Jake’s Rotten Rental Car Reviews: 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt
Few cars are bad enough that putting a dead hooker in the trunk would somehow improve them. The Chevy Cobalt I drove recently was one of them.
Welcome back to another installment of Jacob’s Rotten Rental Car Reviews, the recurring series here on the Hooniverse where our resident road-warrior hoon documents the foibles of rental cars all over. This week’s loser is a cherry red Chevy Cobalt, and when I say I would have rather had chlamydia than drive this car for a week, I do not exaggerate.
Returning again to Shreveport for a business trip with about a hundred coworkers, I should have known I was in for rental car hell. And yet, when the people in front of me in line got a Buick Lacrosse (the “nice” new one), a brand new Ford Focus with less than 100 miles on the clock, and a very subtle bright red Charger, I thought I might luck out. “Friedman?” the attendant said. “Stall 28″ and unceremoniously dumped a crappy plastic Chevy key fob into my hand. Walking out into the midday Louisiana funk, I clicked the horn honk button on the fob and was rewarded with a feeble bleat from a shitty looking Cobalt. Hoping to god that I’d made a mistake and buoyed by the passable Malibu sitting next to it, I tried again. Alas, the same pathetic flatulent beep from the red Cobalt with the big white scratch in the paint all down the right side. Crap.
Opening the door, I was rewarded with the lovely smell of rotting yogurt and farts, as well as a seat covered in mystery stains. When I sat down, hoping to feel some sort of bolster as I scooted into the seat, all I felt was my butt sliding off the seat as it gave way and tried to dump me on the ground, since the seat apparently had bolsters apparently made from wet paper bags. This car, ladies and gentlemen, was a dog. And a mangy mutt of one at that.
The lovely ass and yogurt potpourri was nicely offset by a ragged-sounding idle. After a mere 35000 miles, the already awful car had been transformed into an automotive basket case. After grabbing the rubbery, squishy shifter knob and knocking the four-speed auto into drive, and rolling that bad boy out of the parking lot, a more immediate problem than the miserable smell quickly became apparent. Ostensibly, the car had started life with something in the area of 150 horsepower, but if it still had that much power, those horses were knackered old nags headed off to the glue factory. My god, this car was slow. On a short merge, I was barely able to get up to 50 by the end of the ramp, despite having the pedal mashed into the carpet, prompting a frantic deafening airhorn blast by a decelerating semi, punctuated by multiple obscene hand gestures and some choice four letter words. Rather than accelerating, it seemed like the engine decided it would prefer to put all of that power down as noise, seeming to just get constantly louder rather than actually speeding up.
And despite the loudness of the anemic engine, the exhaust note was easily drowned out by the fifteen simultaneous vibrations rattling loudly out of the dashboard. Every piece of the glossy, nasty, hard plastic trim seemed to vibrate sympathetically with it’s neighbors. Indeed, this rattling would start at 25 miles an hour and would proceed unabated all the wa up the speedometer until the car pretty much gave up the ghost at about 70 or so miles per hour. The car didn’t really have any handling to speak of, although it did feel floaty and light, especially in the driving rainstorm that pounded Shreveport on my last night there. That’s where the dead hooker comes in, as it would press down the rear axle and maybe stabilize the handling. Plus, it couldn’t possibly smell worse than the car’s existing smell.
If this is what GM was making circa two years ago, then they deserved to go bankrupt, goddammit. This wasn’t just a bad car, this car almost made me embarrassed to be an American. On one of the trips I made to India, I got to see the inside of the Tata Nano. The famous “One Lakh Car” (one Lakh is an Indian unit of numerical measure equal to 100,000 rupees, in this case, or about $2000) came off the assembly line costing approximately 1/10th of the Cobalt’s asking price, and it was a far nicer place to be. It was cheap, and very clearly built to a price, but it worked and felt solid. The Cobalt was a shitty rattle trap by comparison.
The best America has to offer…
On my ride back to the airport, I was reflecting about my time spent with the car. The Cobalt was so embarrassingly bad that it became fun to just continually hate on everything that was wrong with it. And in the end, it turned out to be so incredibly bad that I almost felt bad for the lady who’d grudgingly tossed me the keys. Coincidentally, she happened to be behind the desk when I came back. She said, “sorry for the Cobalt” and I just replied, no problem, just read my note. I heard her chuckling as I walked off to security. The sentence she saw? “For the love of god, please replace this thing with a Cruze.”
Rating: PEE-YEW! 5 Trashcans out of 5 (1 is best, 5 is worst).
So is the Cobalt really that bad? Let us know in the comments below.
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Damn, way to kick a man when he's down.
A lady where I work cash-for-clunkered her Jeep on a two door Cobalt with AC as the only option. I didn't think it was that bad of a new car for $7100.
Jake, I gotta ask. What cars are you used to driving? Cause for an affordable basemodel car I'm pretty sure you could do worse than the Cobalt (not much but worse).
… It would either be a GM or a Pentastar.
Focuses are shit too…
Civics also…
…and corollas…
Versas are alright I guess and so are elantras/accents/(iassume)velosters.
Yaris are shit also…
Imprezas are alright though…
The winner, in all my rental facility days, was the 12k mile Sebring that felt like my 144k mile cherokee.
Focuses were shit too…
FTFY.
I'm not as quick to forgive. I haven't driven one, but I can't imagine it was more of a step up then the old fusion to the current fusion… And they were both shit.
Night and day. The previous model was just a rebody of the same platform that they started using in 2000 where as this is the same vehicle they sell in europe (with minor suspension tweeks). The new Focuses are on par handling wise with the VW Golf and Mazda 3. Also with the new ST model coming out the GTI will have it's work cut out for it.
I really should be getting payed by Ford for this.
I think the veloster turbo will be in that battle too. ~200 horse and ~2500 lbs sounds like a winner to me.
Except the non-turbo veloster has 200lbs on your estimate already. I'm not hating, I want one too, but the accent and rio with a few optional features are more like the 2500lb estimate.
It weighs in at 2584 for the standard and 2657 for the dual clutch. Weight does go up to 2740 and 2813 respectively when fully optioned. So, lets say the turbo adds 50 lbs, it'll be at 2634 and there is always the possibility of an R-spec which should drop a hundred or so lbs.
(Source: http://www.hyundaiusa.com/veloster/specifications… – Exterior Dimensions tab. )
I drove a rental Saturn Ion in '04, and wasn't unhappy with the ordeal. Had to drive from Indy to Pittsburgh and back for training. I especially liked the stereo. MP3 CDs were rare back then.
Sounds like you were given either a lemon, or a highly abused car. The yogurt and fart smell wasn't the car's fault. The engine is a better beast when there isn't something wrong with it. Don't know how bad the seats are in the 'Balt, but the Ion buckets were good for the long trip.
And shame on you for liking a Sebring. I had to take one on a shorter trip, and while competent, it was boring as hell. Not a penalty box, unless you feel like actually driving.
Ions weren't as bad as Cobalts for some reason. Maybe it is the whole spring hill thing, but they held up better and drove much more nicely than the Cobalt.
Who said I liked the Sebring? I said it drove like a lifted Cherokee that had been abused for 132k more miles than the Sebring. It was rattling and falling apart.
These are just my opinions as a detailer/driver for a rental facility for a couple of years.
I drive a MK6 GTI. I'm fairly certain the reason this thing was such a miserable pile of crap was because it had been completely beaten to hell. Scratched, dinges, poorly taken care of, you name it. If the rental agent apologized for it, you'd better believe it was pretty bad.
A stock cobalt driven by a sane person would have likely been far less offensive, but this piece of crap was barfed-in, flogged around by hundreds of renters and just generally abused worse than the metaphorical dead hooker in the trunk. Rentals tend to show us a car at its absolute worst, so it's all the more impressive when you get a car that still feels solid.
Yeah, that was what made me buy the facelifted last gen Sonata when C4C rolled around. I've never seen cars hold up to the abuse of renters as well as it.
Bingo. That was why I was impressed with the Kia last week. 8k miles had broken a bunch of stuff on the 300, but the Sportage was still solid. This Cobalt, not so much.
AHHH got it, it's not a commentary on the Cobalt itself but on the fact that it was abused like a thaiwanese school girl when the navy came to town.
Also going from a GTI to a plain Cobalt must've been painful enough on it's own much less to a rental.
The SS has always had appeal to me (this is Hooniverse after all), and I did look a 2LT coupe and I thought it was a decent little car. They gave me a 4 door LS 5 speed to drive as I wanted to drive a stick, that was a deal breaker! As far as cheap cars go, I always thought they were okay. The forums for them scare me, everyone refers to them as "balts"
I think having to spend time in Shreveport is a worse sentence than driving a Cobalt. The only thing cool about being there is being able to see B-52s taking off and landing at Barksdale. What a rush!
As for the Cobalt, I can remember all the praise heaped on it at launch by Car and Driver. Compared to the Cavalier, it was a revelation. Will the Cruze get this kind of scorn and derision in a few years? Man, who rented you this turkey, anyway? Since it's a 2009, I imagine it's just about ready to go to auction, ending up on a note lot somewhere in East Texas, or Houston. I would have complained to the rental agency about the condition and lack of cleanliness.
Didn't even get to watch the B-52s. Was in the hospital working from before sun-up to about sunset.
rather amusing read, thank you
so what did your note say?
For the love of god, replace this thing with a Cruze.
The picture must have been corrupted. Shit.
In my experiences with these cars (mostly working in a Chev service department and running a small rental fleet of the things), they're American Corollas, cars designed to register approximately no mental space (unless they have forced induction). I'd never go out of my way to buy one, but for budget transportation, it gets the job done. It's the car that'll get cashiers to work (in 5-10 years).
I was seriously debating an SS Sedan with a stick that was in the metallic red when i bought my Pontiac Vibe GT. Needed space for the child seat and it was seriously fun to drive, but practicality and affordability won out at the end of the day.
I drove a Cobalt rental from San Diego to Vegas about 5 years ago and found it unremarkable, either in the good or bad department. I do recall disliking the feel of the electric steering, but being fairly impressed by the base model stereo. It handled 100+ MPH on Route 66 no problem.
I sure wouldn't buy one, but I didn't find it to be a punishment to drive.
I had a similar experience. Not long after I got bumped "up" to a bronze Dodge Avenger, which was a much worse car.
Same here in Texas circa '08. Not the best materials, but certainly adequate.
Another me too. Washington DC, '09, I think. It had a crappy GM interior, the motor wasn't too horrible, the tranny sucked (but it's a rental, it's going to have the autotragic), but the thing that stood out were the brakes. They felt quite mushy. I was used to my wife's Civic at the time, and used the same braking distance and pressure as I would for that car. I ended up chucking the poor Cobalt into a corner near its limit. My wife wouldn't let me drive it after that…
It could have been worse.
ANOTHER Me too.
Just had one in Vegas a few weeks ago. We were told to pick any car in the row, ran straight to the brand new Focus and someone already had thrown their bag in the trunk and taken the key from the car. Assuming that the lone Sentra had a CVT, and definately not wanting one of the Corollas, the only other choice was the Cobalt.
Hardly exciting, but I didnt hate it as much as I thought I would. Seemed like a fine appliance, and it had the trip computer so I was tracking my fuel economy the whole trip. I think we averaged 34 mpg or so in the 1300 miles we put on it.
Probably a fine car for someone who isnt a car person.
Sorry about those smells. I rented an Astra in Frankfurt, and the last driver must have chain smoked cigars in it. With the windows up. It reeked. But a quick pit stop to source some Febreeze analog, and then squirting the entire bottle indiscriminately over all of the upholstery, carpet, headliner – everything – and that knocked the smells down to less than projectile proportions.
Projectile smells – I LOVE this concept!
Cobalts get a lot of working-class and poor folks to and from their jobs, safely, every day. They're a lot better than the Citations, etc that preceded them. Not every car has to be awesome.
So, thanks, Cobalt, and thanks to GM for making the Cruz so much better.
My wife had on of those as a rental once upon a time. It was newish so it didn't stink or rattle (much) (yet). OTOH, I can confirm that that engine is weak and harsh pretty much straight from the factory. It has to be the nastiest, most gutless little engine I've ever driven. Coming from a guy that's DD'ed a VW Fox, a Dodge Shadow and an Iron Duke powered Celebrity that's really saying something. I can't imagine spending any more than the fifteen minute sting I did in it getting back to the rental desk. How could anyone DD such a hateful little POS?
The Cobalt was GM almost getting the small car segment right. By that, GM engineers used similiar but expensive bushings (ala VW) to help with the ride and the styling (while not ground breaking) was commendable. The Ecotec engines are pretty damn stout and there are nice touches (for example the driver info display will show psi for all the tires/not just a random check tire pressure symbol. Also the standard radio is rather nice and the interior design is pretty well laid out). Again, traces of old GM shine through. The interior, while pretty well organized, shows evident cost cutting. The seat material is notorious for staining and the hard plastics scream ,"I'm cheap". The SS versions and the higher model trims are actually quite nice for the money. These were not segment leaders but world better than the Cavaliers that preceeded it.
I think GM finally got it right with the Cruze.
Wouldn't any basic rental car with 35K be terrible?
Last time we rented, we got sentenced to an Aveo. Even though it was almost new, my Corrolla driving wife commented that the noises and rattles were worse than in her ten year old car…
I had a 38K mile Corolla from Hertz last year. It had scrapes all over its exterior and stank of cigarettes. It drove like a new car though. Tracked straight as a laser, engine smooth as silk, seamless shifting transmission that made up in properly spaced and timely selected ratios what it lacked in superfluous gears. I hammered on it like a rented car, and still did better than 30 mpg on California's crummy near-gas. Based on my experience, I'd take a Corolla over a Cruze or Focus in an instant, have a decade to laugh at my doubters.
You should drive my 00 focus. I think it's great but what do I know I'm just a hoon from montucky
I like the 1st gen focus. A friend of mine had one when we were in high school and that thing was a riot to drive. Much more interesting than the cobalt for sure.
Reminds me of the base, but still pretty new, Chrysler 300 I rented in Vegas a couple of years back.
It was built on the modified platform of the Mercedes sedan chassis built after the car I drove daily, a 1995 W124…an E320 sedan.
With 165K miles, and 10+ years on that 300, my old, clunky, no-reverse-having Benz was still tighter, quicker, quieter, returned better MPG, and was all around light years ahead in every qualitative aspect.
You know it's bad when, if you were approached on the street and someone said, "here are the keys to a brand-new car, but I have to take your old beater", and you'd gladly pass. Sure, I'd have to occasionally Flintstone it out of a parking space, but it was still better than the 300.