This is the new Chevy Malibu, to the Maxx. It’s a midsize Epsilon-platform-based front wheel drive economical space giver. It’s a car that has a fresh, unique approach to exterior design. It’s a suburban utility wagon. It’s a comfortable ride.

The Malibu Maxx face is blocky and sculpted, but with nicely rounded corners. The shape looks like it was carved into a two-box shape, finished, then reworked on the edges to make it a little softer and gentler. The shape of the hood tricks you into believing there is a higher fender line, and this also accentuates the headlamp shape. The side profile does not flow particularly well but it is faithful to its softened-hard-line design theme. The highlight of the side view is the forward sloping rear window. This feature serves to confuse some onlookers because the steep rake almost makes it look not like a station wagon. Maybe it almost isn’t.



Maybe the intention is to make it just cool enough that social, self-conscious family guys and gals in their early thirties can feel more comfortable hauling the 2.5 kids plus one dog and a whole bunch of sand toys to the local park without fear of being seen by friends in their new family hauler. Maybe the design is even cool enough that it truly transcends any contemporary link to typical consumer transportation. Maybe not. The design is unique and interesting, and applaudable.



The interior pushes aside any worries that General Motors design is stuck in a state of perpetual indifference to low-cost interior aesthetics. The current round of vehicles easily surpasses its direct predecessors in quality and attractiveness, although in comparison to the competition it seems closer to a natural evolution of entry level than a remarkable, class-leading design. The protruding section which contains the HVAC and stereo controls is contemporary and pleasing to look at. The four spoke steering wheel looks and feels large, and its large radius helps decrease needed effort for given cornering loads…that sounds like a nice idea but with power steering, and additionally with speed sensitive power steering, the large steering wheel is unnecessarily large. It does get nicer with some of the available high end models when you wrap it with optional leather – like in the Malibu Maxx SS you’ll here about in a later article.



The center console is the focus of design improvement. Here it appears that the “moves and looks like it feels” design approach, one for which the Audi TT is well lauded, has been absorbed and applied by some General Motors staff. Ribbed knobs connect you to a light clickity-click action. Smooth center buttons depress smoothly. The material is, of course, plastic, but it all feels solidly put together. The center armrest doesn’t flex much, though it doesn’t offer much storage. The shifter design looks ok, but the plastic on the stalk and around the base creaks when you shift – that was the interior’s biggest downfall.

The driver’s seat features moderate luxury with fore-aft power adjustment, as well as power vertical adjustment. Optional packages move you up to heated, 6-way power adjustable front seats. The seat material is your standard cloth garb, which looks and feels stiff but certainly better than you would expect a $10,000 car’s seats to look and feel. The cushioning is more supportive than enveloping but is reasonably comfortable.



Interior room is not excessively generous but it is very accommodating. There will be no sacrifice in front room for most people, and rear seat room in a sort of stock setting is decent at 38.5 inches. However, you have good flexibility in rear seating position because the rear seats slide forward and back over a range of seven inches. This means you can increase rear legroom to 41 inches, and open up your thigh to calf angle a few extra degrees – ahh, that’s better.

The only problem with that extra 3 inches of rear legroom is that your cargo capacity is squashed. The Malibu offers a rear-seat-up cargo capacity of 22.8 cubic feet, a significant increase over that of its sedan counterpart (which offers 15.4 cubic feet). This nearly doubles when you fold down the rear seats. (compare to 14 cubic feet on the Honda Accord, 16.4 on the Camry or 15.6 on the Nissan Sentra). Yet it seems rather easy to fill up the rear cargo area with the seats in their “standard” position. Two large plastic storage bins took up the majority of space available under the cargo cover. You can move the cargo cover into any of four different positions by mounting the ends of the cover on one of two levels, and somewhere in there you can find an optimal orientation to suit your cargo needs. And the roof’s the limit, of course, when you take off the cargo cover; that’s how you get to 22.8 cubic feet. But then you can’t see out the back window. So what’s the point of this back and forth? Just considering the considerations. Per the given class, the cargo room is most definitely competitive. Per the wheelbase, the Maxx has a slight advantage over many others but utilizes this in ways besides just cargo room. It is a good family hauler with plenty of room for four large bags and a few extras and an interior full of occupants.



The Malibu in driving operation is about what one would expect of an economy mid-size vehicle. The ride is comfortable, streamlining much road roughness, and is correspondingly not an excellent handling package. The Epsilon is a good enough chassis for the job – you pick up some flexing, but not much. The four-wheel independent suspension is good at absorbing energy, which leads to turn in delays - the 60/40 front/rear weight distribution certainly helps water down responsiveness - as well as smooth transition over bumps. The Malibu Maxx pushes a lot when you corner aggressively, and you get more understeer with every strong depression of the gas pedal. The Malibu does not respond significantly to throttle lift-off. It’s not a car the car of choice for blasting through undulating tarmac. Yet, the Malibu is mostly quite predictable, consistent and reasonable. When setup right it is certainly possible to push this vehicle to the limits of tire adhesion without fear of dire consequences. You can push through a turn with tons of front wheelspin, and as long as you hug the apex tight you can enjoy a nice four wheel drift all the way across the road. There is evidence of good engineering in the suspension; although cost –effective MacPherson struts are mounted up front, a four-link geometry with twin-tube gas shocks and non-linear coil springs is found suspending the Malibu’s tail at each corner. This is not a performance sedan, but it is pretty stable. For a family sedan, the Malibu handles well enough.



As for inducing a slip condition in the front wheels, the Maxx will do this easily in a straight line drag or in a corner. Power is amply supplied by a 3.5L V6, which is standard on the Maxx. (The sedan starts with the 2.2L Ecotec four-banger). The motor doesn’t sound like much of a monster – judging by vibrations transmitted through the chassis to the cockpit and to your hands and your seat, as well as by the sounds generated from under the hood, one might conclude that this was a healthy four cylinder motor, something just about enough to handle the Maxx’s 3450 pound-plus curbweight. The V6 doesn’t sound very healthy at engine speeds above 5000 rpm, either. But 201 hp does push the Maxx forward nicely. Low end torque is definitely adequate, and you move well through the first two gears, even with a tall 3.29:1 final drive ratio (for the Maxx; it’s a shorter 3.63:1 for the 2.2L and a taller 3.05:1 for the 3.5L sedan). The jump from second to third is much smaller than that from first to second, but acceleration at wide open throttle really seems to die down at this point. Fourth gear is a nice 0.68:1 final drive, which yields a very respectable 22/30 mpg in the city/highway. Acceleration at highway speeds is adequate for passing maneuvers, and the engine obliges when pushed to near the maxx, to and past 100 mph. Low end torque is truly the shining point for this motor, however, and it gets the Maxx’s tail off the line nicely. Somehow, it’s just more fun to bring the motor up to 2500 rpm before letting off the brake and making the tires scream all the way through the corner, torque steer moderately jerking the wheel back and forth in your hands…when you’re driving a station wagon. Or an expanded family sedan. Or whatever you want to call this cool car with the raked rear windshield.



Tire slippage - not to mention good gas mileage - may be made easier by less grippy than average tires. The Malibu Maxx sports large profile P215/60R16 Bridgestone Insignia SE 200’s at all four corners. The tires we will guess are not excessively hard (we did not get out our Shore durometer hardness measuring kit for this test drive…probably because we don’t have one), and sport a moderate treadwear rating of 380. Traction is given a “B” rating, which is again fairly middle of the road. But there is something interesting about the performance of these tires.



The perception that perhaps led to this conclusion starts with brake pedal feel. The brake pedal setup is truly wonderful; the position is electrically adjustable (a standard feature on the top-end LTZ Malibu, optional on the mid-level LT model) as is the gas pedal, and brake pedal feel is initially very firm after a very short section of light pedal travel. Unfortunately pedal feel is far from linear, as pressure never increases after it hits an early peak. This pedal feel inspires a confidence that the brakes are there for you.



Performance convinces otherwise. The first few times we sent the Malibu into heavy braking nose-dives we overshot our intended stopping or turn-in points. Not to glorify our particular set of driving skills, but the Malibu surprised on this performance point more than other comparable sedans have. We’ll write some of that off on driver error and placing too much stake in how controls feel versus actual output. But the brakes seemed to lock up rather easily (thus inducing ABS operation) and the stopping force was unimpressive. If the stopping force was unimpressive and the ABS had only barely kicked in, then we would be clamoring for bigger rotors and pads. But the brakes did everything they could, and the tires failed to deliver grip on dry asphalt. We don’t have numbers to back up our case, but something seems fishy with those tires.

Well, all that handling stuff isn’t of primary concern. And the braking, while not impressive, is certainly not horrid. You are not going to get into an accident driving this vehicle for the first time after thousands of miles in another family sedan. The Malibu just handles like, well, a family sedan. An economy midsize one. The power is there, when you need it; certainly GM delivers in that arena. It’s a car obviously focused on functional value, and it achieves this with cabin flexibility, interior capacity and reasonable appointments – like a skylight, and an optional rear DVD/audio system with accompanying wireless headphones, for the given budget.



General Motors more than delivers in the safety department. The Malibu was created and packaged up to snuff with the competition with side-impact airbag protection, as well as with the industry standard front dual-stage airbags and ABS. But the structure proves most impressive, earning the Malibu a near perfect score in government crash testing. The Malibu earned 19 of 20 stars overall, including 5 out of 5 stars on the frontal impact and 4 out of 5 stars on the side impact tests. That’s the part that matters most, over all other features in this car, because it is a family sedan or wagon or expansive, economical midsize young adult transportation device.



Another part that matters is the price. And the Malibu’s is good, at $17,990. It starts several hundred less than the Honda Accord. The Altima doesn’t come in for any less than $1500 over the Malibu Maxx’s price. What’s the difference? Well, lots of things. Interior quality is, as it has been, inferior on the American machine. But driving the Maxx is not a sacrifice like it was to drive some GM vehicles from the 90’s. It’s more than a decent automobile. The structure is good, for safety and performance. The suspension is probably the right balance for a smooth but not glazed-over ride. There is evidence of attentiveness to ride in the multi-link rear suspension. There is life in the motor. And, again, there is space and more than an economy level of features. The Malibu Maxx offers an American solution to the family mover, for American families.