In which your Race Organizer opts for the turbo Sonic instead of the usual rental version
As the 24 Hours of LeMons season grinds on, I continue to alternate whatever random rental cars fate deals me with new review cars placed in this Race Organizer's hands. The Colorado-Utah-Wyoming adventure with the 2014 Subaru Impreza 2.0 Sport Limited went well, especially the part involving using the car to drag a narrowed RX-7 rear end home from the race, but then I rented a '14 Chevy Sonic sedan to drive to the Button Turrible race a few weeks later and realized that I'd really come to like GM's sold-everywhere-on-the-globe subcompact as a rental. What would the turbocharged factory-hot-rod Sonic be like as a Race Organizermobile?
During the last couple of years of intensive traveling as the Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court, I've found that the safest rental-car choices are the Chevy Impala (if you're getting a big car) and the Chevy Sonic (if you're going for the just-barely-bigger-than-the-Kia-Rio option); they're decent drivers and manage to stay in good functional condition even with 25,000 rental miles on the clock (like dog years, one rental mile is worth seven regular miles).
I rented a '12 Sonic LT for a solid week in rural Wisconsin last year and became quite attached to it, and so I had extremely high hopes that the sporty Sonic RS would turn out to be the 21st-century equivalent of the hilariously raucous Chevrolet Sprint Turbo.
Upon first driving the Sonic RS, I felt let down by the lack of '86 Chevy Sprint Turbo-style frenzy -- the blown Suzuki Cultus weighed a good thousand pounds less than the '14 Sonic and transmitted every gear whine and turbo whoosh straight to the driver's ears via the car's beer-can-grade structure. This century, drivers want their sporty subcompacts to be a bit more civilized, and so the 2,847-pound Sonic RS sedan is quiet and its engine's 138 horses seem a bit on the sensible side. The racers at the 2014 Doin' Time in Joliet 24 Hours of LeMons were a little puzzled by what appeared to be a rental car with TURBO emblems on the trunklid, but nobody asked me any questions about my Race Organizer ride.
The interior had RS emblems everywhere I looked, and the upholstery was nicer than what you'd get on the rental Sonic. The six-speaker, Bluetooth-enabled audio system sounded good. I enjoyed driving this car more with each passing day.
Once I got over my disappointment that the Sonic RS isn't a tire-shredding sleeper (with about the same curb weight as a '66 Chevelle coupe, the Sonic isn't going to be particularly nuts with just 138 horsepower to work with), I came to enjoy buzzing (quietly) through the gears at Joliet's many traffic signals.
By the end of my race weekend with the Sonic RS, I had overcome my initial sadness over the lack of power. While I never took the car onto the Autobahn Country Club race track, I think that the suspension and brakes seem good enough to make it a pretty decent track car. Adding another few pounds of boost from the turbocharger— no doubt possible with some aftermarket bits— would work wonders for the fun level.
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