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I’ve always been more critical of steering than of any other control because you’re using it every moment the car’s in motion, but it wasn’t until I injured my back a few years back that I became more sensitive to seat support and ingress/egress.

It astounds me that given how integral the comfort of the driving position is to the connectedness and relaxation you feel behind the wheel that its so rarely mentioned in the media. Perhaps that’s why so many of today’s cars have inexcusably poor seats, visibility or ways of entry and exit.

Last month I spent time behind the wheel of three cars on extended road trips – the $16K Suzuki SX4, a $30K Pontiac Grand Prix and a $20K Hyundai Sonata and of all the things that made an impression it was the seat comfort. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

[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…

here’s an excerpt from Auto Express’s coverage:

power jumps 26bhp to 215bhp…The supercharger combines well with the unit’s variable valve timing, too, filling in the gaps in the powerband at low revs. It’s refined, but doesn’t sound sporty and some characteristic supercharger whine would liven things up

One catch: it’s only available in the European Corolla (for now).

UPDATE: Now that 4Car has sampled the engine, here’s what they have to say:

a supercharger… boosts the T-Sport’s power by around 15% to a heady 215bhp and maximum torque by 19% to 158lb ft. An added bonus of fitting the supercharger to the T-Sport variable valve timed 1.8-litre engine is that the sweet point in the rev range – where torque and power are at their peak – is lower, at 4,000rpm, meaning you don’t need to rev the engine all the way to the 8,000rpm limiter to make decent progress. You wouldn’t actually want to venture too high up the rev range though, as the aural accompaniment isn’t exactly tuneful…

Car and Driver does a quick A:B comparison in their October issue – click here to read their surprising conclusion…

UPDATE:

C&D has since flip-flopped, which should be a lesson to anyone who bought the car based on a ‘ranking’ rather than the subjective impressions that make up the driving and ownership experience.

They explain thusly:

Last October, we compared the all-new Mazda MX-5 and Pontiac Solstice—for about eight hours. That wasn’t enough time to settle the dispute. We were still messing around with the Solstice’s knurled seatback control when a Pontiac emissary arrived, demanding the return of his keys. And, in any event, finding suitably twisty roads in Michigan’s farmland is [near impossible]. So we don’t apologize for this MX-5/Solstice redux.