Gadgetory

in Chevrolet's very busy lineup of cars this one slots one from the top just below the Impala it's the Malibu and it goes head-to-head with serious competition in fact the toughest in the industry Accord Camry Fusion Sonata Chevy says this guy is good enough to do battle with all of those in 100 countries where they'll sell it let's see if their confidence is well placed and check the tech now Chevy will tell you the new Malibu is picked up some styling DNA from the Camaro I don't really see it except for perhaps these kind of powerful haunches over here square lens tail lamps and it mimics that with square pods for the speedo and the tack inside more interestingly this car looks a lot like the new Impala check that one out oh and check out the front it's got an automatic shutter on the bottom air grille that will close when the engine doesn't need the cooling to improve aerodynamics the first thing I see inside the cabin of this Malibu is no cheap plastic crap they did a really good job catching up with Ford and Hyundai in particular with the exception of GM's typical tendency to go over heavy-handed on the chrome your center console is rather Chevy Volt like but doesn't have the touch-sensitive panel these are all real buttons thankfully I'm not a big fan of this touch sensitive stuff when it comes to buttons key though is an interesting example this car is part of this new trend toward feature radios this is an LCD screen head unit you would think it's got everything in it but there's actually no navigation this is sort of a basic interface whether you have nav or not hit this little switch right here and the whole thing flips up where your connected phone can live back there nice little light to see what's in there unfortunately no power connector wouldn't it be nice to have a 12-volt outlet in there instead I can put a charger down here and have a cable string down across my center console No thank you now playing is an interesting shortcut I kind of like Oh they've got that hardwired in here your energy screen we'll get to later that shows you what your powertrain is doing it's a big part of this car story we have Bluetooth hands-free of course standard as well as streaming Bluetooth stereo audio on this car here is Pandora put the Pandora app on your phone and the Chevy MyLink technology in here brings the interface up on the cars - and blanks it out on your smartphone and of course we have the usual CD USB aux Jack's over here there's that bluetooth streaming I was talking about so it's a well featured system but if you want to add naff to this you pay about a thousand dollars and you get an SD card that plugs into a slot that we would also have if we got that option and that graphs in navigation otherwise you're stuck with the standard OnStar directions and connections I hate having a conversation with someone to get my directions although it probably works better than the voice command in this car help I am sorry I did not catch that it's crappy like in most cars and nowhere near as good as in most smartphones so auto industry you still got to catch up one choice only 6-speed Automatic right here plenty of Chrome on the top and this little rocker switch on the top is your shiftable one when you put it back in manual that will change your gears otherwise leave it and drive no paddles no slapstick nonsense as it shouldn't have check out this gauge the Eco gauge inside the tach is also part of a new trend that will show you when you're either braking or accelerating too aggressively both are toxic to your mpg a message that most drivers have never heard before but car makers are starting to bubble that up with this kind of gauge now we have an interesting story in positioning here on this car this Chevy Malibu eco has a 2.4 liter engine with an electric motor assisting it what does that sound like that's a hybrid folks but you won't find a hybrid badge anywhere on this Malibu you see Chevy knows that hybrids are getting into weird territory for most car buyers so they don't call it that but that's what it is 2.4 liter gas engine 180 to total horsepower 172 foot-pounds of torque it's also got auto start/stop technology when you come to a stop at a lighter in traffic that adds up to a total of 25 37 mpg or about 29 average all the boy racer car magazines kind of jump on this one saying you know doesn't have enough performance I'm looking for real-world performance in a car like this around town on the freeway back in the city and I find that it does a very nice job on that and yeah I'm happy with the start stop the start stop on this car works almost imperceptibly which is exactly what it should do and it's quick off the throttle when you lift and you're getting ready to use power again it gets it gets the car back up and running there will be a two and a half liter non hybrid version of this car coming as well as a 2.0 liter turbo I understand we'll check those out when they get here but I would not hesitate to buy this powertrain right now if this fits the kind of car you're looking for okay a 2013 Malibu eco the only powertrain they're selling at first is twenty six thousand base but it's nicely equipped and it has that color touch Chevy MyLink head-unit bass as well as a lot of other nice features for about thousand dollars you can add navigation through an SD card because it's so cheap I would do it if it was two grand I'd say forget it and another thousand dollars all a cart will get you a saloon you