>>Oh, yea you'd hate like Hell to get beat by one of these, wouldn't you? [Laughter] I lost to a Cobalt but this is a Cobalt SS so wipe that grin off your face. There's some pretty good tech inside, considering, but most importantly a bunch of snort under there. Let's go.
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>>Now of course we're driving an SS so the heart of the matter is under the hood, 2 liter, inline fork, Ecotec motor. Hmmm, big deal, right? Well it is a big deal when you slap a turbo on it and tune it rather aggressively. Now we're getting 260 horsepower out of that 2 liter mil and 260 foot pounds of tork. On top of that we've got something called the no lift shift technology in this car. So when you're driving it with its one choice only 5 speed manual you can go into this sort of street mode where you keep your right foot planted, the car seeks redline and as you get there all you do is depress the clutch and grab the next gear. The car is gonna hold it right there at red line, keep the boost up with the turbo and that when you've got manifold pressure at the peak at all time, ultimate power for those drag races. Not that I recommend that but if you're in to that sort of thing, that's why they did this. Helping you read what's going on in that boosted motor is that gage there, which has two personalities. Below the zero you're getting vacuum which all engines have. Above the zero it's going to read turbo boost, which as far as I can tell gets to 15 before the waste gate opens so this things got a pretty good level of boost even though the gage goes to 30 which is nuts. The other street fighting toy is this button right here which looks like a very simple way to defeat the traction control which you sometimes need for certain situations but press it again and you go into competitive mode launch control. That's for getting out of a hole the fastest. Ok, let's try this no lift shift deal. The hardest parts going to be unlearning 30 years of driving and keeping the right foot down while the clutch goes in, that's weird. So here we go to red. [Car sounds] A lot of burn there and off we go, hold it to red. [Loud car sounds] Keep the right foot down, move the left food around. It's like some kind of damn square dance and it works. Now inside our little Chevy's got a few tricks that are gratifying. First of all you recognize the head unit as some standard GM fare, AM, FM, XM, it's about 228 watts, 7 speakers, pretty meaty sub in the trunk by the way. But that's not too interesting until you get over here. Lookey, lookey, we've got a USB jack. Now this guy is optional in that it has functionality for both USB drives but also beyond that I can hook up my iPod cable into that and my iPod on the other end gets connected in a very intelligent fashion. Hands free calling is done 2 ways in this car. What? Alright, first of all you've got standard Bluetooth because we're in an SS trim Cobalt. Other way is talk to your friends at OnStar because our OnStar system has their hands free calling but we're not crazy about that. What our OnStar system does also provide that is not available any other way in this car is navigation. You cannot get an LCD based GPS or hard drive nav system, just doesn't happen on the Cobalt. But we can ask the OnStar operator for directions. It's what they call turn by turn navigation.
>>Directions are now being sent to your vehicle.
>>Now I can see my routing preview if I keep pressing next in the preview menu here. Is it all you need? Personal preference. But the whole idea of having to call in and go through that whole human negotiation you either love that or you hate it. I hate it! Ok, let's price our 09 Cobalt SS, it's very simple $24,000 pretty much gives you all the performance and tech toys. The only option to think about is $100 bucks to upgrade the stereo to that USB jack for iPods and thumb drives. Of course you will.
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