Gadgetory

the Chevy Malibu it's a lot like t-mobile in the big four but bringing up the rear in sales let's see if an all-new version 4 2013 can move it up the rankings as we drive the Malibu LTZ and check the tech now for 2013 the Malibu is on a whole new platform in other words the entire underpinnings are new GM did that for two reasons one they want to sell one Malibu and every market worldwide also they want a better platform to compete against Fusion Accord and Camry that are ahead of this car in the sales race in that order they've also tried to take some Camaro DNA hmm the gauges are like out of a Camaro that taillights kind of suggested Camaro but this is not a performance car certainly not in this trim it's an everyday car let's see how it does on that front now inside poor old GM just can't stop doing fancy I mean what is this upholstery when the question is do you want caramel brown dark brown black or blue stitching the answer should never be yes but that's what happened here and that that's more chrome than on an entire Audi this cabin looks like it's the perfect car for a junior executive in the pimp industry they got to tone it down on a brighter note Chevy MyLink is shaping up to be a real bright spot in the Chevrolet product line okay this is not the most ambitious head unit in any car today it's no outtie killer but what it does comes off pretty well like the rest of the cab but it's a little bit garish the icons are a bit much and they're screen after screen of them they've not done a good job of making this a vertical stack it's a very horizontal set of pages of functions that got a little busy now one thing you see missing here is a navigation tile this car doesn't have navigation that remains optional even with this rather elaborate head unit instead we had a reliant on star which you got to hit the button and talk to the service and then they'll feed the directions here to the LCD I would much rather get the onboard navin less you're really lonely I want to have someone to talk to you've got a picture of you were here utterly worthless but someone's attempt at doing cool much more positively the Pandora integration is the best I've ever used all I did was pair my phone the first time I got in this car I punched the Pandora button and bang everything just connected and worked usually you got to fiddle around and kind of rock it back and forth from the phone in the car big ups on that and you've got all the major modern sources here nothing significant is missing though no HD radio now check this out this guy's got a flip up LCD 7-inch nice saturation and brightness that gives you a little bit here where you can put your smartphone or media player but unlike some cars let me see here now there's no power outlet in here which would be nice and one downside of having that flip up screen is that it does give you a little bit of flimsiness on the screen so when I'm pushing buttons actually on the display you got kind of a cheap feel not bad but it's a little unnerving by the way there's a base audio system and we have the upgraded audio system it's a premium pioneer ray got 10 speakers I believe you don't get anything terribly advanced in terms of the DSP or digital signal processing but you do get a nice set of EQ including something that is actually going to be a preset variety or standard basement and treble the backup camera is optional at the LTZ level and it's very simple no trajectory indication no guidelines just a look off the stern you can get a lot of different engines in a new Malibu but they're all four cylinders at this point there's a two and a half litre for kind of the bread-and-butter a 2-liter turbo for the hotrod motor and a 2.4 liter lean-burn hybrid power drink we have the mainstream guy a biggish two and a half liter for all the engines have direct injection you're looking at 197 horsepower here 191 foot-pounds of torque pretty big numbers from a pretty big 4 0 to 60 though is also a pretty big number unfortunately about eight point three seconds mpg 22:34 sidesaddle front-wheel drive only that six-speed automatic is your only gearbox choice let's go for a ride like so many cars in the class of this guy Accord Camry and others in different driving is sort of the theme here let me put it another way there's a very loose relationship between the engine the gearbox and what the pedal on the right is doing these are not performance cars in this category of vehicles they're utilitarian they're grocery getters they've got smooth rides but the basic idea here is that this car is meant to have few surprises and it's driving transitions and that's what it delivers on the downside if you're getting into this car because you like to drive you're going to be disappointed at least in this one LTZ trim I don't even have much to say about its steering and cornering because the powertrain doesn't beg you to even try that another bit of a gripe I've got here that also adds to the lack of responsiveness is as I showed you no shift paddles on the wheel which are kind of becoming standard these days and to get shift ability you've got to put the gearbox lever back in em then you can use this little fiddly toggle on the top to change gears that's dainty not involved a lot of folks ask you know how's the build quality on a Chevy product it's real good there's nothing about this car that doesn't fit beautifully that doesn't appear to be bolted down real strong real well overall this is a great little highway car a wonderful little grocery getter but you're not gonna be very involved in driving it it's a little appliance like let's price this 2013 Malibu we've got a 1 LTZ there's also a 2 LTZ that has a 2-liter turbo different car different video 1 LTZ which is pretty high trim starts at about 28 6 for this guy now 1,900 bucks for the electronics and entertainment package that gets you premium pioneer audio backup camera as basic as it is and garage door opener seems a little steep to me but I'd rather do that to have some local shop tear apart my audio system to upgrade it 795 is a great price to add onboard navigation not rely on that OnStar stuff and 395 is a steal for forward collision alert and lane departure warning all in you're looking at about a $32,000 car that competes pretty well with Fusion camry an accord