I was born in 1971 and started actively reading about cars in 1976, subscribing to Car and Driver and absorbing the work of men such as LJK Setright, Gordon Jennings, and Gordon Baxter. Those men were waiting for America to create a truly outstanding small car, one that could meet the Germans (and, later, the Japanese) on equal ground and beat them in a fair fight. More particularly, since General Motors was the acknowledged leader of the American automotive industry, they were waiting for GM to create the Great American Small Car.

Those men are gone now, as dead as Julius Caesar and not nearly as well-remembered. I am standing here, waiting in their stead, waiting patiently for the Great American Small Car, waiting for General Motors to fulfill the promise they’ve made to us for nearly fifty years now.

The 2011 Chevrolet Cruze is a good car, although at least part of its goodness comes from the fact that it isn’t really that small. It’s well-positioned against the Civic and Corolla. I believe that it beats both of those cars in significant, measurable ways. This is what it is: a good car, a bold car, a car for which no purchaser need make an excuse or feel any concern. This is what it might be: great. That’s for the buyer to decide. This is what it is not: American.

You are looking at the Cruze’s not-so-secret weapon: an interior that represents a Cloverfield-sized leap past the competition. It’s part Cadillac CTS, part Buick LaCrosse, part Chevrolet Malibu, and unmistakably GM in the way the exterior does not quite manage to be. Forget the Civic or Corolla. From the touchable dash panels to the big, comfy seats, the Cruze is fitted-out to compare directly with Accords and Maximas. The interior is spacious. Visibility is outstanding. On the road, the Cruze is genuinely quiet — not from an overabundance of insulation, but from thoughtful design. The harsh, annoying frequencies disappear, allowing the stereo to shine even at low volume. Never before has a car of this size been so relaxing to run down the freeway for four adult passengers.

In this class, iPod integration matters more than raw power, and the Cruze shines here, offering fast, no-excuses access to my 138GB of music. The rest of the “HMI” doesn’t match up to Ford standards; in terms of usability and feature content, it’s closer to what you would expect to find in the Korean competition. Still, it’s at least in the ballpark with the class leaders.

Awww, look at the baby engine! This is the 1.4 Ecotec Turbo. GM is positioning this as the “upscale” engine in the range. It produces about the same horsepower as, but far more “area under the curve” than, the standard-equipment 1.8 normally-aspirated Ecotec. The ostensible reason for delaying the Cruze introduction in the United States was to make sure this engine was ready for prime time, although surely the massive expense of changing Lordstown from Cobalt to Cruze production also factored into that decision.

No matter. If you’d bought a Cruze last year with a 1.8, you would probably wish you had the 1.4 turbo instead. This is a sound, cheerful, strong-enough motor, producing a nice long plateau of torque from 1700rpm on and making it easy to drive on light throttle. In recognition of the fact that TTAC readers don’t necessarily care how quickly the big little Chevy can run down a two-lane, during my drive time I chose to focus on a different aspect of “performance”. Faced with a twisty, elevation-change-laden twenty miles of bad (meaning good) road, I gripped the wheel…

…drove the speed limit, maximized economy and smoothness, and was rewarded with an average of 36.8mpg. This wasn’t a freeway snooze drive; it was chock-full of marked 25mph switchbacks, big climbs, and plenty of descending, decreasing-radius stuff. Never did the Cruze feel out of breath despite the light throttle openings, and never did the engine feel inadequate.

The same cannot be said for the transmission. DSG and Powershift have made this torque-converter box obsolete in the class. While it offers a full six ratios compared to Toyota’s four, this is a transmission that is always in motion, always shifting, and always intruding on the experience. It should be junked, and soon. If you’re considering a Cruze, get the manual transmission. It wasn’t made available for us to drive, but it can’t be worse.

This new GM “world car” platform offers a “Z-link” rear torsion-beam suspension that seems to improve the so-called secondary ride a bit. This is a car that absorbs road imperfections very well, beating both the Civic and Corolla provided for comparison. That’s right: Chevrolet was confident enough to include two of the four heavy-hitters to the party. The Civic was a more enthusiastic vehicle, and far more fun to hustle along the back roads, but it cannot match the Cruze for features, space, fuel mileage, or interior ambiance. The Corolla has simply outlived its competitiveness, period. The Focus, had it been present, would have easily shown-up the Cruze on over-the-road pace and interface design but would have struggled with noise and interior quality perception. The Elantra would have been a tougher nut to crack, given that it is a massive improvement over its precedessor. Still, none of these cars can “waft” like the Cruze… and who would have thought that word would ever apply to a car that traces its spiritual lineage to the Chevette?

For drivers who are not particularly worried about over-the-road sportiness, the Cruze could very well be the current class leader, and it’s likely to hold that position at least until the next “Euro” Ford Focus arrives next year. For the first time in modern history, a Chevrolet compact car is legitimately the class of the field.

Unfortunately, it’s priced like the class of the field, too. The base car starts at $16,995 and features the 1.8 Ecotec coupled with a more-than-healthy dollop of airbags and other safety features. The top-of-the-line LTZ-RS rings the cash register for $23,300 or thereabouts and doesn’t have a navigation system at that price. Will cash have to be laid on the hood to move these cars?

The most interesting of the model variants is the mid-range “Eco”, which pairs the turbo 1.4 with a host of weight-saving and aero mods, including aerodynamic shutters behind the grille that close to optimize freeway fuel economy. Priced at $18,895, it is projected to clock 40mpg with the six-speed manual. I see no reason to disbelieve this claim. It may not be a Prius killer, but it takes the fight directly to the Civic Hybrid and carries the now-mandatory set of green-ish badges.

During the PR event in dreary Washington, DC, home of General Motors’ corrupt government owners and the mendacious lobbyists who pull their strings, we were continually reminded that the Cruze has been successfully sold in “sixty countries” so far. This is correct, and it’s troubling. To some degree, the Cruze is already old news upon its arrival here, the same way the Ford Fiesta has had a nice long run in Europe prior to visiting Ellis Island. Why?

The answer is simple: this is a Daewoo. My direct, repeated questions to GM personnel regarding the Cruze’s Korean ancestry were answered honestly but with perhaps too-scrupulous attention to detail. I was repeatedly told that “the architecture was engineered in Germany”, and I was repeatedly told about the “global nature” of the engineering, but the plain fact of the matter is that the Daewoo Lacetti was largely engineered, styled, and developed by Daewoo in Korea. It was then modified in some detail to become the Chevrolet Cruze. It’s a Korean car, and if it isn’t quite a Korean-market transplant like the Aveo, it’s very far from being a European design like the Ford Focus or VW Jetta.

The issue of American engineering for the Cruze hardly came up. In the modern era, GM seems to source its electronics in China, its major systems in Europe, and its brainpower in Korea. It’s smart business — TTAC readers know about China’s market and the limitless potential there — but for those of us who wanted an all-American small car to draw a line in the sand, there’s only disappointment.

The rest of you can buy a Cruze with a clear conscience. It’s built here, it’s feature-packed, it doesn’t lag behind the competition, and it’s likely to be a reliable, decent vehicle. That’s all this segment asks for. Anything else can be dismissed as the worthless dream of a wandering dreamer like myself, a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent seas, wishing for the day that General Motors shows us a great American small car.

From the surface, the C63 looks like it has the goods to compete with the big boys in the Euro performance club. Boy racer styling? Check. Monstrous V8? Check. Ginormous tyres? Check. Manual transmission? Not so much. Also not along for the party is a coupe or convertible version of the C63. Mercedes’ decision to make the C63 auto-only is perplexing enough, but the fact that they also decided to ignore the rest of the M3 portfolio is truly baffling. Consider the competition: the M3 coupe and convertible [combined] outsell the M3 sedan almost five to one. This halfhearted approach to a hotly contested and prestige-generating segment truly defines the experience with the C63: you constantly feel like this could have been a great car.

When reviewing a car I often find it useful to read other reviews on the same car, usually to see what likes and dislikes other reviewers had, and then see if those same issues bother me at all. When the C63 AMG was dropped off on my doorstep, I have to admit I was giddy, not just because it looks like a mini-me version of the E63 that I routinely park next to, but because every review I have read waxes poetic about it being the answer to the M3.

Starting off inside, for a $66,500 (as equipped) car, the cheap plastics and lack of features are startling. The same options – or lack thereof – that greet you in a base C300 rear their heads in the C63. If you don’t opt for the $3,300 multimedia package, then you are stuck with a pointless microscopic screen tucked under a manually opening storage cubby. The screen shows a digital tuning dial for the radio and provides a display for the built-in Bluetooth, but it’s so small that you might as well dial on your phone. When you opt for the $375 iPod integration kit, the screen becomes an oddly placed paperweight since the iPod can only be controlled via the steering wheel.

This is good if you don’t like your passenger’s to decide what tunes to listen to, but bad if you would like to use the screen in the center of the speedo for something else like the AMG mode where you see oil and coolant temps and an alternate gear indicator. This feature is so counterintuitive that when reading reviews like Autoblog’s review of the C63, they never even worked out how to use the iPod interface and instead disconnected the iPod and manually changed songs and playlists! Our press car didn’t come with the uplevel sound system or keyless drive, a feature found on Kias these days. Electronic shocks aren’t even an option.

I drove the C63 for two days, then re-read a number of reviews on the car. I figured there must be something wrong: they must have been driving a different car. The front seats in the C63 are epically uncomfortable yet no other review mentions this; they were apparently designed for someone less than 5’10” tall and less than 8” from shoulder to shoulder. I had no less than 15 random people try the seats, nobody found them pleasant to sit in. Six feet tall and with an average build, I was incapable of finding a comfortable seating position because the upper portion of the seat is so severely bolstered that the only way my upper back could touch the seat is if I hunched forward and curled my shoulders. Otherwise it felt like I was being groped by the side bolsters, and not in a good way. Sadly Mercedes offers no alternative seats. The front seats alone are reason to avoid the C63. Don’t get me wrong, I love side bolsters, but they need to be adjustable or sized for 85% of the populace.

The C63 is a deeply conflicted car; it has the engine of a world-class sports car and an exhaust note that makes teenagers cream their shorts, yet it possesses the most dimwitted automatic I have ever experienced in a sports sedan. The C63 doesn’t get the E63’s new automatic-with-a-clutch. Instead it gets Mercedes’ “Speedshift Plus” 7-speed automatic. The name suggests that this transmission shifts quickly. It doesn’t.

The C63 may very well be faster than the M3 in a straight line at a drag strip from a stop, but in reality when you are on the freeway next to one and compete for a freeway exit, the M3 is off the freeway and on the ramp before the C63 has even shifted. Speaking of those shifts, cars like the M3 or even the portly (in comparison) XFR will queue shifts: i.e. if you are in 6th and want 2nd hear, just flip the paddle four times and most performance cars will shift directly from 6th to 2nd blipping the throttle only once in the process. The AMG will not. You have to flip the paddle once, it blips, the transmission engages 5th, once in 5th you flip the paddle again, it blips again and engages 4th rinse and repeat for gears 3 and 2.

By the time you get to 2nd gear, you have run over the bicyclist in front of you, careened over the cliff or forgotten why you wanted 2nd gear in the first place. When I asked about this annoyance, I was told that all you have to do is hold down the down paddle and “the transmission will shift to the lowest gear available.” Sounds good, right? Wrong. The transmission still blips and shifts sequentially all the way down from 7th to 2nd (that’s five blips, five gear changes) making you sound like some knob that can’t drive a stick, plus you can never summon 1st gear in that fashion, that is always one more paddle pull away.

What makes the transmission all the more infuriating is how the car handles. There is zero drama at speed. The electronic nanny reels in the fun at all the right moments and, should you tell the nanny to pack it in for the day, you can burn out and do doughnuts to your heart’s content. This car is fast, seriously fast. The forums are alight with complaints that Merc didn’t keep the 518HP tune from the E63 in the C63, but it doesn’t really matter because there isn’t enough grip to use all that power from a stop anyway. My best accelerometer tested 0-60 time was 4.8 seconds, and that was (by necessity) easing up on the throttle around 3500-4500RPM to keep from burning out in first gear.

At the end of the day, the M3 remains the better car. The BMW’s ride is more compliant, thanks to electronic shocks. Its dual clutch transmission is neck-breakingly fast. And, perhaps most significantly, its interior parts quality is light-years ahead.Every person who got into the C63 was surprised that they were not surrounded by luxury. If Mercedes ditched the M3 wannabe seats, spent some cash making the interior a better place, and softened the suspension a hair, it might just be the perfect compact Euro sports sedan. Until then it’s playing third fiddle to the RS4 [a car that is no longer even sold new] and M3.

Mercedes-Benz provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of gas for this review

Germany 1958: Women are allowed to take a job without asking their husband for permission. Europe makes its first baby steps to an EU. Elvis Presley arrives as a GI in an army barracks in Friedberg. Mercedes is in its fourth year of the gullwinged 300SL, one of the finest automobiles of all times.

The last perhaps was car journo hyperbole, expected from someone who was just handed the keys to a sports car fully restored by the Mercedes Classic Center in Stuttgart. Juan Perón had one, Porfirio Rubirosa had one, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Zsa Zsa Gabor had one. Now Sajeev Mehta has one, if only for a day, and if only for the benefit of the readers of Thetruthaboutcars.

This $500,000-ish Mercedes barely escaped the clutches of a Russian mobster who found its shipping container in Europe, en route to Texas. Which further explains why I was neither impressed nor interested in the attention it garnered from bystanders. Unlike the feeling of driving any Lamborghini, the gawkers only took away from the 300SL experience. Because, after 52 years on the road, it’s such a remarkable piece of hardware that it embodies the best of old and new, and defies its age like no other.

Aside from its meager footprint, the 300SL’s style defies the boundaries set by a generation’s worth of design gimmicks: this body is to automobiles what The Great Pyramids are to architecture. While the current Mercedes SLS is a fine ornament in front of the blingy Luxor Hotel, it’s bulldog face, chunky B-pillar and gangsta-wannabe hoops cannot hold a candle to its forefather’s proportional perfection. Which is true for every modern day retro-mobile, so perhaps Old School Über Alles is the only way to fly.

The 300SL’s interior shows its age, only in the best way possible. Everything is beautiful: decadent leather (all original) that’s olfactory ostentatious. Ancillary controls move with a weighted precision not found in today’s plastic craptastic machines. Even the gauge cluster is suitably gorgeous. The SL might be perfect, if not for the gull wing specific doorsill’s compromising entry/exit strategies and a borderline cramped cabin. Safety features (as if) notwithstanding, six footers will survive, provided their BMI is on par with your average Yank from the 1950s. The 300SL isn’t a car for everyone, but certain cars shouldn’t be designed to be all things to all people.

Preach to the choir much? Clock my final complaints: the lack of power steering (paired with a 70’s vintage Nardi tiller) makes parking lot positioning difficult, while the manual drum brakes (discs were standard in 1961) are terrifying in emergency situations. I steered clear of cars with modern stoppers for good reason.

The 300SL’s direct injected motor also lacks the technology of modern GDI powertrains, to keep those revolutionary injectors closed when the motor kicks off: which gives new meaning to Sunday afternoon cruises to blow the carbon out. Clear the straight six’s throat and enjoy the refined powerband of a motor with a flat torque curve and seamless power delivery from idle to 6000 revs and beyond.

Get a few MPHs on the speedometer and the old SL’s honor is restored, with a quick ratio 4-speed manual putting the power down with grace and pace. The (factory re-issued) Dunlop’s tall sidewalls mask rough roads better than most new vehicles, but there’s plenty of steering feel at turn-in. Put another way, the 300SL truly shines once the fuel system knows its place.

And this SL has the power to keep up with modern metal. Handling at modest speeds brings excitement, more than any modern day sports car with the safety nannies turned off. Thanks to the somewhat unpredictable swing axle arrangement, the 300SL happily steers the rear wheels on uneven pavement. But as a Gentleman’s car, it only picks a fight if you throw the first punch. Treat it right, stay in the ideal gear and the rear pushes you out of a corner very hard. Without drama. Which is simply intoxicating.

From boulevardier to back road barnstormer, the 300SL’s true beauty are in its bones: my tester was a roadster, one of 1885 made, but you’d never know from behind the wheel. Chassis flex? Not a chance: torsional loads are dissipated faster than GM bonds in bankruptcy court, while cowl shake is completely non-existent.

Not to belabor the point, but there’s no late model vehicle with a chassis this tight, much less a comfy convertible with a hoon-worthy suspension. No matter how technology progresses, I doubt any Lexus performs this good after five decades, even with a few years of restoration. It possesses gadgets and safety bits, but the driving experience can’t be topped. Dare I admit it, the same applies for any modern Mercedes.

Which makes the 1958 Mercedes 300SL simply heartwarming: it stands the test of time, with engineering relevant to cars like the 2011 Hyundai Sonata. Even without A/C or an AM radio, the 300SL is such a disarming dance partner you simply fall in love. With every turn and any gear change, I was completely taken aback at the 300SL’s timely yet distinctive performance. Which begs the question: can our modern metal produce a car of this caliber for the year 2062? Just don’t bet on it.

(Thanks to Mr. David Duthu for the seat time in his vehicle)