Revving up the next Cobalt: Spies offer a peek

By Don Shilling

The photos show more front-end and rear-end styling than ones taken last month.

New photos suggest the small car coming to Lordstown will have a more aggressive look than the current Chevrolet Cobalt. Journalists on automotive Web sites love the changes.

“The car has the bold, aggressive look that Chevy is looking to show off,” said Ray Wert, editor in chief of Jalopnik.com.

Siddharth Raja, editor of MotorAuthority.com, called the design a modern look without being too controversial.

Both sites posted the photos Wednesday and called them the most revealing shots taken yet of the next Cobalt. Such shots are known as spy photos in the industry because they are taken while vehicles are being tested and before automakers have released any official photographs.

Wert said it appears the car in the photos are of the new small car that GM said would be launched from Lordstown in 2010, although that could not be confirmed.

The car had black shapes painted on it, which were meant to hide the design, but all parts of the car were visible. In photos taken last month, the car had black leather coverings on the front and rear.

Wert and Raja said their staffs and people posting messages on industry Web sites have been positive about the car’s design.

“Looks like a cute car,” wrote one person on autoblog.com.

Another said, “I was just about to scream Opel, then words such as ‘Chevy,’ ‘Chevrolet’ and ‘U.S.’ came outta nowhere and smacked me silly. GM finally getting an attractive compact for something other than Pontiac?”

Wert said Chevy is using certain styling cues to show that a vehicle is American made. A wide grille and a line down the center hood are meant to give vehicles the strong look of a domestic vehicle, he said. Both are used on the Chevrolet Silverado and Malibu, as well as the new compact.

The photos also show a two-tiered grille. The aggressive look comes from the top part being wider than the bottom, Wert said.

Wert said a pronounced line running along the sides of the car gives the car an arrow shape and also suggests an aggressive appearance.

He added that the car appears “beefier” than the Cobalt and has a raised trunk line.

Put it all together and it’s a look that is better than the Cobalt, Wert said.

“The current model is too generic,” he said.

Chris Lee, a GM spokesman, said he couldn’t comment on the photos and didn’t know when more information would be released on the car coming to Lordstown. Last week, GM said the plant would receive a new compact in 2010 that would achieve 9 mpg more than the Cobalt.

Wert said industry Web sites are calling the car a Cobalt even though GM hasn’t announced a name yet.Glenn Paulina, who took the photos, said he spotted the car in Austria.

Paulina said he labeled the car as the next Cobalt because of information from his sources, the size of the car and front-end design, which he called “unmistakably a Chevy.”

The shots from Austria and Colorado show that GM is designing the car with engineering teams from different continents, he said. GM said last week the new compact would be the first time it is building a car using a global architecture, meaning essentially the same car would be built in different countries.