Bloomberg's Doron Levin likes the new Chevrolet Malibu, believing the sedan might even help change perceptions of General Motors (GM/NYSE):
Of the many indignities General
Motors Corp. has endured in its fall from dominance of the U.S.
auto market, none is more damaging than the inability to field a
first-rate family sedan.
That adversity might just be coming to an end. The new
Chevrolet Malibu, which begins arriving at dealers toward the
end of this month, is a car GM is praying will be discussed
favorably by consumers in the same breath as the Honda Accord
and Toyota Camry, the acknowledged benchmarks in the category.
"It's astonishingly good,'' said Eric Noble, president of
The CarLab in Orange, California, which does engineering
analyses of vehicle tear-downs. "And I've been quite open in
the past about my negative views of GM vehicles.'' Noble, who has driven the new model, said the interior of
his test vehicle was superior to the top-selling cars in the
U.S. "When Honda and Toyota see this car they'll have to start
putting back some of the content they've been taking out to
economize,'' he said.
Csaba Csere, editor of Car and Driver magazine, who has
bashed GM models in the past, says the new Malibu "drives
beautifully.'' Csere said Malibu's 2.4-liter, four-cylinder
engine is smoother and quieter than the comparable Honda engine: "It's unprecedented. GM has made enormous progress on every
front.''
Didn't Forbes' Jerry Flint write sometime back that he thought the Malibu was the best sedan around? Even better than the Japanese alternatives? If my memory is right on that, he must've been talking about last year's model. Don't know offhand what he thinks of the new Malibu, if anything.
UPDATE: Actually, now I'm thinking Jerry Flint was praising the Chevrolet Impala a while back, not the Malibu.
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