Motoramic Motoramic Drives 2013 Chevrolet Malibu Eco

"How about a 'Bu?" said the guy from Chevy as I stood in the rain outside the entrance of the Four Seasons Austin, trying to choose my afternoon ride. The "Bu" was a 2013 Chevy Malibu Eco. My other choice was a Hyundai Sonata. The lady or the tiger. I went for the four-door Malibu sedan, which was, after all, the car I'd been assigned to review.

My life as a car writer had been absurdly charmed thus far. First, I'd gone to Croatia to test-drive a Bentley GTC. Then it was off to Spain to tool an Audi S8 around a racetrack. After that, I returned to Spain to drive a 3 Series BMW around a different racetrack. I'd discovered some sort of automotive Fantasyland; I was Cinderella with the glass pedal.
The other automotive journalists warned me: It's not always like this. Eventually, you'll find yourself in Detroit during wintertime, or driving around Ohio, or flying two days to South Korea for the privilege of 15 minutes behind the wheel of a Kia Sedona. Eventually, the junket piper gets paid.
How about a 'Bu?
It's hard to wax glory over a car whose company touts, at a press conference, that it's  "a vehicle often ridiculed for its vanilla, appliance-like offerings." And that comes from the lead designer. But the 2013 Malibu, this designer claimed, was different, sporty, exciting, and desirable. He forgot to add that with its extra-long, thick nose, it looks like an angry ground sloth. Here's what I wrote in my notebook as I drove around South Austin in the gloaming, windshield wipers going full speed: "Sluggish, almost depressing. Totally, thoroughly average. Cheap plastic molding inside, with a few wood veneer accents.  Seat is uncomfortable and too small. Transmission feels clunky. Functional at best."
But maybe I wasn't being fair to the 'Bu. It contains some nice features: Even though the seats pressed on my hips a bit, they were made of cozy leather. It had ample legroom.  As an engineer said at a press conference the next morning, it's the "most quietest mid-sized car of anything on the road today." And it was true: The Malibu provided a mostly silent, smooth, shock-free ride.
The next day, I took the Malibu on a drive through the Texas Hill Country, in nicer weather.  I found the steering a little wobbly and the suspension a little too stiff. The brakes worked fine. Tight hilly turns didn't exactly feel effortless, but they weren't a nightmare. The car seemed to function best on a straightaway between 50 and 60 mph. But it took a long time getting up to 80, and wobbled a bit when it got there. This means that the Malibu is playing straight to its target market. Chevy says that the average Malibu customer is 45 years old and makes $82,000 a year. The sales pitch at the nighttime press conference was "they don't want to say, look at this wonderful, fantastic-performing model. They want to say, 'look at how smart I was to buy this car.'" No one's getting a Malibu so they can tool around the autobahn.
I'm not sure whether or not its smart to drive a 2013 Malibu. It probably depends on your perspective. But the "Eco" portion of the car's name definitely doesn't hold much water. The Malibu uses an "eAssist" compact liquid-cooled induction motor-generator mounted to the engine, which provides 14.2 kilowatts of electric aid to the power train in certain driving situations, such as passing on the highway or climbing a grade. It contains a lightweight lithium-ion battery to store energy during braking. It's the first time GM has deployed this technology in the Malibu, having previously used it in the Buick LaCrosse and other models.
I spent an hour gauging the eAssist's effectiveness in the Hill Country, during a drive that contained a lot of downhill action where I didn't have to touch the pedal at all. During that hour, the car barely got 26 mpg. In a world where hybrids can earn 40-plus without really even trying, that's just not impressive.
The same could be said for the Malibu's MyLink infotainment screen, which combines an adequate GPS with various other functionalities, including, starting in this summer, Bluetooth access and a link to your Pandora account. But the screen didn't feel intuitive, and the graphics looked like something out of Windows '98, which matched the speedometer and RPM displays. They also had the appearance of being lifted out of a late-90s car. That seemed consistent with the whole package.
The Malibu is smooth, quiet, peaceful, and dull, a mid-priced, middle-of-the-road, marginally upper-middle-class car for a mid-level Midwestern executive. But there's something earnest and almost sweet about it. As I spent time in the Bu, I found myself softening, not to its charms, because it has few, but to its functionality. If I flew into Kansas City on a business trip, had to drive 20 miles from the airport to the office park, and they gave me a 2013 Malibu at the rental-car place, I'd be totally pleased. "They've come a long way," I heard one reporter say to another during the sojourn, and that's true. With the 2013 Malibu, you get the sense that Chevy is trying, and not totally failing.