Product Reviews > Chevrolet Kalos (1.4 L, Petrol, Sport)

"Priced at £9,995, the Kalos Sport majors on affordability"

Young buyers often find themselves caught in a quandary. The sort of car they want is desperately expensive to insure and the ones that are insurable are often about as attractive as a thumb in the eye. Certain manufacturers have belatedly twigged this, offering small hatches that look the part but don't have the liability of a powerful engine. Chevrolet can now count themselves amongst them, their three-door Kalos Sport offeri...

"Pitched from £8,795, this Kalos is neither pricey nor so cheap that it arouses suspicion"

So what kind of Supermini can you really buy into for less than £8,800? Well, it's best not to raise your hopes too high. Stripped-out Fiestas and Polos beckon but don't go expecting niceties like a decent stereo or air conditioning. If you want those, you'll need a Far Eastern cheapie ' and you'll still probably end up having to pay more for it.

This is where Chevrolet hope they can score '...

"The Giugiaro design studio has done a good job with the Kalos and even in entry-level 1.2-litre guise, it's a striking thing"

If you were to design a template for the perfect city car, there would be a number of criteria you'd need to hit. The most obvious ones would be that the car in question must be compact, manoeuvrable and economical. That's the easy part. It also needs to be light in order to be quick off the mark but without feeling so flimsy that suburban mum in her Range Rover...

"The Kalos Three-Door certainly has a younger, more dynamic image more in keeping with the Chevrolet brand?"

Perhaps it's fitting that Chevrolet's future in the UK started with the Three-Door Kalos supermini we test here. It should have launched in 2004 but after an initial viewing, management decided that it lacked that special something. The 'Chevy Plus' it now has.

You get an idea of what that means the first time you set eyes on the car expecting it to be little more than a Ka...

"The prospect of that extra equipment should be enough to spark the interest of buyers"

Good value is a relative concept, the relationship between a product and its price and the perception of what the buyer actually gets for their money. Chevrolet is a brand that pulls out all the stops to try and offer a strong value proposition right across the range but that value doesn't necessarily have to come in the shape of a basic product at a budget price. The Chevrolet Kalos 1.2 SE Plus 5-do...

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

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...

Daewoo's bargain basement, no-frills approach to car manufacturing may have enabled it to get a toehold in the UK market, but such a strategy isn't a viable way to maximise profits in the car industry. Building added value into a product and charging a little more for it is a far better business model and it's one that Daewoo had to pursue, encumbered as they were by a brand name that still smacked of lowest common denominator motoring. The Kalos was their first offering in the supermini sect...