Civic? lame. Corolla S? Please. Mazdaspeed 3 only decent competitor, but dang, they’re ugly.

GM really needs to find another name for the high-performance Cobalt. Not “SS.”

That FWD thing they called an Impala also doesn’t deserve SS designation.

Ring-Taxi: the Cobalt was never a POS. It’s just not interesting to many people.

zoomzoomer: “The whole proliferation of SS was just GM grabbing at straws.” you’re right.

RaineMan: “It competes nicely with the Civic Si.” yeah, THAT’s a high bar.

livelyjay: “Another thing which is unfortunate, is you can’t lock these cars up and think they will grab top dollar down the road. They are compact cars with a suspension package and go fast parts thrown on the engine. They aren’t going to fetch good money down the road like a rare sports car would (think ZR-1 and GT-R 40 years from now).”

RaineMan: “You want to know the really nice thing about the Cobalt SS? It’s not a Civic Si. The bad thing about the Cobalt SS? It’s not a GTi, Mazdaspeed3 or WRX.

Be honest here folks… if you bought one of these amped-up econoboxes odds are you don’t give a crap whether it is a rattle-trap or not. Hell, I put SOLID engine and transmission mounts in my 06 to get even better performance. It shakes like a NASCAR but when I push the go pedal it does one thing right… that is shit-n-get. Ken knows exactly what I’m talking about.

These cars are American Muscle to the truest historical sense of the term… put the most horsepower in the smallest package and set it loose on the streets… if you want creature comforts go buy a Camry, I’ll make sure to wave as I blow by you in the left lane.

Now let’s talk about this buy one now and reap the profits later scenario. If it hadn’t been for OPEC in the 70′s we wouldn’t be having this conversation because no one wants to miss the second coming of the 60′s muscle car era. News flash kids: neither the Cobalt or HHR even in SS guise are muscle cars. Why not throw a Mazdaspeed 3 in the garage? It’s twice the car as either GM example is dynamically. So what makes the Cobalt so special? Is it because it’s a Chevy? Is it because it’s not Japanese?

Let’s look at this from an historical perspective. If you pulled out a showroom stock late 80′s vintage Shelby Daytona from your collection and threw it on e-bay what do you think it would fetch? If you got the original msrp I’d be surprised and that was a pretty hot car in its day. What I think you’re all speculating is that the end of cars like this is near and that we’ll all be driving electric hamster wheels sooner rather than later. Couple that with the exclusivity of a limited production run and it just has to appreciate, right? Wrong.

If you want one of these just get one and enjoy it. Only drive it on sunny days and keep the mileage down if you so desire and in 10 or 20 years you may have the nicest one left in your state or province. I look through classified sites all the time where guys say that about their ride. Whatever. It may make yours worth 5 or ten times what the average running example is worth but 5 or 10 times f*ck all is unfortunately still f*ck all.

The 4-door makes tons more sense than the Coupe. It competes nicely with the Civic Si, and is nearly as fast as the WRX and Evo while being a good bit cheaper. I see tons more sports sedans than I do coupes… they’re so much more practical. The one thing I don’t like about my 06 Cobalt SS is the lack of useful space.

Chevy has absolutely no sense anymore.

The 4 door SS kind of was their competition with the four door Civic SI, looks like that’s out the window.