's missing is good looks. This is a homely, awkward looking little car whose balance and proportion seemed to have been left on the drafting table. I felt the same way about the car it replaced in the BMW portfolio, the equally disappointing looking 1-series. This is a real shame too because everything else about this car is freaking awesome. 

Sorry, at the end of the day, a car that stickers closer to $60,000 than $50,000 should be as visually appealing as it is a strong performer. For my money, the BMW 4 series coupe is a much better looking car. While not the screaming performer this car is, it's performance is good enough, and that's saying a lot considering it's a BMW. And no, BMW doesn't offer an "M" version of the 4 series coupe. They do, however, at almost $69,000, sell an M4 coupe. 

1974 AMC Matador - Killer

 

From my old man's Rambler  to the Pacer, all AMC's were weird. To some extent their odd designs,  and smaller size, of course, were intentional to set them apart from anything "The Big Three" were doing. After all, if you can't beat 'em, make an attempt at being a mass appeal "niche". On the other hand, their off beat designs, through my eyes, indicated a lack of talent in their design studios. How else to explain the 1957 Rambler, all Ramblers up through 1963 for the matter, and what was up with the Marlin, Gremlin and to a degree the Javelin? Many an AMC made Chrysler's far out designs in the early '60's look out right inspired. Problem with AMC, though, was that when they tried to go "mainstream", they couldn't win for trying. Take their 1974 Matador coupe for instance.

Around 1967 or so, American Motors made the conscious decision to start producing automobiles that were more in line with what consumers wanted. That being larger, more sensibly styled automobiles. Problem with that was that meant they would be competing head-on with GM at a time when GM could do no wrong design wise. Ford and Chrysler were already mopping up whatever was left of the market with their wares that could be construed as being GM knockoffs. Ford more guilty of that than Chrysler of course but still, there's many a similarity in Chrysler's '60's design ethos and GM's. Anyway, in an attempt to go "mainstream", AMC's were still awkward looking but worse than that, they became bland and anonymous. Their 1971 Matador looking more like some sort of Chrysler design than anything original. In fact, AMC had an ad campaign out in 1973 with the actors asking the question, "what's a Matador".
 

 

In an attempt to be distinctive or less anonymous, AMC "rebodied" the Matador coupe for 1974 with this amorphous blob. The sedan and wagon remained the same but AMC did have plans to do "blob jobs" on them too. In an age when in spite of being as subtle as an Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile, the swoopy, retro-themed 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo was a monster of a sales success because only GM could design something as outrageous as that and make it work, AMC's version of it came out all wrong. Don't just take my word for it; AMC sold just 110,00 of these in five model years. That's an incredibly long time to soldier on with something that wasn't working. Then again, it's not like AMC had anything else lined up to replace it or had any resources to retool it to make it more mainstream looking. At least the wheels are nice on the car in this commercial.

Powered by AMC's slate of big, thirsty engines, the Matador did no buyer any favors at the gas pump either in a time when AMC surely could have used a penny pinching larger automobile. AMC tacked on atypical mid-1970's luxury car baubles and bits onto subsequent Matador coupes but nothing caught on. Rather than replace the Matador in 1979, AMC just stopped making it. 

AMC died a long, painful death by a thousand lashes and the 1974 Matador coupe was certainly one big whip. Matador, incidentally, in Spanish, doesn't mean "bullfighter". It means, "killer".

Buick Encore, encore - "DINK"

This is my second blog on Buick's "cute ute", the Encore. Please click here to read my first blog about quite possibly the worst vehicle GM makes today.

 



Our younger son is a sophomore at Ohio University and is a member of the school's men's singing troupe, "Singing Men of Ohio". "SMO" wrapped up their spring break tour in Cincinnati this past Saturday night and my wife and I, who take advantage of any opportunity to see him and/or his brother, made the 4 hour long traipse down I-71 to see him perform. With his brother being a junior at the nearby University of Dayton, we decided to make an over niter out of our trip and see him the next morning.

With my 2002 Monte Carlo knocking on heaven's door, our Tahoe inhaling gas at 18 miles per gallon highway and Enterprise all but throwing weekend rentals away, my wife insisted we take advantage of their promotion and rent a car from them on the cheap. Unfortunately, she didn't see the fine print in the online ad for the weekend promo that they'll zap you for 20 cents a mile if you go over 300 miles. Like discount airlines charging exorbitantly to check baggage, they have to make money someway on these promotions. Seeing how upset my wife was at herself for her over sight, the nice counter person not only waved the mileage fee, they also gave her a free upgrade. Nice. Only thing is, it was an upgrade to a Buick Encore.

It's not like she didn't consult with me on this - she did. She had a choice between a red Hyundai Elantra and this thing and I said go with the Encore knowing that she's said in the past that she thought it "cute as a button". Well, looks are deceiving. I knew we were in trouble when I came home, saw this big white bowling ball in our driveway and an annoyed looked on her face.

Right off the bat, the Buick Encore failed to impress me failing my very basic rear door slam test. Closing with an alarming and entirely unsatisfying, "DINK", I believe the last time I drove something has tin can hollow was when I skimped on myself in Nashville several years ago and I rented a Kia freakin' Rio. While it was only to scooter myself around town and back and forth to the airport, I paid through my ass physically and emotionally every time I used it. Anyway, that same sad feeling of "I coulda, shoulda, woulda" came over me test driving the Encore around our one-mile long block.

Secondly, I had almost as much difficulty getting into it as I did the Chevrolet Malibu I rented a couple of weekends ago when I was down in Florida with our older son. At least with the Malibu, the challenges I had getting into it were because of its rakish styling. On the Encore it was due to the fact that this thing is just too damn small. Isn't ease of ingress and egress one of the reason's people buy these blasted crossovers?

  

Inside, because the Encore's floor is so low and its beltline is so high, I felt as though I was sitting on a bar stool inside a small van. What's more, the center console is so low you have to bend your entire body to retrieve anything you put into it. Speaking of things that go into the center console, I always feel compelled to put the ridiculous "keyless entry/fob thing" in the console rather than keeping it in my pocket. I hate those damn things because I've misplaced them in rental cars a number of times slowing me down when I want to get out; "well, the car's running so it must still be in here". I never have to worry about losing our keys in our old cars because they're right there in the ignition. Someone, please explain to me how a push button start is an advantage over a key. I think they're gimmicky and dumb. The driving position of the Encore makes me feel as though I'm driving some big toy as opposed to driving a serious vehicle.

Turtling around our neighborhood, the Encore's 1.4 liter, turbocharged inline 4 responded well and really boogied when I nailed it on the long straightaway on the main road that leads into our development. Couple that performance with a projected 30 plus miles per gallon and that's something to write home about. Too bad the rest of the Encore just flat out sucked. Note, hood prop. On a Buick let alone a vehicle with a near $40,000 sticker? Maybe "hood prop" and "cheap car"don't go together like they once did but in my book, a vehicle costing as much as this shouldn't have a hood prop.

With 15,000 miles on the odometer, our Encore rattled, moaned and groaned and its front struts felt as though they had as much life left in them as the struts on my 155,000 mile, 16-year-old Monte Carlo, do. That's not much btw. Keep that in mind if you're considering getting one of these; it would seem they're not assembled very well if they're this creaky after only 15,000 miles. Rentals do get abused. though so there is that but, still.

Again, the driving position is really odd. The curvature of the windshield means a funky placement of the "A pillars" which means vision to the sides out the windshield is compromised. That black square thing behind the rearview mirror was stuck in the corner of my right eye making me feel as though there was something splattered on the windshield. Things I know I could get used to on our 500-mile over-niter but it's stuff I shouldn't have to get used to driving what is allegedly an entry level, premium vehicle.

Oh, one thing I really liked was the heated steering wheel. I had never driven a car with one of those and it was quite cozy; you never know what you're missing when you've never experienced something. I liked the backup camera too. Then again, a heated steering wheel and backup camera come on most every modern luxury vehicle so it's no great shakes that the Encore had them. I liked the features regardless of the fact that they were on the Encore.

To make matters worse, the damn thing pulled aggressively to the right even at low speed. Both front tires looked to be inflated properly so something was up with the front end. Not the first rental I've driven that felt as though it had been thoroughly used and abused but this Encore took that to a different level.

We dumped it off back at Enterprise and picked up the red Elantra we should have gotten in the first place and had a drama free if a somewhat boring drive to southern Ohio. The gas mileage on the Elantra was so good, incidentally, that it ran us only about $30 more to rent it than it would have been to use our Tahoe. Seeing our boys has never been more affordable.  

Brett Eldredge "The Long Way" - Poetic License

Poetic license is loosely defined as an act by a writer or poet of changing facts or rules to make a story or poem more interesting or effective. In the case of "The Long Way", a country pop love song written by Brett Eldredge, Matt Rogers and sung by Brett Eldredge, enables the use of "mama" and "Impala" in a way that makes us car wonks cringe.

Taking the video for the song at face value, the song is about a romance between a man and a young girl woman whom have a sizeable age difference between them. Mr. Eldredge is 31 years old going on 50 and his love interest is 20 years old, going on 13, Sadie Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame. Allegedly, he cast the reality TV star in the video after following her on social media and feeling drawn to her personality. Nothing creepy or stalker-ish at all, right?  The two had never met until the first day of the video shoot and they became instant friends.
 

 

May-September romance aside, the song is a conventional if formulaic ear worm. This being a car blog, let's focus on the songwriters use of "'99 Impala" to  reinforce the protagonist's infatuation with his new found love interest.  Why? Well,  Chevrolet didn't make an Impala in 1999. What's more, while the producers of the video chose to feature an Impala in the video for the song, the Impala in the video is a 1964 Impala. We wonder if the producers of the video believe that viewers will think this car is the "hand me down '99 Impala" the song makes reference to. You never know. Regardless of poetic license, Millenials are so out of touch with cars that they probably assume it is.
 



  

Can't say we blame them for using a "'64 Impala" in the video instead of a '99 Impala. If there was such a thing it would have looked like this sad lump. Sexy. Maybe they were referring to a 1999 Chevrolet Lumina? That would have been even worse. Honestly, though, outside of the Corvette and maybe the Camaro, Chevrolet hasn't done much in the way of designing anything that could be remotely considered romantic in decades.  

 

 

Ah, romance. Then again, most likely the songwriters didn't even care about a physical car instead wanting nothing more than to have "Impala" sing well in the song. Who knew that Impala rhymed with mama anyway? Actually, it doesn't but such is "country music". Writers and singers not only using poetic license to achieve a pretentious final result but bending pronunciation of words to get said effect accomplished. For the video, few types of cars were as "romantic" as GM's old full size convertibles. Even one with oh-my-god-awful fender skirts like the '64 in the video.

 

Poetic license in pop music is nothing new. For instance, U2 took some liberties with historic events with their 1984 hit song, "Pride (In The Name of Love)". Mr. Bono sings, “Early morning, April 4/Shot rings out in the Memphis sky.” The lyrics are a reference to the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Only thing is, Dr. King was shot by James Earl Ray in the early evening of April 4, 1968. It's ok, Bono because, you know, poetic license.

 

 

The former lead singer of Journey, Steve Perry used poetic license when he wrote the anthemic, "Don't Stop Believing" for Journey's seminal 1981 album, "Escape". In the song, Perry sings about "a city boy born and raised in South Detroit". This just in...there is no South Detroit (per se). Unless he's referring to a small town in Brown County, South Dakota or Windsor, Ontario of all places. Perry admitted recently that he made up the lyrics and didn't look at a map when he did so. He's from south central California so we'll cut him some slack for his use of poetic license.

 

 

Having discussed "car casting" in videos with artists as often as I have, you'd be surprised at how many of them not only know nothing about cars, but could care less that what they're singing about makes little to no sense cloaking bizarre lyrics under the tarpaulin of poetic license. Flawed as the lyrics are to "The Long Way" and as, sorry, somewhat creepy the video is given not so much how old Eldredge looks but how child like Ms. Robertson appears, the sentiment of the song and the video are not lost on us dyed in the wool, factually and historically anal gear heads.

 

 

Imagine, though, if instead of "ninety-nine Impala" they used "sixty-nine Impala" in the song and a '69 Impala convertible in the video. That would have legitimized the song as an actual experience of the song writer(s) rather than a conveyance to further along a rising star's career. Then again, if "sixty-nine Impala" was used instead, this blog about "The Long Way" would be about sexual metaphors making the video even more unsettling. Just as well they took the long way with as much  poetic license as they did.

 



2018 Chevrolet Malibu - I'm Not One of Those People



My son and I just spent a glorious weekend in Florida for his 21st birthday taking in Yankees spring training games in Tampa. We also saw the Mets play the Marlins near his grand mother's house in Jupiter (west coast about two hours north of Miami) so that meant we had to rent a car to traipse across the (quite challenging to navigate) state of Florida. With an upgrade to a "full size" car, we got to choose between a gaggle of CVT Altima's and Chevrolet Malibu's. Slim pickin's. Since I can't stand CVT's, I begrudgingly threw our bags into the half-open trunk of this Malibu.
 

I had previously blogged about the at-the-time all-new Malibu and in retrospect, I was on point with  99% of what I wrote. Especially the styling which, just like the latest and from what I understand last Impala's, still hasn't grown on me. Still, with considerable wheel time behind one, I now have the additional perspective of real-world experience to expound upon.



I won't bore you with a long, drawn-out flowery story and I'll cut right to the chase  - this car is awesome. Too bad I still find it so ugly.



This little spaceship can do it all and it does it all very well. Handling, braking, acceleration, fuel economy, solid build, ease of operation. Every. Thing. It does everything well except look good. If only Malibu's of yore could do anything half as well as this modern Malibu I'd probabbly use one as a daily driver. Old Malibu's, though, can't hold a candle to this thing. For the record, when I say "old Malibu's", I'm referring to anything made between 1966 and 1977 with special emphasis on 1966 and 1968-1972 Malibu's.

It's not perfect, though, although any foibles above and beyond styling I found had to do with "current automotive trends". For starters, the Malibu has an incredibly raked windshield and "A pillars" making the darn thing harder to get into than a Corvette. I haven't banged my head on the roof of a sedan as much as I did this past weekend since I rented a Volkswagen "CC", Comfort Coupe, several years ago. Like the "CC", the Malibu is all about "coupe styling". Well, this coupe guy and his son would have rather had a coupe. We never opened either of the rear doors so I can't speak to how spacious or not the rear seating area is. They charge a fortune in FLA for specialty rentals like Mustangs and Camaros. Yes. We looked into it. Ridiculous. Besides, with the Malibu's ability to pull G's, what would be the point of a sports car on a weekend getaway anyway?

I also wasn't a fan of the blasted "auto stop" that turns off the engine when I came to a stop at red lights. Take your foot off the gas and the engine magically springs back to life. Really annoying. It was rough and quite obtrusive although it probably helped us get the incredible range we got on little more than a tank and quarter of gas. Take that, hybrids. Ford's I've driven with this feature were much smoother. I've heard you can disable "auto-stop" but I didn't look into it.



I could pick on the little 1.5 liter turbo engine's lack of linear power but for most driving situations it was fine. I still prefer a larger non-turbo six-cylinder engine. Larger turbo fours have more power but they're frenetic. They make big power but they also use big gas. What's the point of that?

 

TV screens in dashes are clumsy looking and until they start putting these things in front of the driver so the driver can toggle between the speedo and navigation screen, they're going to continue to look out of place. I've yet to see a modern dash with a screen that's either in the dash like this or pops up that looks any good. On our rental, it looked about as good as I think these things can look. Nice job, Chevy.



The infotainment system hooked up easily to our iPhones and were even able to use both of our phones through the car at the same time. My son supplied the tunes while my phone was used for navigation. All the while we were able to use the hands free to call people. My son's playlist being muted when we did so. Pretty cool. This might be everyday to you already but to a family that has a fleet of automobiles with the least old being a 2006 Tahoe, this is Buck Rogers, flying car awesome.



As good as the Malibu is, though, it's apparently not good enough to stem the tide of people moving to cross overs. In a market segment that's shrinking, despite automobiles themselves in general having never been better, Malibu sales are off from last year at this time as are sedan sales in general. Blame a down year after several years of booming sales - car sales are cyclical to a certain degree - and what remains of the sedan segment being brutally competitive. Cross shop the Malibu against a Ford Fusion or the myriad Corolla-Altima-Civic's that are out there and you'll go cross eyed. They're all fantastic albeit, like out Malibu here, as generic as a Bosch dishwasher is compared to a Kitchen Aid. In the end, they're all the same.

If there's anything good coming of the Malibu's compromised market position, after all, it's still a Chevrolet, it's that on used car lots, you can get a gently used, late model Malibu for relatively little. For instance, our rental here is a Malibu 1LT that comes with almost everything you'd want in a modern car and it stickers for around $30,000 brand new. A gently used 2017 with a scant 1,600 miles on it can be had for $18,000.

That's big value and makes perfect sense for a lot of people who want nothing more than a transportation conveyance that will take them from point A to B. And that's fine. I just happen to be not be one of those people.