Still a lot of cars to post up, Ill see how many I can do today.


Introduction: The Chevrolet Malibu is one of GMs older names the first Malibu was introduced in 1964 until GM canceled it in 1983. The Malibu name was later revived after the demise of the Corsica/Beretta in 1997. Im not sure why GM had to retire the Corsica name since Ive never heard of this one being a horrible car like its predecessor the Citation was. Anyways GM brought back the Malibu and unfortunately for GM it was a pretty weak effort to combat the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry, I remember seeing the return of the Malibu...and the car was pretty dull and the interior was very disappointingly cheap...like youd expect from the Cavalier. Turns out that it ended up doing only well as a fleet car which is a failure unless the car was designed for fleet sales only ie. Ford Crown Victoria, Toyota Crown Comfort, etc. Finally someone at GM seemed to realize the Malibu had absolutely nothing to convince you to switch from Honda or Toyota and decided the whole car needed...a reasonably budget the result is the newly designed 2008 Malibu.

When I was given the opportunity to drive this GM car...I knew that GM had to do much more than a mild improvement to even think of challenging the other mid-sized sedans. Up until I drove the Malibu, all the GM sedans Ive driven were pretty disappointing and generic. With all the US media hype over this car I had to look at this car more critically to see whether GM finally understood what its been doing wrong for nearly 30 years.


Performance: Well Ive only driven the LS model which is the base model and has the not nearly as strong 2.4L 4-cylinder. Its nothing like the first Ford Fusion which had a horribly matched engine but this is not a very powerful car with an engine like this. It only produces 169 hp and 162 lb.ft of torque which is not all that great for acceleration making from 0 to 100 km/h in 9.6 seconds. The engine is refined enough to be quiet enough unlike a Dodge product so in some sense its not all that bad.

My Score: 6/10 - The engine isnt all that powerful, the V6 in terms of power is much better.

Handling: One of the annoying things about American cars has always been the fact they are made purely for the highway, the old Taurus was like this and as a result the handling was often terrible. The new Malibu fortunately avoids this problem, the handling on the Malibu while not being that great is not terrible as one would expect. The big problem here for the car however is its weight, at 3500 lbs its heavy and you start to feel this once you make the corner. Unlike what Toyota has done, the steering for the Malibu isnt vague it actually does feel connected which is a massive improvement over other older GM products.

My Score: 7/10 - Decent handling, good steering feel but the car is noticeably heavy


Interior: This used to be GMs anchilles heel...in the 1990s you jump into a GM car and can see the awful sea of grey, dull plastic. It was so uninspired and very cheap at the same time that you hoped it was a rental or one of the cheapest cars youve bought. The VP of GM by the name of Bob Lutz noticed this and was willing to basically say the GM interiors back then...were crap. The new Malibu made it a goal that the interior had to look like someone actually spent time and money styling it instead of before just throwing cheap parts from a Cavalier and hope the buyer was too dumb to notice. Mission accomplished, there are some noticeable neat looking styling items like the gear shifter with its neat lights, the much much nicer dashboard(a fake digital by the way) and a general inviting atmosphere of the interior. I liked the implementation of this interior. Its not the most beautiful interior because of the plastic but these days, nearly all the interiors of cars are plastic. As for the build quality its made in the USA and so far...I havent seen a major defect, only a minor misalignment which Toyota these days has.

My Score: 9/10 - Very very good effort, if it didnt have to use plastic it would have been perfect.

Styling: The exterior styling of the Malibu is not something I particularly liked. The good news is its not nearly as dull as the last two generations. The front has a nice headlight set up...but I think it was sort of ruined by how large the grille became, kind of like seeing a person with a massive nose. The rear just didnt really match with the front, theyre definitely unique but dont quite have pronouncement that makes certain unique styling good.

My Score: 6/10 - They tried something different, I just dont think it worked out as well

Value for Money: This is really where GM has to fight its hardest, the midsized sedan segment is getting much harder to take on. Accord and Camry are extremely well established and havent made the major screw ups compared to Ford and its ill fated midsized Taurus. GM has never been considered a major player here and thus needs to prove its better than the establishment. Im not quite sure it does, the Malibu is several times better than before but Im not sure it has done enough to prove GM will no longer resort to the old bad days of accountant designed rubbish. If your a American patriot, then yeah this is your best choice and unlike before youd actually support a good product unlike the Chrysler Sebring.

My Score: 6/10 - In a very competitive market, there isnt anything truly outstanding to make it the new standard for midsized cars. I gave the Mazda 6 a great score because it did quite a few things other midsized cars wouldnt do at those that did, the price was much lower for a still high quality product.

Overall: 34/50 - A pretty fair score, its definitely far from being bad like the last Malibu but its still not quite that brilliant either.

Sometimes you can tell how good or bad a car is just from the way it looks. Heres one that shouldnt be that difficult to guess.


Introduction: This car started out in 2004 and is known in South Korea as the Daewoo Kalos. GM decided it wanted this car and placed a Chevrolet badge for the international market and a Pontiac badge for the American market. For the Canadian market, GM still had control over Suzuki and decided to bring this along and put a Suzuki badge as well while bringing the other two rebadges. This resulted in the Chevrolet Aveo, the Pontaic G3 Wave and the Suzuki Swift+. All three of these cars are practically identical, only the grille had the biggest change aside from the badges. This would be GMs answer to the Toyota Echo, the Hyundai Accent and the Kia Rio.

Now when I first got news that I was going to have to drive this car, I didnt really know what it was. I never knew Suzuki actually had this car as a rebadge or even knew of its existence. I knew about the Aveo, but not the G3 Wave or this. I do remember the old Suzuki Swift that had the 3-cylinder, this seemed nothing like that. Most of these are sold as hatchbacks and this is what this review will focus on.


Performance: The Swift+ featured a 1.6L 4-cylinder engine for the North American market. This engine produced 103 hp and 107 lb.ft of torque making it the lowest hp producing engine since the demise of the Golf Mk IV with its 1.6L. The acceleration this engine can manage for this car is going from 0-100 km/h in 10.8 seconds. Not the worst accelerating car Ive driven. As for the engine its not a very good one, its very noisy and irritating. You can tell Daewoo was new to making cars due to how rough this engine puts out power with the noise and the fact you can feel the vibrations in the interior. The worst thing about this engine however is its not even efficient, the Chevrolet Cobalt with its bigger 2.2L engine manages slightly less fuel economy in the city but beats this Daewoo on the highway. What is GM thinking? What was Suzuki thinking? The old Swift at least was very fuel efficient, this Daewoo is inefficient yet still nowhere near exciting.

My Score: 2/10 - Unrefined, noisy and not fuel efficient...what good is it?

Handling: This is usually where small cars manage to get back some points if they failed on performance. This Daewoo...doesnt really get there sadly. The steering wheel is not as light as it is on a Toyota or Chrysler but crucially it doesnt produce a natural feel to the steering...it feels artificial and doesnt produce confidence when you try and corner for a small thrill. The body roll is very poor and with its very small wheels its less agile than its competitors.

My Score: 3/10 - They tried but failed, puny tires and the articificially inserted feel do not make this car any fun


Interior: This is where you start seeing why Daewoo failed in North America in the first place. Inside its just all black aside from some tin foil plastic which is as always pretty nasty to look at. The cup holder is very flimsy and very cheaply made, the door handles are also made of this flimsy cheap plastic, the seats use budget proportioned cloth and so on. I mentioned in the performance section that the engines vibrations can be felt inside, the steering wheel is often the piece that shakes as the car idles, showing how cheaply designed the engine is and how cheaply trimmed this interior is. Due to how black and unattractive the plastic is...its actually a pretty depressing place to be inside. While Daewoo managed to have interior space for moderate sized passengers they sacrificed the tailgate space. Last thing to mention, Daewoo mostly fit these with no power locks...there is no way for the driver to manual lock their door since the inside lock itself refuses to move and must use the key from outside the car. This may not seem like a problem at all but Ive seen these cars where the key hole actually collapsed and getting inside this car required entering from the passenger side and exiting the same way. I mentioned a key hole failing and this is another problem in this Daewoo because its not built very well. All these cars come shipped from GMs Daewoo factory in South Korea, so if youre not too knowledgeable about cars the salesman might con you into thinking this is American or Japanese.

My Score: 1/10 - Unattractive, very poor quality materials, flawed engineering, poor cargo room and not built very well.

Styling: This is normally where Chrysler regains some points...this Daewoo just doesnt. When you look at this car with its strange side profile, its dinky wheels and its not very attractive front end you can tell this car isnt going to be any good to begin with. With the surprisingly poor fuel economy I looked around to see how much drag it creates...well it produces a drag coefficient of 0.35 which is what luxury Japanese SUVs can manage. So basically you have this weird shape for no good reason.

My Score: 1/10 - Its bad when you can tell just from looking at the car that it will be bad, add for most people this will be a clown car.

Value for money: This is normally where Korean cars start to look good due to being very well equipped and fantastic value for your money. This Daewoo...doesnt, it may have the lowest MSRP of its time but when running costs are added its more expensive than its Korean rivals and clearly more expensive than the Toyota. Its more expensive due to how fuel inefficient it is but also due to the parts being sourced purely from South Korea it takes a long time for them to arrive. Accident damage or an out of stock part puts this car out of commission longer than cars made in Japan or Germany. Its not very well equipped either, unlike the Kia or Hyundai it has nothing as a standard feature. More importantly, its not very safe either it did spectacularly badly during its earlier crash tests, today its just scores just average which for a small car is worrisome.

My Score: 2/10 - Its got a low MSRP, unfortunately its burdened with no standard equipment, expensive running costs due to bad fuel economy, difficult to source parts and worst of all disappointing safety scores.

Overall: 9/50 - Its a very bad car, Im still perplexed at why GM even bothered when they clearly could do much better with a smaller Cobalt. This is part of the reason why GM had to declare bankruptcy, stupid decisions like selling this car outside of its home country.