New 2014 Chevy is Amazing!

This is One Amazing 305 hp Chevrolet Impala

Go Check this out soon at your Local Chevy Dealership. “We’ll make money on this car,” the guy from Chevy was saying about the 2014 Impala at its launch this week in San Diego. His thinking may have been wishful. Fully loaded — which is the only way that this vehicle should be ordered — the Impala runs more than $41,000. Even in an era of inflated car prices, that’s a lot of money. Such an outlay can get you a lot of car in this world: ABMW 3-Series, a jacked-out Hyundai Genesis, certain members of the Lexus family, and even Chevy’s vastly technologically superior Volt all run in that range or below. If you want to sell something for 40 grand, it’s going to have to offer more than a 3.6-liter V6 engine, adaptive cruise control, and seats covered with a substance that somewhat vaguely resembles, and might in fact be, actual leather. It’s going to have to be lovely to look at, comfortable to sit in, and fun to drive, or at least some combination thereof. The new Impala, unfortunately, misses the mark.

The 3.6-liter engine purports to offer 305 hp, which should be more than enough, but the carry-over V-6 has to haul 150 lbs. more than it did in the elderly 2013 edition. The car gets a pretty sad 19/29 mpg split, so it had best drive fast and loose (The 2.5 Liter and 2.4 Liter with “EcoAssist” engines, which come out later this year for the Impala, offer even less power, and only mediocre gas mileage. They will run in the low-to-mid thirties, price-wise, but should probably be avoided). During four hours of road testing, the V-6 proved barely adequate. Going up hills was a chore, and I’m not entirely sure why. In the immortal words of Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty from Airplane!,it handled sluggish, like a wet sponge. The little plus and minus symbols on the gearshift for the six-speed automatic didn’t help any, either. If you’re going to pretend to allow manual shifting, put in paddle shifters or go home. When I did try the manual shift, it felt about as intuitive as trying to change channels on an airplane armrest.