2014 Chevrolet Sonic

The Chevy Sonic gets so little coverage from car magazines that it is easy to forget it even exists. Even the Chevrolet team does not seem too excited about the subcompact’s prospects with American buyers. Maybe that is why most of the official images are just renderings of the car inserted into picturesque backdrops via Photoshop…

If Chevrolet can’t be bothered to actually take its mini car to the desert for a photo shoot, why should buyers care?

There are a few reasons that the Chevrolet Sonic is storming up the sales charts recently to become the top-selling supermini in the U.S. for the last few months. Offered in five-door hatchback or four-door sedan body styles, the Sonic line is well-positioned in style, price and interior tech to overcome rivals, like the Hyundai Accent, Kia Rio and Ford Fiesta.

A new-for-2013 RS trim added lower gear ratios to help improve acceleration in the top 1.4-liter turbo engine guise. While relatively exciting versus the bread-and-butter LS, LT and LTZ trims, the 2014 RS deserves a review of its own – published in the near future so check back for more details.

The focus here is on the volume model sedan and hatchback Chevrolet Sonics with highlights of the new-for-2014 features and options.

The Sonic twins share their interesting nose graphics up to the A-pillar of the car. The style is marked out by a low-mounted, full-frame Chevrolet bowtie grille and flanked by quad round lamps on either side. The headlights are probably the Sonic’s most unique feature, as they hark back to the older BMW style, but are an open design instead of shrinking the lamp cylinders under a sheet of smooth plastic. It’s a distinctive touch that will resonate with younger buyers.

The look is only let down by the cheapness of the halogen reflectors that actually do the lighting and have a yellow-ish hue that screams econo-car in cities dominated by white-LED-wearing Audis and BMWs.

The low grille avoids looking like a pig snout from most angles and the front overhang is not excessive. As the Sonic rotates into profile, there is a clear similarity in style between the hatch and sedan via the rising swage line and the lower door sculpting, both aimed at impacting sportiness in a practical shape. Where the sedan’s rising shoulder-line continues to shape the rear three-quarter and trunk, the hatchback flips the swage line upward to form the rear window outline.

Chevrolet is supporting OEM vehicle wraps for the Sonic via a web configurator called Chevrolet Graphics. About a dozen different partial and full vehicle wraps are available for both the sedan and hatch. Multiplied by the handful of standard exterior colors, the combinations are enough to make sure your Sonic is unique on the road. The graphics don’t revolutionize the appearance, but it’s refreshing to see a manufacturer so involved in aftermarket trends. Check out the big photo gallery below for some sample Sonic graphics.

Overall, the four-door’s style in profile is relatively fresh. Things fall apart out back for the sedan, which is cursed with a high roof and very high trunk lines. While not exactly cover-worthy, the Sonic sedan looks far for planted and sportier than the Ford Fiesta sedan. The Fiesta sedan from the back is simply grotesque with tiny taillight blobs atop a trunk lid so narrow it could be from a soapbox car.

The five-door Sonic, as Chevrolet likes to call it instead of hatchback, looks less fresh from the back, due to some shared design cues with the universally loathed and discontinued Chevrolet Aveo. You know a Chevy is a total flop when the name lasts only one generation.