Car Review: 2005 Chevrolet Malibu “Classic”

Kate and I just spent the last 5 days and 2100 miles behind the wheel of a 2005 Chevy Malibu “Classic,” and in the spirit of reviewing all the cars I drive, I’ll speak about it here a bit.It took quite a while to find any reference to this car on Chevrolet’s website. It was tucked in under their commercial fleet listing, which is no surprise as we rented the car for our recent road trip. Enterprise told us we were receiving the Aveo when I made the reservation, so this was a slight step up. This came in handy when packing up our gear, but the weight of our luggage slowed the vehicle down and put a cramp on its already boat-like handling.The car was powered by GM’s 2.2l Ecotec engine, which I’m sure is fine in smaller cars, but felt like it was struggling the entire trip. The car was just too big for the motor.The inside was dull, and after 22k miles, was completely falling apart. Sure, its a rental car, but the carpeting was coming up, plastic was cracked and the seats were worn – and not comfortable at all. There were two power adapters in the front, but neither worked.For basic transportation, it was fine. It got us out and back without any real problems. And really, you can’t go to a dealership and buy one of these since its a rental fleet car. But if you have the option to buy a rental car, you should check out the Toyota Corolla we had in December, or if GM is your bag, you might want to look at the Malibu Maxx – both much better cars then the Classic.