About five years ago auto manufacturers began to realize that consumers’ sets of needs did not always match up with existing product categories. What if someone wanted to image and handling of a sports car, but the carrying capacity of an SUV? Or the image of an SUV, but the carrying capacity of a minivan and the ride of a luxury car? In response to this realization, we are now seeing “crossover” vehicles that do not neatly fit into any conventional category. The Pontiac Vibe is one such vehicle.

The Vibe, especially in GT form, is sort of a tall station wagon / sports car cross. It is very similar in size and interior versatility to the Chrysler PT Cruiser, but with ultra-modern rather than retro styling. It was engineered by Toyota on the new Corolla chassis and is manufactured in a GM-Toyota joint venture plant managed by Toyota in California. Toyota sells a vehicle that differs largely in exterior styling as the Matrix. Three models are offered: a base front-wheel-drive model with a 130 horsepower engine, an all-wheel-drive model with a 123 horsepower engine, and a GT model with a 180 horsepower engine (also used in the Celica GT-S). Though the high output engine uses a different block with a shorter stroke to enable higher engine speeds, all of the engines are the same size, four cylinders displacing 1.8 liters. The key variable is how high in the RPM range each engine maintains its torque output (i.e. breathes). As the father of small children who would love a sports car, I could use a tall wagon / sports car mix, so I took the Vibe GT for a test drive.

For my review of a Toyota Matrix fitted with the 130-horsepower four and an automatic, click here.

Pontiac Vibe Reliability

Want better reliability information? Want to more clearly know what difference it will make if you buy a Vibe rather than something else? My website, truedelta.com, will be providing this information in the form of "times in the shop" and "days in the shop" stats.

From these stats you might learn that your first choice, compared to your second choice, is likely to make 2.3 extra trips to the shop in its first five years. You might decide its advantages compensate for this, or you might not. Either way, you'll be able to make a much better informed decision than you can today.

I aim to provide the highest quality information to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, these goals conflict. If I simply give the information away, few will help provide it. So I'm doing the next best thing: those who have been active participants for at least six months will receive free access to this site's reliability information; otherwise this access will cost $24.95. The average time commitment for someone reporting on two cars will be (at most) 15 minutes a year, so you'll essentially receive $100 an hour for doing your share to help everyone make better decisions.

For the details, and to sign up, visit www.truedelta.com.

Styling and Accommodations

The Vibe shares its basic theme with the much-maligned Aztek, but it works much better here because of better proportions and adequate side curvature. In two-tone paint, it has an SUV-ish look to it. Actually, the second tone is unpainted plastic cladding, as seen on the Chevy Avalanche and last year’s Aztek. Thankfully, there is much less of it in this application, and it looks fine to my eye. Still, I personally prefer the monochrome, which looks more refined and less trucky. I strongly prefer the styling of the Vibe to that of the Matrix, which intentionally includes a number of quirky elements. Where the Vibe is styled to look somewhat familiar and more or less conventionally attractive, Toyota clearly wanted to stir controversy with its version. Maybe this plays with the 20-something crowd, but not with me.

The interior styling is a bit more conventional, if not particularly attractive. As in other Pontiacs, the gauges are red. To cater to the young target audience, each gauge is surrounded by a thick chromed plastic ring and the instrument panel has a metallic look to it. Nothing especially tasteful here, though. The pair of gimmicks cannot overcome the general artlessness of the interior design.

The strong point of the interior is the amount of volume available inside this fairly compact vehicle. All of the seats are positioned mini-SUV high. This affords good thigh support for adults in the rear seat, a feature too often lacking in largish sedans. Headroom and legroom are adequate for two adults front and rear. Not only could my feet fit under the front seat, but I could lift my toes up under them. This is a fairly narrow vehicle, though, so three adults will fit in the rear only in a pinch.

Despite the high seating position, the view out the side windows isn’t especially open. The Vibe’s beltline (base of side windows) starts fairly high and rises continuously as it moves rearward. Shorter rear seat passengers (and especially kids) might feel a bit closed in as a result.

Every seat but that of the driver can be folded, opening up long and tall cargo space. Cargo space width is limited, though, as the rear wheelwells intrude nearly all the way to the rear edge. I measured the available width, and it came to 40 inches. This is two shy of the length of my double stroller when folded. The stroller will probably still fit, just not flat on the floor. The cargo area and folded seatbacks are covered with a hard plastic with raised ridges to facilitate scar-free, low effort loading and unloading. This surface is much more slippery than carpet would be, but numerous tie-downs are provided on the walls and floor to secure objects.

One especially neat feature: a standard electrical outlet is located in the center console. So forget about converters, you can just plug in your notebook computer, hair dryer, whatever using the regular plug. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? The only other place I’ve seen this is in a fully loaded Toyota Avalon. It seems more appropriate here.

This is basically a Toyota, so reliability should be good. That said, a number of interior trim pieces were of dubious quality. For example, the hard plastic cover of the A-pillar bowed out and was loosely attached and there was a small rattle in the instrument cluster.

On the Road

Here’s where the whole sports car thing falls apart. The engine is willing enough, though with peak power at 7600 RPM and peak torque at 6800 you have to rev the bejesus out of it. Short gearing makes this fairly easy. (Toyota, unlike Pontiac, offers an automatic with the 180-horse engine; I cannot imagine that this works well.) You can easily feel the high RPM timing and lift kick in around 6200. It feels a bit like a turbo when it does this. Below 6200 you’ve got the basic engine. The engine makes a lot of noise when pressed, but I didn’t find it especially objectionable. It has more of a small car sound than the similar four in the Ford Focus SVT, but it’s not grating. (For my reviews of related vehicles click on the blue hyperlinks.) Media reviews have picked on this engine, finding it out of character with the car, but my problems with the Vibe were largely elsewhere.

To begin with, the driving position is awful. The shifter is mounted on an extension of the dash. It is a couple inches too far forward and a couple inches too high. It might also be a bit far to the right. The throws also felt like they ran at a slightly awkward angle. Moving the seat to where I could stretch to reach the shifter, the wheel and pedals were too close. A nice, amazingly large dead pedal is provided, but it is even closer. Driving with my left foot on the dead pedal and my right hand on the shifter I felt like a clown. Flat-out wide-open driving position, I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s Twister ™, but in a car.

Then there’s the matter of the front seats. The cushion is small. My father, along for the test drive, felt like he was sitting on a beach ball. I didn’t quite feel this way, but understood where he was coming from. He also complained about the lack of any handle on the door to use to brace himself--there’s only an indentation in the armrest that is too shallow and too far rearward for this purpose. People who like a nice handhold on the door will be very unhappy here.

But back to the driver: The seat has moderate bolsters, but they’re so soft I just pushed right through them in turns. I encountered a similar phenomenon in the new Nissan Altima. Why do the Japanese put side bolsters on seats that provide no lateral support in practice? Do they see these as a marketing gimmick only, the interior equivalent of a spoiler?

My disappointment extends to the chassis. All it took was one good curve to realize that this vehicle, even in GT form, sways way too much in turns, especially at the rear. It’s tighter than, say, you’re standard Korean compact, but short of what I expect from a sporty car. Basically, when you try to drive aggressively the vehicle sends a clear message to back off. It refuses to reward such behavior with any entertainment value. The car I drove had the standard 16” wheels, but the optional 17” wheels are not going to alter the dynamics of the chassis. Like those seat bolsters, they seem to be offered for stylistic purposes only. While various media reviews have suggested that the engine is out of tune with the vehicle, from my perspective the vehicle could be more in tune with the engine.

The chassis rides fairly well, nothing luxurious but definitely up to the compact car average. So there’s room to stiffen it up without totally killing ride quality. Right before driving the Vibe I drove the Focus SVT. That car had amazingly sharp handling, but also an extremely firm ride. The ideal for most performance drivers is somewhere between these two cars.

While the engineers are adjusting the suspension, torque steer requires some attention. Sure, there’s not much torque to manage here, but under full throttle as the engine reaches its powerband the front end gets squirrelly, bobbing and weaving a bit. Once again the message is sent that this engine is here for marketing purposes only. It doesn’t feel well-integrated into the package.

Pricing

For quick, up-to-date new car pricing, and especially user-specified price comparisons, check out the website I created: www.truedelta.com. Why yet another vehicle pricing website? Well, I personally lacked the patience to keep using the others. They were too slow and required too much effort, especially when trying to compare prices. So I taught myself some programming and created a site where there is no need to dig through option packages, prerequisites, and the like one by one -- the TrueDelta algorithm figures these out for you in one swift pass.

Anyone considering the Vibe should certainly compare its price with that of the Matrix. The Vibe lists for more, but usually incentives more than compensate. If the prices are equal, it's the one I'd want between the two.

Last Words

The Vibe GT thoroughly fails to deliver on the sports car performance promised by its engine and advertising. Even if it weren’t so expensive, this powertrain is let down by flaccid seats and a soggy suspension. Until these are fixed, I can only recommend the Vibe for its utility aspects, and thus the base rather than the GT model. (I’d give the base model at least one more star.) Myself, I’m still looking for a rich mix of utility and dynamic handling that costs less than a 3-series wagon.

To learn more about my reliability research and sign up to participate in it, or to perform thorough, up-to-date new car price comparisons, visit www.truedelta.com. A link to this website and alphabetized links to my other vehicle reviews can be found on my profile page.
Amount Paid (US$): 21300
Model Year: 2003
Model and Options: GT 6-speed