After a little more than a month, the 2010 Chevrolet Malibu long-termer finally left our fleet last week. We would’ve liked to keep it longer as we still had a lot to cover about it, but General Motors Middle East wanted to put the car back in use as a press test-drive vehicle. But before we gave it back, we just did a quick run to see what the engine is capable of in terms of fuel economy.
Being the fully-optioned version of the 2010 Chevrolet Malibu, our long-term LTZ tester also comes with the best stereo available in the range. It is seemingly unbranded and doesn’t look like much, but for the first time ever, we had the time to delve deep into the entertainment system of a test car, and were pleased with the new tech on offer.
Our long-term 2010 Chevrolet Malibu had been taken away for more than a week for an agency photo shoot, during which time we cruised around in a courtesy Cruze. Our Malibu is back now, with about 500 additional kilos on the clock. As interesting as the Cruze is, upgrading to a Malibu again is like getting bumped up to first-class. In fact, on the day we got it back, we took it along when we returned the Accord Crosstour to the Honda Middle East HQ. We gave a tour of the Malibu to a person from Honda, and he uttered the words “wow nice”
We took our first ever 2010 long-term car on a trip from Dubai to Ras-Al-Khaimah, partly as an excuse to test the highway behaviour of the Chevrolet Malibu LTZ on a long drive, and partly to meet our resident desert-safari-driving friend, who happens to live in that rocky city.
The Chevy Malibu LTZ has now become my main mode of transportation, as my Jeep and BMW start gathering even more dust than usual. The Mallu is proving to be a rather comfortable ride, while also keeping up appearances. It looks like a luxury car after all, and behaves like one too.
I first asked General Motors’ old PR agency for a long-term test car back in 2005. At the time, they couldn’t comprehend why anyone would need a test car for more than 2 days, let alone some start-up website. Since then, we’ve asked others, and they all rejected us, mumbling something about the “quality” of our audience. But things have changed. Online is in. Chevy design is in. The new GM is in. And the new GM now has cool new PR people. They recently started a long-term test program, and we are only the second people to get a long-termer from them,