First Drive Review
Not long after Bob Lutz started tearing up rulebooks at GM in 2001, he squished his fat thumbprint into the company's moribund Delta compact-car program. Still smarting from the ignominious failure of the Saturn Ion, the first Delta, the engineers were told by Lutz to now build a class leader regardless of cost. Nobody believed GM's prickly accountants would ever let it happen.
"I'll take care of them," Lutz reputedly said, and locked the engineers in a room for a week to brainstorm improvements to the forthcoming Cobalt. Delta engineering manager John Cockburn (pronounced " co-burn") was in the room.
"That's where a lot of this stuff came from, that week in the room," says Cockburn. By "stuff" he means the laminated Quiet Steel in the fire wall that hushes engine noise to a whisper, the sophisticated hydroelastic suspension bushings that soften impacts from the twist-beam rear axle, and other fixes that saved the Cobalt from the GM curse of mediocrity.
Behold the Cobalt wagon.
"Heritage High Roof" is what HHR actually stands for. It's pretty self-explanatory, but we get paid to fill this white space. By heritage, GM means the 1949 Chevy Suburban echoed in the HHR's bulldog face and baggy fenders. The roof actually looks low from the outside, thanks to pillbox windows seemingly cut by a hot rodder's torch, but it's not. Comparisons to the PT Cruiser are inevitable. The HHR is bigger, with a half-inch more between the axles and another 7.4 inches in length. Width and height also go to the HHR, but at 63 cubic feet with the seats folded, the Chevy is short one cargo cube to the Cruiser.
The Cobalt was always intended to be a three-car program, and with the styling flavor of the Cobalt sedan and coupe fixed on vanilla, product planners decided to get playful with the third car. GM hopes this five-door wagonoid configuration will also be popular in Canada and Mexico, but it's holding annual volume forecasts at a conservative 60,000, about half of PT Cruiser sales.
