The president of GM’s North American affairs, Mark Reuss, was recently quoted by Automotive News as saying he would very much like to see a high-performance variant of the Chevrolet Sonic make it into production.
His exact words, from the sidelines of the LA auto show last week were: “Yeah, I’d love to do that… We’ve got the ride-and-handling vehicle dynamics for it.”
This new hot model would sit above the current warm RS variant, the one that has a 1.4-liter 138 hp engine under the hood as well as styling and suspension tweaks. That power figure would have to be brought up closer to 200 hp, if this new model stands any chance of matching the Ford Fiesta ST, or the smaller and lighter 160 hp Fiat 500 Turbo/Abarth.
The sound of all this is quite promising, and we’re all for putting more power in a front-wheel drive eco-box and seeing what happens. We will follow this up once new information becomes available.
By Andrei Nedelea
PHOTO GALLERY
