I think the Cruze will look much better when you see it in "flesh" than on pictures. The current Malibu looks much more exciting than it´s predecessor. Probably the same will happen with the Cobalt/Cruze. Actually if I had to make a choice I´d take the G5 over the Cobalt though it´s basically the same car.

Yes, see Audi with the 4000/5000 which had to change their name (and even with that, it took time before their sales went back to their previous level)

It's too bad, the turbo coupe is supposed to be quite good: AutoZine.
(For those not familiar with AutoZine, Mark really doesn't like American cars, this is glowing praise.)
Maybe GM's being a little oversensitive dumping the name so early. My only real impression of them is that they look too much like J-bodies, which isn't a good association in my mind. I've never even ridden in one though.

The reason is becuase names pick up bad reputations. It takes years to gain a good reputation in the automotive industry, such as "Camry" and "Accord". It takes only a couple years of bad publicity, reliabilty, and recalls, to make a car get a bad rep, (and thus dropping sales) A good example of this is the Citation. The first model year, they sold over 840,000 untits! That's almost a million in ONE year! Every year thereafter, they were almost unable to sqeeze out even 100,000.
And even though "Cobalt" has only been on the market three years, it already has gained itself a bad "vibe" from buyers. Just goes to show how subsatndard American car companies produce their products these days...

I don’t understand why they feel they must rename a vehicle every four model years (I could understand if the name had been around for 15 years) This seems to be a growing trend now. I wish they would pick a name and stay with it.

Lincoln’s "Zephyr" only lasted on model year before becoming the "MKZ".

Here are some much better "official" pictures if anyone's interested. I don't find it all that bad really. Sure it's kind of ugly, but there are worse
http://www.chevycruzess.com/

Yikes! Is that spy pic taken after the crash test?

If it has to look like that, they can keep their 32/43 MPG and give me a 1966 Impala instead

Well I was reading a car magazine (Car & Driver) and they mentioned something about a new compact Chevrolet for 2010-11. So I went online to do some research and found this
http://www.motortrend.com/future/spied_vehicles/112_0806_2011_chevrolet_compact/- index.html
and as it turns out the Cobalt name is going bye-bye with the next generation of small Chevy! It also mentions that the new car will get a MPG of about 32/43, which is impressive considering it has 150 HP and is not a hybrid. Sounds pretty prosmising to me, but let's just hope it's not as disappointing as the current Cobalt was.

P.S. the article also talks about a replacement for the Korean-made Aveo which is also supposed to debeut around 2011 or so.


EDIT: Checked wikipedia, and apperantly the new Cobalt will be renamed "Cruze" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Cruze
and will also replace the Chevrolet Lacetti in Europe, making this a true "world car"