I applaud GM for this, but I am still confused as to how they can manage to update this car so fast (a halo that very few people will actually buy), but they let their actual sellers (Cobalt and Malibu) languish for years without even an updated front bumper.
Wasn't the Malibu all-new in 2008?
It was, and it got great press in 2008. Now it is falling to the bottom of the list in just about every comparo because everyone else got better and GM has done nothing. It went from having very little fleet sales at launch to filling the Enterprise and Discount lots.
All it would take are little things like an integrated stereo, maybe a nav system option, maybe throw in the DI engine and a face lift and the car would be back at the top again. Instead it sits at the bottom and sells to fleets and old people with GM credit cards.
So? It's replaced with the Cruze next year. And as for minimal changes in the past six years, let's play "spot the differences" between a 2003 Corolla and a 2009 Corolla.
Heres the biggest difference here: The Corolla was a good car in 2003, and was still pretty good in 2008 (the 2009 was a whole new model BTW). It didn't need any updates to stay competitive and sell at near MSRP for its entire run.
I'm not saying they should have updated the Cobalt just for the sake of updating it, but they should have at least fixed its glaring faults.
I've sat in the Cruze and while a major step ahead of the Cobalt, from a qualitative standpoint (sitting in the car and observing the interior, I haven't driven one), it will face the same problems as the Cobalt when it finally hits the market. Just decent when it comes out, lackluster within a year.
The Cobalt in 2005 was cramped, uncomfortable, had a poor quality rattle filled interior, and looked dated from day 1. The Cobalt was near the bottom of the class when it came out, and has had no updates since then while just about everyone else (at least the imports) was already better in 2005 and has had a face lift or full redesign since then. So, they get dumped into rental fleets and sold at fire sale prices. I've driven MANY of them, I worked at a rental agency where we'd get them in by the truckload at ridiculously low prices, and even the customers complained about them. I now work in government where we have another fleet full of fire sale priced G5s and Cobalts which are SEs and LTs which I believe were bought for something like 12-13k (with a sticker 9-10k higher than that).
They work fine in that application, but they could not go head to head in a retail environment with a Civic, Corolla, or 3 on day one of sales, let alone 6 years later with not one improvement.
When Subaru overhauled the current WRX just a year after its release to fix some widely-criticized shortcomings, people applauded their fast response. Why wouldn't this be the same?
I am applauding them, I just want to know why they are so quick to update and fix a halo car that only has a limited customer base, while their bread and butter cars which COULD sell hundreds of thousands to REAL retail customers rot away without any changes for whole life cycles.
