Lots of comments about the better looks of the Impala. It is certainly a much better-appearing package than GM has offered for a number of years. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and when you are driving down a street or road, you are not the beholder. You are showing off your taste (or lack thereof) to your friends, neighbours and co-workers. As rewarding to the ego as this may be, the reward may be hard to quantify, as most people aren't going to wave and point to acknowledge your wise choice. Don't get me wrong, I love a good-looking womxxx car as much as anyone, but if I buy and drive one, I can't see its fender curves, the swoop of the headlight bezels, the gleam of the signal lights, the arch of the side windows from the driver's seat. As nice as it looks at the curb or in the driveway, what makes me continue to love any car is the way it treats me, in terms of how well it is assembled, how well its parts stand up, and how much respect it offers in terms of fuel economy expectations.
I recall reading about the new cars in the 1950s, and one of the features of the new-car comparisons was the number of faults new owners reported to the mags. The writers compiled the figures and averaged them out, in overall totals and by section of the car. It wasn't unusual to see reports of several dozen faults on a single car, and some makes averaged 30 or 40 defects! Misaligned body and interior parts were common, as were fasteners left loose, or at least not torqued to specification, found on almost every area of the cars. Apparently, buyers put up with shoddy assembly, because they had no choice. Today, competitive forces have raised our expectations, and they are met in the majority of cases; finding egregious assembly errors (a kind definition of probable carelessness or even maliciousness) in a new car today is surprising, and does not bode well for a manufacturer who does not quickly correct the situation. Failing to do this recently caused major trmors in the North American auto landscape, and it can and likely will happen again.