Test Drive: 2012 Chevrolet Sonic LT 5-Door

By Kevin Harrison

I’m a Habs fan. Try not to hold it against me, especially since I’ve fully acknowledged and accepted that my team is garbage this year. In fact, I’ve reluctantly brought myself to cheer for one of my all-time rivals: the Toronto Maple Leafs.

No, I wasn’t struck over the head, I genuinely want them to win the Stanley Cup this year. Or, at the very least, I’d like to see them make the playoffs. Why? Well because the Toronto Maple Leafs have historically been a team of losers. They haven’t made the playoffs in five years straight and haven’t won a Stanley Cup in 45 years straight. At this point, it’s just sad. And to continue to make fun of them is a bit like making fun of an old man who has fallen down the stairs. While it may be a tad funny to see, it’s immensely inappropriate and just plain contemptible.

With GM, their small car offerings were always akin to the Toronto Maple Leafs: very popular, but generally accepted as losers who couldn’t quite beat out its competitors. Everything from the Geo Metro to the Chevrolet Aveo were all pretty bad, yet they remained popular with the buying public anyway.

But like the Maple Leafs this year, GM’s new sub-compact offering just might be a winner.

(Okay, for this analogy to continue to make sense, let’s just forget that the Leafs have recently lost nine games straight and fired their head coach).

I drove a 5-door LT version of Chevrolet’s new Sonic recently. Despite the moronic name, it does seem promising on paper. I drove one to find out.

In the sub-compact segment, it’s fairly difficult to come up with an attractive design due to the small dimensions of the car. If you’re not careful, you could end up with a wretched little thing that only a mother could love. Luckily, GM managed to come up with one of the more attractive designs in the segment. While the exposed headlights and tail lights look a tad cheap, the aggressive front fascia matched with those optional 17 inch wheels help to give it some serious presence on the road (not to mention when equipped with my tester’s dark orange paint). The sharp side profile is further enhanced by hidden rear door-handles giving it a three-door illusion. Out back, circular tail lights with black bezel tries to accent the sporty look. Overall it’s an agreeable design, but if you live in a province that requires a front plate like my tester did, which was in Ontario, it really takes away from the aggressive front fascia.

Inside, you won’t find much typical econo-box cheapness. While there may be hard plastics in abundance, the overall interior design is logically laid out and is an attractive design. The speedometer is in analog form which reminds me of the early 90’s. I’ll let you decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. However matching the circular rev counter with the rectangular speedo makes for an odd ‘bop-it-like’ shape. A telescoping steering wheel is standard which is much appreciated. There is plenty of headroom in both front and rear, but legroom behind this author’s preferred driving position is fairly cramped, however it is adequate for shorter drives. The cargo area is average sized for this class and can of course grow larger with the rear seats folded down. Not to mention that mass amounts of small cubby holes to store smaller items. Good work on that one, GM.

The Sonic gets a 1.8 litre 4 cylinder engine capable of producing 136 horsepower and 125 pound foot of torque. While it is adequate for a car this size, the car’s name suggests some sort of sonic-like speed which it clearly is not. Hence why I think the name is moronic. However, the Sonic does come in a slightly peppier flavour with the top of the line turbo. It gets a 138 horses, however the torque number jumps to 148. Even with that added power, the Sonic is clearly meant to be a city driver and when treated as such, it does well.

Unfortunately the engine is let down a bit by the automatic transmission. To call it unrefined would be accurate, if not a tad understated. Shifts are usually hesitant and on a few occasions, the transmission skipped a gear, only to revert back to the proper gear about a century later. Shifting the gears yourself remedies this problem, but again, there is significant lag in communication from the driver to the machine. Traditionally I usually suggest opting for the manual transmission to alleviate common problems of an automatic, but apparently the six speed manual is controversial as well with unusually tall gear ratios. This means that both transmissions make the Sonic sluggish when higher speeds are required such as merging onto the highway. There were several times when I found myself trying to merge in front of someone thinking I had plenty of time, with my foot to the floor and….nothing.

Handling is this car’s saving grace as it is quite good, even with the winter tires my tester was wearing. you can flog the Sonic around the corner with ease, and the vehicle stays fairly stable and sure footed. The steering is light, as expected, but fairly direct. This paired with a well thought out chassis and a solid feel meant that the Sonic felt fairly tossable, and was able to dart in and out of heavy traffic with ease. Handling really is this car’s forte and it does it just as well as the Ford Fiesta and Honda Fit.

And with that, perhaps the Toronto Maple Leaf’s current status is akin to the Sonic. There’s no doubt that the Leafs are a better team than they were in the past five years, but they certainly aren’t perfect. That’s the case with the Sonic. It’s clearly better than the Aveo, but there still could be some work done to make it better. If the Leafs were to make the playoffs this year, I’d wager they’d make a decent name for themselves in the process. Likewise, throw the Sonic in with the benchmarks like the Fiesta, and Fit and the Sonic could probably hold its own. In fact, it could indeed surprise many people that wouldn’t normally give it the time of day. Converting long-time Fit owners is possible if this long-time Habs fan was able to cheer for the traditionally horrible team. And that, truly, is the Sonic’s biggest accolade.