Once you do get to them, you've punished the driver, too, because there's no "memory" spring for the driver's seat, which means it'll need to be manually repositioned. And even though that probably means few passengers will be forced into the second-class rear bucket seats, these are both uncomfortable (the bolstering is all wrong) and tough to reach. And, yes, on the track the Cobalt is a superb car (more on that below), but it just doesn't look cool enough inside to woo a lot of demanding and savvy first-time buyers.īefore we get to the Cobalt's well-earned praise, we have a few more digs. , which costs a good deal more money than the standard Cobalt. It's meant to go toe-to-toe with the Scion and the Civic Si from But just because the lower-rung Cobalt is meant to be nothing more than a base-level subcompact doesn't mean Chevy shouldn't treat the SSSC as something entirely different. Yeah, the SSSC is an appliance-a tool for getting you from point A to point B. Note to GM: Find some twentysomething-or younger-designers to work on your youth-targeted models. The Cobalt SSSC interior is at best, appliance-like. The fit is that tight, the aesthetic that refined, honed and targeted toward a buyer who can be hyper-critical about the netherworld "realities" conjured in exceedingly complex videogames. Clamber in behind the wheel of the tC, and you'll come away dazzled. What will especially ding the SSSC is its under-designed interior.
That's because a lot of buyers don't bother to test drive before they buy, which will hurt Chevy, because, from the outside, the Cobalt SSSC doesn't look as special as the tC. If a potential Cobalt SSSC buyer walks onto his Chevy dealer's lot after first having examined a tC at the Scion dealer, Chevy is going to lose this fight. Then again, there's precedent for this sort of upselling: In this country-no BMW leaves the showroom "stock." This is the Xbox generation: If you wave a shiny bauble in front of them that cost "only" a few hundred dollars more, they're going to go for it. Even better, most Scions sell with piles of dealer-installed options, pouring a little cream into each dealer's coffee mug each time a Scion sells. Whereas the common thinking five years ago was that younger buyers want to buy cheap used cars and make them "hotter," Scion has shown that cheap new cars can sell too. The success of Scion has awoken Toyota's competitors in this segment.
2004 CHEVY COBALT SS DRIVER
The driver will be young, hip and precisely who Toyota envisioned buying its less-expensive cars when Scion was created.
2004 CHEVY COBALT SS WINDOWS
(Check out the average Camry or Avalon driver the next time you're in traffic, and you're unlikely to spy a twentysomething behind the wheel rocking to Weezer's "Beverly Hills.")īut pull up alongside a Scion xB on an urban block some evening, and it's not only very likely to be tricked out with wider wheels and tires and an exhaust designed to make noise (if not actual muscle), but the windows are likely be tinted and vibrating to the beat of some "artist" whose work won't hit the mainstream for at least six months. And remember: Toyota has recently had far more trouble attracting young buyers than VW, with its median buyer pushing well into middle age. With almost all of its customers age 30 or younger, Toyota's Scion label has clearly struck a nerve. Scion sales are up over 80% this year when compared with 2004. VW could learn a lot about youth marketing from Toyota Motor and its Scion xA and xB models, which have gone from selling nothing in the summer of 2003 to selling as many as 150,000 cars this year. But considering that VW sales are off by more than 19% so far in 2005, with more than $1 billion in North American losses, it certainly doesn't help that cars like the reintroduced Jetta and Touareg aren't exactly electrifying performers-and are a lot more expensive than the competition. Sure, that automaker's problems aren't specifically rooted in failing to keep up with the fickle tastes of younger buyers. Volkswagen, once the darling of this segment, seems to be falling apart at the seams. A child of the digital age, especially one who's a car nut, can-and will-read every review, parse all the specification data, lurk on every model/manufacturer blog site and then stroll into a dealer armed with brutal, concrete knowledge of not only performance figures but also of option packages, colors, safety features-and probably even dealer incentives (cash a car dealer gets from the manufacturer, not what the buyer gets) and on-hand inventories.īrand managers seem particularly befuddled by the youth buyer.
2004 CHEVY COBALT SS HOW TO
Anyone born in 1980 or later knows far more intuitively than, say, this reviewer's father, about how to shop for a car online.
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