The 2005 Chevy Cobalt: A Watershed Design that Pointed the Way to the Future

If there was any car that can be thought to have started the changes that have literally rocked Chevrolet's product line it was the 2005 Chevy Cobalt. Although it was really a restyled Chevy Cavalier, the Cobalt illustrated what Chevy was thinking for its future lineup.

The difference between the Cavalier and the Cobalt is like the difference between day and night. Where the Cavalier was a nice, but very old design, the Cobalt had a spark of newness to it. Indeed, if you look closely at the tail of Chevrolet's next new design introduction, the 2006 Impala, you can almost see the influence.

The 2005 Cobalt sports a slightly rounded rear end that features two taillight clusters that are nicely fared into the rear quarter and rear panel itself. The taillight feature gave the Cobalt a finished look and it, likewise, gave the Impala a finished look.

Interestingly, the interior of the Cobalt, while somewhat changed from the Cavalier, still had the American stamp of plastic and carpeting on it and while the gauge cluster was somewhat different and offered more information, as well as different placement of the speedometer and tachometer, it still was pretty much the Cavalier interior.

Looking more specifically at the Cobalt LT from 2005, it was really a very nice vehicle with some thoughtful features that were available as options on the Cavalier, but were standard on the LT. For example, the LT sports the upgraded eight-speaker Pioneer sound system that delivers very nice sound and it sports a CD player that delivers excellent fidelity. Also, when equipped with leather, the front seats are also heated - two settings warm and pizza oven-hot - that are actually quite nice on cold days when you are waiting for the heat to come up.

The seats themselves are firm and supportive and provide lots of lower back and thigh support. They could use a tad more bolstering because they are somewhat slippery when you sweep into a deep turn, hit the right spot and head out again (a road tester's trick is to try to straighten every corner by finding the apex of the corner and driving straight toward it so that you are constantly looking at a corner's geometry to find the apex or apexes that would keep you straight. We have found some interesting decreasing radius turns with as many as three apexes, although they are usually on on-ramps to the Interstate).

Indeed, through turns and corners, the front-drive Cobalt holds the line you choose. The 2.2-liter four returns 30 mpg or better on the highway and does a respectable 24 mpg or better around town, even when the compact is equipped with the automatic - the automatic does have an overdrive setting so it does step the engine down to loaf mode at speed to keep gas use down

Surprisingly, though, the 2.2-liter four has more juice than you would expect. It can easily turn a sub-10-second quarter-mile and its 0 to 60 time in the mid-7s is very good. It is a very surprising powerplant with a wide powerband that's mated to a transxle whose gearing easily handles the broad powerband of this engine.

The ride is firm and yet not uncomfortable as there's very little body flex in the front-drive Cobalt. Overall the ride is good and the handling is equally as good.

For the rear seat passengers - you can seat three back there, but two would be more comfortable - there is plenty of head room and legroom. There are two wells under the front seats that allow tall passengers to stretch their legs out and, unless you're over say, 6-foot-6 you should have plenty of space back there.

The front seats are equally comfortable and supportive. A nice feature of the LT is the ability to tailor the seating position to your needs. In the non-power-seat version, you have a handle to the left of the seat that raises or lowers the seat cushion itself, while a small wheel at the right front of the seat lets you adjust the tilt of the entire seat. The seatback adjustment is easy, you just pull up on a small lever at on the left side. In this way, you can find the seating position that makes you the most comfortable behind the wheel.

The body, when it was introduced, was quite a telltale for Chevy. It featured a small, but deep front cross-section and multi-barred chromed grille covering. The front end, while deep, swept up through a sloping hood and fenders that carried an expanding line through the wheel wells and on through the A-pillar. The hood also carried this line and sloped upward to a nicely sloped windshield. The doors, that featured a relatively high beltline, carried this line through the rear quarter panels and finished in the tail that we have already described.

A nice feature of the trunklid is that it opened almost vertically so that even though there was a rounded trunklid finish piece forming the end of the car and the trunk, it was out of the way. The trunk, itself was quite spacious for a small car and you can add to the carrying capacity thanks to the 60/40 split rear seat that allows you to put longer items into the trunk.

The standard wheels on the Cobalt LT were brushed aluminum alloys and its original equipment included Pirelli P6 all-weather tires.

Altogether, the Cobalt was a nice piece of work and it showed the way that Chevy was to go with its design. And, while it was a tentative step in the process, it began a process that continued through the 2006 Impala and then was really radicalized in the 2008 Malibu. The 2008 and later Malibus are an equal match for anything that the imports have available.

Essentially, the Cobalt design has remained unchanged since 2005, although there has been some minor tuning to the rear light assembly to make it more up-to-date and agree with Chevy's current rear lighting.

The 2005 Cobalt was a watershed car for the automaker. Indeed, it probably didn't even know it at the time it was introduced.