You’d think it would be blue. As in all blue, and not this gold, hey-look-at-me-I-just-retired-and-my-kids-stole-my-cash paint job.

Come on, GM. How embarrassing. You finally get a car right – a car, of all things – and you offer it in a gold sandstone number that elicits shouts and squeals from neighborhood blue hairs but makes teenagers shirk away, afraid that the 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt will tweak their cheek and smack ‘em on the rear.

Of course, you don’t have to buy the gold one.

But you may want to buy the Cobalt. The 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt is perhaps the first car produced by General Motors that actually touches the hem of the Honda Civic’s dungarees, climbing up to the next level with a great interior, an acceptable powertrain and good safety scores from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS). Here’s hoping that there’s anyone left who cares, after bad car stacked up on top of bad car, year after year, a drumbeat of mediocrity that has left GM gasping, one brand dead, and another brand dying.

But that’s another sad story. The Cobalt is a happy car that no one will ever try, because it’s a Chevy and everyone knows – if you’re buying compact, you buy import and never ever take another chance on a piece of domestic “engineering.”

Shoot. That’s also another sad story. There are many of those today when the topic is General Motors. But the Cobalt is not one of them – it is a bright ray of hope that, hey – at least they figured it out, got a clue and built something worth owning that wears an American bowtie. Amazingly, the best thing about the Cobalt is the interior – it’s so close to quality standards set by the imports that it may actually be better than the Civic or the Toyota Corolla. Layout is simple and direct – three knobs for environmental controls, two knobs and a few buttons for the radio, vents that work well at directing air flow and – get this – turn all the way flush when you close ‘em – a nice touch. Seats are comfortable, and there is plenty of room up front. Plastics are well made, and interior construction is above reproach. This is simply the best interior in a low cost mainstream GM car for a long time.

What people see when you’re driving it, however, is another story. The design is worse than ugly – it’s a bore, and mimics most every other compact on the market – Mazda 3 excepted. Perhaps the coupe will be more attractive, which is where the looks really ought to be anyway. There’s only so much you can do with a four-door sedan, after all, and while no one wants a car that ran over the proverbial ugly stick, it’s nice to have a little flair. Initial reaction to the Cobalt ranged from a hearty, “Uh, nice…what’s for lunch?”…to,“Take a look at the nose on that thing!”

The powertrain is much like that snout – nice enough to get by, but not enough to really shout out and sing about it. The four-cylinder’s whine at high speeds is irritating, though it does have a nice sound when you first mash the pedal. Mated to a five-speed manual or four-speed automatic transmission and riding on teeny little 15-inch wheels, the Cobalt produces 145-horsepower and 155 lb.-ft of torque, more than enough power for what a compact needs to do. Like the Civic, Corolla and every other small car on the market, the Cobalt achieves the power and performance levels it needs to reach. If you want more, wait for 2006 and buy a Chevrolet Cobalt SS.

But then, none of that stuff really matters. No one cares about horsepower if they’re shopping for compact cars. The important things are exactly where the Cobalt shines, such as interior quality and safety – the Cobalt received one of the best side impact ratings (with side curtain airbags) from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety.

The exception, though, is a really big one: price. The Cobalt is just too expensive. Even with cash back, the Cobalt needs to be very competitive on the sticker price in order to jerk heads away from the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla. Then again, even if Chevy were giving it away, the Cobalt probably would not get much notice; such is the damaged reputation of General Motors. And this is in fact the saddest story of all: a good car, fated to obscurity because of the bruised and haggard reputation of its carmaker. – Brian Chee

Photos courtesy of Erik Hanson and General Motors