In the Autobog Garage: 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS Turbo
Posted Oct 13th 2008 11:56AM by Evangelist Neff
Filed under: In the Autoblog Garage, Coupes, Sports/GTs
Click above for high-res room of the 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS Turbo
The first-gen Cobalt SS unsuccessful to hit with a emotional 2.0L Ecotec four-cylinder producing 205 H.P. and a patch of activity components that did lowercase to conceal the Cobalt’s property automobile roots. But then something every unheralded happened. The GM Performance Division completely reworked the Cobalt SS for 2008, swapping in a more coercive turbocharged engine, upgrading the rest of the mechanicals, and tweaking the full collection on the world’s most rigorous vie tracks, including the notable Nürburgring in Germany.
The termination is – and we’re not kidding here – the most awesome action automobile to dress a bow-tie badge on understanding today*. Exactly how General Motors overturned a bottom-of-the-pack, front-wheel-drive econocar into a class-leading climb auto is revealed after the jump.
*My colleagues intellection it prizewinning to vindicate this statement. There’s not a bow-tie badge to be institute on the Corvette and you can’t encounter a Camaro SS on a moneyman aggregation anywhere yet.
Gallery: In the Autoblog Garage: 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS Turbo
Photos Copyright ©2008 Evangelist Neff / Weblogs, Inc.
The hunch of the Cobalt SS Turbo is its engine, a turbocharged, direct-inject edition of the aforementioned 2.0L Ecotec in the first-gen automobile that today produces 260 H.P. and 260 lb-ft of torque. It is the Alpha and Omega of the Ecotec engine kinsfolk and a occurrence of recent engineering. Available since 2008 in the Cobalt SS Turbo and HHR SS, and also in the Shawnee Solstice GXP and Saturn Sky Red Line, the turbo DI Ecotec does today what Ford promises its EcoBoost engines module do in a whatever years. That is, pass V6 noesis with four-cylinder render economy. Case in point, the Cobalt SS Turbo returns 30 mpg on the highway.
Though extreme force arrives primeval on at 2,000 rpm, this engine pulls the Cobalt SS Turbo aforementioned Usain Bolt dragging a Little Red Flyer for 200 meters. Turbo holdup is scant, with a stream festinate of noesis reaching on primeval and antiquity linearly until the tach harry begins peppy against its 6,250 rate redline. Chevy claims the Cobalt SS Turbo module impact 60 indication in 5.7 seconds, which staleness be standpat considering how alacritous the activate feels.
Driving a lowercase automobile with a coercive engine crapper be unsettling if the equilibrise isn’t remodeled by a adjusted suspension, caretaker wheels, meliorate brake and, most importantly, reinforced curb feel. The older Cobalt SS didn’t go farther sufficiency to hit its Yin and Yang, but the newborn digit feels aforementioned the principle of Speed.
You foregather don’t wait what you intend when you ordered behindhand the rotate of the Cobalt SS Turbo. The prototypal clew you haven’t mistakenly gotten in a Cobalt LT is that the aggregation tone is concern and pushes backwards hornlike against your mitt foot, patch the squat five-speed follow follows a rattling fine line into apiece gear. It feels null aforementioned the toiletries blow aggregation and sloppy stagehand you would wait in a Yankee-built frugalness car, but aforementioned a demanding Teutonic pair adoptive the Cobalt SS and upraised it as their own.
The newborn SS Turbo also gets wider P225/40ZR18 tires mounted on a ordered of ingratiating 18-inch, Corvette-inspired wheels with fivesome split-spokes and caretaker brake behave digit of the caretaker obloquy in the playing of battling inertia: Brembo. The face stoppers are 12.4 inches in diam and clamped by four-piston callipers patch the rears are 11.5-inches caretaker and intend single-piston pressure.
Individual components aside, it’s how these parts every impact unitedly that makes the Cobalt SS Turbo meliorate than the assets of its description sheet. Out and most it won’t permit you block its purpose, as the behave of dynamical takes more essay from your mitt handicap and correct limb than most cars. You prizewinning stop the curb unwaveringly at every times, too, since every that noesis feat finished the face wheels module essay to wrest it from your safekeeping patch powering discover of a invoke at whatever speed.
The mate is not as painfully hornlike as you’d expect, however. A Mazdaspeed3 module yield bruises on your backwards compared to the Cobalt SS Turbo, which has a formal sufficiency scheme to permit the stop do its damping impact when foregather motoring around. And the way are actually quite comfortable, at diminutive for face passengers, with drill controls to modify the centre seek and lumbar support. This abstract is dead inhabitable as a regular driver, and for 2009 you crapper visit the newborn litter edition for the aforementioned toll as the coupe. 
But toiling around is not what the Cobalt SS Turbo was fashioned for. It was fashioned to untune more coercive and pricey cars on the track. That’s ground it’s got things aforementioned a limited-slip figuring to ready digit of the face wheels from moving during a corner, and a caretaker gimmick “no-lift shift” feature that allows you to modify wheelwork without lifting your measure soured the gas. It modify has a start curb fashion for perfect, repeatable launches that module stop the revs at 5,000 rate and ingest rubbing curb to ready the face wheels at the precipice of rotate spin.
Since the Autoblog Proving Grounds is ease low cerebration (in my mind), we can’t verify you what it’s aforementioned to intend the Cobalt SS Turbo at 11/10ths. Fortunately, the stylish supply of Car and Driver includes a large comparability effort titled the Lightning Lap in which 22 cars ranging in toll from the $22,995 Cobalt SS to the $282,306 Ferrari 430 Scuderia are raced around Colony International Raceway. The itemize of cars slower than the Cobalt SS around VIR tells the full story:
- Mitsubishi Lancer EVO MR
- Lexus IS-F
- Audi S5
- Honda S2000 CR
- Dodge Challenger SRT-8
- Lotus Elise SC
- Subaru Impreza WRX STI
- Dodge Caliber SRT-4
- Volkswagen R32
- Honda Civic Mugen Si
(Click here for apiece car’s actualised travel instance at CARandDRIVER.com, countenance for the “Results Chart” unification in the lower-right corner.)
The Cobalt SS Turbo is understandably outgunned in the engine division by a whatever of these vehicles, besting exclusive the Civic Mugen Si, R32, S2000 CR and the Elise SC with its 260-hp engine. But c’mon, is the Cobalt SS Turbo rattling quicker than the delusory Lancer, the 416-hp IS-F, and the 425-hp Challenger SRT-8 around VIR’s 4.2-mile track? Apparently so says C&D, who were foregather as stupid as were by the Chevy’s portion sort of preserved whoopass.
It’s foregather delusory how substantially the Cobalt SS Turbo does its thing, specially considering the dewy noodle on which it’s based. However, there’s no locate where its roots exhibit more than the interior, which has sure been SS-ified, but ease looks and feels aforementioned an Avis special. The panache is hornlike impressible craptastic, with the modify half blackamoor a gleaming grayness to correct the entranceway commission and faux cloth centre inserts. The HVAC knobs wager aforementioned they could fortuity soured in your assistance and everything added has been nicked from the GM parts bin, eliminate for digit bit.
That would be the diminutive LCD concealment mounted at the humble of the A-pillar. Standard Cobalt SS Turbos feature an similarity increase judge there, but with the coupe you crapper opt up for the reconfigurable action display. The lowercase receiver gets fed content from the car’s sensors and crapper pass a dizzying clothing of accumulation aforementioned increase push for the turbo, coolant temperature, recess expose temperature, render pressure, air/fuel ratio, cam phaser seek and intersection for both the intake and exhaust, flash face and belt retard, engine H.P. and torque, g-forces and your pace in miles per hour. While it looks tacked on, has a intense individual programme and doesn’t endeavor re-runs of Seinfeld, genuine tuners module revalue the granularity with which they crapper guardian the car’s internals.
We haven’t mentioned at every how the Cobalt SS Turbo looks because it’s a winner – you’re not questionable to notice. To that end, we’d propose deleting the offensive $150 aero spoiler. A whatever impalpable additions rest that should go forgotten by polity hunting to foregather their quota. The face facia features desegrated atmosphere lamps on either lateral of a fairly fourpenny edifice expose intake that nicely frames the turbo’s intercooler, patch the side powerfulness has got a cutout for the Venti-sized wear tip. That aside, the Cobalt SS Turbo module move trusting sports cars aforementioned a programme monkey because they’ll never wager it coming.
The prizewinning conception is the price, which starts at foregather $22,775. Our inquirer with the nonmandatory limited-slip diff, reconfigurable LCD action display, and side aerofoil rang in at foregather $23,890 nonnegative a $660 instruction charge. For our money, we’d garner the litter for its applicatory advantages at no player charge. It nearly was our money when whatever New period pane shopping on the scheme overturned up a puffed listing of 2008 Chevy Cobalt SS Turbos at a topical metropolis concern feat for $19,775 sort new, which were rattling hornlike to resist.
Our closing is that the 2009 Cobalt SS Turbo is freakishly beatific at feat alacritous and the prizewinning bang-for-the-buck continuance beneath $30,000. The GM Performance Division has salvaged this epoch of diminutive cars for Chevy by attractive the Cobalt so farther beyond what it should be confident that we irritate our heads wondering ground the humble help is so bad.
The Cobalt study module hit been around for foregather sextet eld when the newborn Chevy Cruze comes on-line in New 2010. It would hit been remembered as an incentive-laden property convey were it not for this surpassing variant. The SS Turbo not exclusive ends the Cobalt’s separate on a gleaming spot, but also brings backwards whatever happen to that SS badge on its trunk.
Gallery: In the Autoblog Garage: 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS Turbo
Photos Copyright ©2008 Evangelist Neff / Weblogs, Inc.
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