Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

Well, this is it. What we’ve all been waiting for, right? The 2011 production version of the Chevy Volt. Happy (and impressed) as I am that GM has actually committed to producing the Volt, I have to say that I’m slightly disappointed at the compromises that they’ve made in the final design. It looks kinda, well, normal, at least compared to the concept versions we’ve been looking at for the last couple years.

To be fair, the production Volt does retain some of the futuristic and angular elements that we’d seen in the concept versions until this point, but it’s been drastically toned down to (I assume) appeal to a wider demographic of consumers who, unlike me, don’t want their new car to look like something out of a sci-fi movie that isn’t Transformers 2. The other big reason is most likely fuel efficiency: as awesome as that long nose on the concept looked, it was probably about as aerodynamic as a fat moose. And really, the thing that’s going to make the Volt successful isn’t it’s looks, it’s the plug-in battery power and the resulting fuel economy, for which aerodynamics are way more important than looks.

Long nose and angular style or not, when 2011 rolls around, the Volt is still going to be at the top of my list to replace my Volvo, which I have no doubt will have collapsed into a pile of beige splinters by then.

After the jump, a couple more angles on the production Volt.

[ Chevy Volt ] VIA [ AutoBlog ]