2014 Chevrolet Impala, an enigma without mystery: Motoramic Drives

“We’ll make money on this car,” the guy from Chevy was saying about the 2014 Impala at its launch this week in San Diego. His thinking may have been wishful. Fully loaded — which is the only way that this vehicle should be ordered — the Impala runs more than $41,000. Even in an era of inflated car prices, that’s a lot of money. Such an outlay can get you a lot of car in this world: A BMW 3-Series, a jacked-out Hyundai Genesis, certain members of the Lexus family, and even Chevy’s vastly technologically superior Volt all run in that range or below. If you want to sell something for 40 grand, it’s going to have to offer more than a 3.6-liter V6 engine, adaptive cruise control, and seats covered with a substance that somewhat vaguely resembles, and might in fact be, actual leather. It’s going to have to be lovely to look at, comfortable to sit in, and fun to drive, or at least some combination thereof. The new Impala, unfortunately, misses the mark.

The 3.6-liter engine purports to offer 305 hp, which should be more than enough, but the carry-over V-6 has to haul 150 lbs. more than it did in the elderly 2013 edition. The car gets a pretty sad 19/29 mpg split, so it had best drive fast and loose (The 2.5 Liter and 2.4 Liter with “EcoAssist” engines, which come out later this year for the Impala, offer even less power, and only mediocre gas mileage. They will run in the low-to-mid thirties, price-wise, but should probably be avoided). During four hours of road testing, the V-6 proved barely adequate. Going up hills was a chore, and I’m not entirely sure why. In the immortal words of Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty from Airplane!, it handled sluggish, like a wet sponge. The little plus and minus symbols on the gearshift for the six-speed automatic didn’t help any, either. If you’re going to pretend to allow manual shifting, put in paddle shifters or go home. When I did try the manual shift, it felt about as intuitive as trying to change channels on an airplane armrest.

Now for some kind, or at least some neutral, things about the Impala. The steering is untroubled, and I liked the brakes. They were sharp and un-hitchy. The exterior design, while certainly nothing special, doesn’t remotely offend. The car has an enormous trunk, and lots of rear-seat space. It also has top-notch, state-of-the-art safety features, including front and rear cameras and truly effective lane departure warnings. Also, Chevy appears to have put substantial engineering effort into establishing a quiet interior, including, according to the press materials, “triple-sealed doors with acoustic perimeter water deflectors” and “body cavities filled with acoustic foam baffles.” And you know how painful that can be. Regardless, it’s a pretty quiet ride.

But oh, the interior! I met the interior designer and she was very nice and obviously quite hardworking, but she got saddled with some bum materials. Chevy cries leather, but it felt like I was sitting on a cheap half-inflated kiddie basketball the whole time. They also claim “soft-touch” material, but there was a springy element to the whole car that just felt plain unappealing. Also, the “dual cockpit” design in the front seemed out of step with current luxury design trends, which tend toward more integrated, swooping look. The Impala was somehow simultaneously boxy and curvy, and it didn’t remotely connect with the present, or with me. It was rubber, I was glue.

Speaking of “connect,” a few words here about Chevy’s “MyLink” system, which gets a refresh starting with the 2014 Impala. The friendly guy in charge of the system was extremely patient in explaining it all to me, but it felt like total overkill. The car companies, particularly the American ones, seem to think that offering “connectivity” in their cars is going to magically magnetize millennial buyers into their orbits. But anyone in their 20s who can somehow afford anything more expensive than a Kia Soul isn’t going to be buying an Impala, and no one is going to be attracted to what amounts to a third-rate Kindle Fire knockoff embedded into the dash. A decent stereo, a GPS, and a USB port will more than suffice. Voice and gesture recognition looks great in commercials, but it doesn’t really matter all that much in the real world. The guy I talked to was even threatening “voice-activated tweeting.” “It’s coming soon,” he said. Save us, Steve Jobs’ ghost!

The Impala was once a stylish marquee name, a glorious tail-finned showpiece of Detroit’s golden age. Those days are as distant as Don Draper sitting alone at the hotel bar. Now it’s just clumsy, expensive department-store jewelry, dated and stale, desperately out of step with the times.

Chevy told us that about 70 percent of the current Impala is going to rental and commercial fleets, meaning that two-thirds of these cars won’t be purchased by individual humans. For the 2014 model, they said, those numbers are going to be reversed — with the 2013 model soldering on as a fleet-only special named, unironically, the Impala Limited. But you can’t just flip a switch. Not at these prices. The Impala may not be a budget vehicle, but soon enough, Budget may be the only place you’ll find one.

2014 CHEVROLET IMPALA SPECIFICATIONS