Chevrolet Kalos

BEAUTY COMES FIRST
Chevrolet’s Kalos turns out to be a surprisingly significant small car – and a surprisingly good one. Jonathan Crouch reports….

Naming a car after the Greek word for ‘beautiful’ may be tempting fate a little but Chevrolet’s little Kalos supermini has proved able to carry off the badge. The Chevy badge may not be familiar in Britain but the car already is, establishing a useful niche amongst buyers who know value when they see it. Over in the States, it’s the most popular small car you can buy.

Chevrolet UK have slightly less exalted targets for this model on these shores but an ever-increasing share of the supermini sector is certainly possible, especially now there’s a sporty-looking three-door version and a practical five-door. There are two petrol engine choices – a 72bhp 1.2-litre unit or a preferable 94bhp 1.4-litre 16v powerplant. Diesels won’t arrive here for a while yet, which does put the car at something of a disadvantage when it comes to garnering market share.
Or does it? When you actually look at the extra upfront cost of diesel variants over their petrol-powered counterparts, you end up having to cover quite a mileage in order to make the extra cost pay off. And supermini buyers don’t tend to cover large mileages. They don’t tend to like paying over the odds either, so asking prices around £2,000 less than an equivalent Ford Fiesta should come as welcome news. The three-door range begins and ends at £7,295 for the 1.2S, while the five-door range goes from £7,795 for the 1.2S to £9,345 for the 1.4 16v SX.

"When we designed the Kalos, we set out to produce an alternative to conventional lines and tread new paths in terms of design…."

You could argue that the Kalos is a more practical proposition than the Ford too, being part of the latest generation of superminis that attempt to cram as many MPV-style ideas as possible into their truncated dimensions. That doesn’t sound like a recipe for style but fortunately, the Kalos is notably better looking than many previous attempts at this genre. Small wonder, as it was styled by Giugiaro in Turin, a design house of no little repute.

It’s certainly not bland. "When we designed it, we set out to produce an alternative to conventional lines and tread new paths in terms of design," says Giorgetto Giugiaro, explaining the philosophy behind the design of the Kalos. You could say he’s hit that particular bullseye. The front end is quite unlike any other production car, the huge headlights striking in their clear glass lenses with indicators that are arranged almost like eyelids.

The flanks of the Kalos are marked with three competing attention seekers. Firstly there’s a swage line across the front door that heads rapidly south as soon as it encounters the rear doors. The front wheelarches are rounded, but the rears have a squared off blister above them which really shouldn’t work but does. Finally there’s a strange, almost vestigial, third window at the side that Chevrolet claims, "optically loosens the rear of the car." Make of that what you will.

The interior is as striking as the bodywork. Far from the usual South Korean elephant grey, the Kalos features high quality materials and imaginative design. Imagine Volkswagen at its best and then splash that design with a few touches of metallic brightwork and you‘ll not be too far from the mark. The twin ventilator rosettes that burst from the top of the dashboard highlight a circular design theme that’s continued throughout the cabin, mirrored on the side air vents, the displays and the door handles. You’ll even find the theme continued on the fabric applied to the doors.

The passenger compartment is extremely spacious, due in no small part to the 2.48 metre wheelbase - one of the longest in the supermini class. Chevrolet claim the 955 millimetres of headroom to be a class best. The rear seat splits in the normal 60/40 manner but also has a trick up its sleeve. You can not only fold it down, but also jack-knife it forward and secure it to the back of the front seats. This little party trick frees up a cavernous 735 litres of available luggage space, in effect more than quadrupling the usual capacity of 175 litres with the rear parcel shelf in place.

Safety is well catered for with all models getting anti-lock brakes with electronic brakeforce distribution, twin front and side airbags, three-point belts on all five seats and ISOFIX anchorage points for a child seat in the back. Otherwise expect to find power assisted steering, height/tilt adjustable headrests, clear side repeaters, coat hooks in the back, central locking with an alarm, electric front windows, cup holders front and rear, an auxiliary power outlet and a tilt adjustable steering column. All 1.4 and five-door models have air-conditioning and the SX variants add 15" alloy wheels, electric rear windows, side airbags, an upgraded stereo with steering wheel controls, electric mirrors, a sunglasses holder and body-coloured door handles.

The 1.4-litre 16v engine and five-speed manual gearbox are a willing combination, powering the Kalos to a top speed of 110mph and capable of hitting 60mph in 11.1 seconds. An average fuel consumption figure of nearly 40mpg is reasonable, though CO2 emissions of 178g/km are a little way off the class best. Even the 1.2-litre Kalos is no slouch and its combined fuel economy figure of 43mpg is not to be sniffed at.
Given that one car in every sixteen sold across the world is a Chevrolet and that this Kalos, (sold in the US as the ‘Aveo’) is, as we’ve said, that country’s most popular small car, it turns out that this is a surprisingly significant world product. Which makes it appropriate that it’s also a surprisingly effective supermini.