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I’m writing this as I make way over to Cobo hall – word has it the Malibu and the CX-9 were awarded.

CX9 I get – it’s surprisingly well executed, esp given it’s roots.

The Malibu we all saw coming, didn’t we? Especially as this award is voted on by the same journalists who have been heralding the Malibu as the best new car when it really isn’t all that new. Aren’t they all in essence defending their own decisions?

I’ll report back on what my personal best in show picks were…

Order the 22-inch tires if you must have the look, but we advise against them. They ride harsher than the less sporty choices, they’re noisy, and their quick-responding nature fights with the steering feel on gusty days, taking you down a ziggy path. – Car and Driver

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Leave circuit rather disappointed with ZO6. It’s fast but feels edgy on the limit and uncommunicative too. A Porsche 911 Carrera S is slower and less powerful but I know which one I’d rather drive… ZO6 even worse on the road. If ever you needed proof that there’s more to making a fast car than making it go fast, the Z06 is it. Drove a standard, 400bhp Corvette to the airport. Preferred it. – 4Car’s Andrew Frankel

UPDATE:

In the Z06, despite the manifest improvements over the C6, there’s an underlying aloofness that ensures you never feel inclined to feel for its limits. And while it has the grunt, grip and stopping power to keep pace, or even set the pace, without needing to dig that deep, it’s this lack of ultimate tactility, its inability to fully engage you, that means it never truly delivers those genuine moments of inspiration that define the others. – evo

the Aveo’s manual gearbox isn’t very good, as road test author Dan Kahn wrote, “GM/Daewoo engineers apparently decided to use very wide ratios in the transmission in an effort to cut shifting to a minimum around town. While this would have worked in an application with a little more horsepower, the Aveo was severely underpowered going up most hills and inclines, causing us to run in third gear on the freeway on more than a few occasions. Therefore, the fuel mileage suffered greatly and we only managed to achieve an average of 23 mpg.”

However, the four-speed automatic in my rental Aveo worked just fine for a car in this price range. It downshifted when I needed it to, and compared to the manual, the gears are much better spaced to take advantage of what power the engine does have. And it has a decent amount for a car in this class, even though its 103-horsepower rating is on the low side. I was passing cars at 80 mph with no problem, although Illinois is very flat, so it probably wouldn’t have been so easy on the mountain passes near my home in Southern California. The engine was smooth and quiet when crusing at 80 . I did a little better on fuel economy, 26 mpg, but still not great for a car this small. – Edmunds blogs

To literally breathe new life into their anachronistic pushrod engines, GM has started adding variable valve timing which optimizes valve timing over a broader range of engine speeds. (Overhead camshaft engines started down this path over a decade ago).

Car and Driver has sampled the new engine and reports:

A variable-length intake plenum optimizes airflow, and a new variable-valve-timing system rotates the cam to crack open the intake valves (and yes, the exhaust valves, too) earlier or later depending on the motion of your right foot. That’s a first for “cam in block” engines, says GM. Snigger if you wish. Say that’s like being first out with a black-and-white plasma-screen TV, but pushrod cam phasing is a new wrinkle worth noting and a widget that even the Corvette doesn’t have. Ultimately, easier breathing is what the fuss is about, and the 3.9 revs hard and fast with an unusually crisp song that we’re unaccustomed to in GM’s pushrod V-6s. It also doesn’t gasp at the far end of the tach, winding to the 6200-rpm redline with a steady, consistent push.

Note that variable valve timing is a blanket term that can mean different things. Systems may have two stages or be infinitely variable, operate on one or both camshafts, change just timing or timing and lift, etc.

While the Mustang and the Challenger are very nice cars, I [Bob Lutz] honestly think [the Camaro concept] goes beyond that. I like both of those cars, (but) they don’t really break any new ground aesthetically. They are very close to the original car. Maybe that is a good thing, but we elected not to do that. We elected to do a thoroughly new car with totally new surfaces that doesn’t just make the same statement of the old car again, but in fact makes a new statement while capturing all of the spirit and essence of the original cars. source: Automotive News

[Inside the Malibu] Ragged mold partlines are everywhere. Several plastic trim pieces feel as if they were secured by bubblegum and a prayer. There’s this sense that if you turned the car over and shook it vigorously the entire interior might fall out. There are no overhead hand grips for front-seat occupants, and the trim around the skylights appears to have been cut out with dull scissors. If GM didn’t build cars as if it expected to discount them, maybe it wouldn’t have to. source: Car and Driver, February 2006

(The good news is that GM’s aware of the problem and is just now doing something about it; the interiors of the new GM full-size trucks and SUVs are a marvel and those in the Cobalt and Lucerne are well beyond the General’s usual).

Domestic manufacturers have long operated under a different model, placing sticker prices on their cars that are close to foreign competitors but designing the car so its cheaper to produce. This makes dealers happy because the margins are larger and customers happy because they are often offered ‘cash back’ or are able to negotiate thosands off the sticker price.

Anyone in sales can tell you that convincing the customer they ‘got a good deal’ is more important than anything else, so this formula has worked for the company so far despite the fact that it devalues the car from a resale standpoint (the more heavily a car is discounted at the dealership the more it tends to cost an owner over its service life).

Automotive News reports GM is adjusting its pricing to become less reliant on incentives. The Cobalt’s sticker is slashed by $1,500 for example…

As promising as that may sound, the V.P. of North American Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing was quoted as saying incentives are “...part of what makes this business fun.” He obviously hasn’t had to buy a car and spend time haggling with a salesperson at one of his dealerships in a number of years…

Car and Driver:

The SS was quick, particularly in the midrange, handled well, and generally felt like a coherent, well-assembled package.

Automobile:

The surprise disappointment in the Impala lineup is the SS, a car seemingly geared toward the NASCAR-watching family man who needs some space and craves the sound of a traditional V-8 but demands little ride or handling refinement. The V-8 is too powerful for the chassis – spirited stabs of the throttle yank at the steering wheel even at highway speeds-and the heavy engine hanging out ahead of the front axle wreaks havoc on the handling dynamics when you attempt to drive the SS quickly. All of this is further exacerbated by the steering’s lack of on-center feel, a problem that plagues all Impala models.

(We’ll simply say that we have yet to agree with C&D’s Fred M.H. Gregory or to drive a large-engined front-drive car that we’ve liked).

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Many writers have come from their first drives of the Corvette Z06 so full of adrenaline and so stupefied by the ferocity of the experience that they’ve started calling it ‘the best Corvette ever’.

As much as we admire the modifications made to the standard Vette, we get the sense that it’s less than the sum of its parts. The Z06 lacks the dialed in chassis of the last iteration – it’s more about the motor than the handling this time around.

From Car and Driver’s December issue:

...the gas pedal is the trigger of the gun that’s pointed to your head. Squeeze the gas a little too much at corner exit, and you’ll find yourself instantly in trouble. On our first drive of the Z06 in Europe, we noticed the Vette’s chassis didn’t make the driver feel confident, but on smooth racetracks, the chassis was more or less benign. But Grattan’s track gave the Z06 fits. It never felt comfortable or sure of itself and gave us all disconnected, spooky feelings that were only exasperated by that booster rocket waiting to be unleashed. “Only qualified drivers should be handed the keys,” warned Phillips. If the Z06 encountered any kind of bump or lump in the pavement as it was exiting a corner, the result was a nearly instantaneous outward snap of the tail. It was so sensitive to bumps that the Vette uncovered lumps in the pavement we never knew were there—even though we’ve done hundreds of laps at Grattan in stiffly sprung race cars. For our first few laps, we wisely set the Delphi stability-control system to its competition mode. That allows some sliding but can save the driver. Had we shut it off, we probably would have stuffed it. Not yet aware of the sensitivity to bumps and the throttle, we were saved by the system numerous times. ... to establish a lap time we turned it off and did five laps. ...the faster we went, the sweatier our palms got. ... our knees were audibly knocking and we parked it… our sense is there was too much consideration paid to a cushy ride and perhaps that’s why it’s such a handful.

This edginess has been present in each C6 Vette we’ve driven, which is why every time we’re offered the keys to a Vette at a GM driving event we opt for a CTS-V or GTO instead. We blame the overly sensitive throttle, sudden electric steering assist, and tires with little slip angle designed in. (A soft suspension seems softer if you can’t make smooth inputs and the tires break away suddenly).

The Viper C&D editors preferred the handling of is ordinarily considered a handful, but its new fixed roof eradicates the slop in the chassis and its Michelin Pilot Sports have a lot of slip angle engineered in. This causes it to be less snappy both front and rear than the Z06 and “a real sweetheart on the track.”

Given the Corvette’s balky shifter and annoying skip-shift feature, we’re more excited about the new 6 speed automatic (past autos have had a maximum of 4 ratios). Given the way most Corvettes are driven, the torquey engine and the surplus of power, will the new Corvette Automatic be the best Corvette ever?