You may have already gleaned that from our first Cobalt preview last July. How good could the bow-tie version be?Īs it happens, it's astoundingly good-an Olympic long jump for GM, from dead last to the head of the class, right up front with the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic. The Cobalt shares General Motors' front-drive Delta platform with the Saturn Ion, the sensational belly-flop of model year 2003. After 23 years of building the Chevy Cavalier, GM's small-car credentials could stand a little hardening, too.ĭuring a recent lull in California's monsoon season, Chevy allowed a press gaggle to turn miles in 2005 Cobalt models, including the 145-hp, 2.2-liter sedan and base coupe and the 205-hp supercharged 2.0-liter SS coupe (a 175-hp, 2.4-liter engine option comes later in '05). Chevy probably chose the name because cobalt is used as a hardener in high-performance alloys such as those found in aircraft jet turbines. It's nature's industrial rust belt, the Lower Cuyahoga of the atomic scale. 27 on the periodic table, sandwiched between iron and nickel on a working-class street that's also home to copper, zinc, and manganese.

2005 cobalt ss supercharged