My two cents on the original question - I took both the coupe and the sedan out, and I did get the feeling that the sedan is a little more sure footed with the stock setup than the coupe. For want of a better description, the coupe tended to want to slide its rear out a little more on acceleration out of a stock turn, where the sedan was a touch more predictable with less butt-slip.

If you lower or change springs/suspension/tires on these cars, all bets are off, of course. If you're making it your racer, than why worry?

Onto the appearance - I don't think Cobalts are winning any beauty contests in either configuration, unless its against the Mazda 3 or the previous Cavalier! But then again, I got the sedan for one reason - police invisibility. They don't seem to look at the sedan as a tasty treat in my part of the woods.

 

I bought a Sedan. Love it more than I could a coupe i think... but then again who knows.

Buy the Sedan. Make sure it has a turbo!

 

All the discussion in the thread about the sedan being better than the coupe handling wise and vise versa is ridiculous. The cars are nearly identical. My 5'10" 240 pounds in the drivers seat compared to a 150 lb guy driving it has WAY more to do with a handling difference than the negligible weight difference between the sedan and coupe. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. Do you want rear doors? Buy a sedan. Want two doors? Buy a coupe.

/thread

 

Frame Rigidity is what makes the difference. The frame is slightly stiffer on the sedan.

 

Keep looking for a coupe. Sedans looks like ****. No offense

 

You'll find more difference on the sunroof/non-sunroof car then sedan vs coupe I'd gather.

 

Thats the first ive heard about the sedan having a more rigid frame....... did they beef up the rockers or add some kinda cross bracing to the uni-body or something? Seeing as the wheel base is basically the same (.2 tenths on an inch) i assumed they used the same uni-body for both.....but i know nothing when it comes to these things. The only really difference in dimensions is height..... the sedan sits 1.4 inches higher.

 

A lot of owners seem to like stating that there is a difference in stiffness or rigidity but I've never seen any of the torsional or bending numbers on both variants provided by GM so I would assume this is mostly hearsay and opinion. As the unibody is pretty much identical except for the side B-pillar area I'd make an educated guess that they are close to identical based off numbers from other platforms where GM and other manufacturers have provided in the past for cars that have both a coupe and sedan variant. Due to the smaller door openings the sedan may have a slight edge but it would probably be negligible and offset by the tiny increase in weight.

If we were talking a Cobalt hatch or wagon compared to coupe/sedan I could see a bigger (but still small) difference but to me both SS Turbo models are essentially identical in performance, chassis, and handling. The Delta/Delta-II architecture is already very good as-is. I'd imagine there's a bigger difference in cars just from random production line and powertrain variations than from structural differences.

 

Agreed..... the odd friday built car VS a tuesday built car should be taken into the equation at this point lol.


Which sedan owner wants to ship their (stock) ss to the RING and see it it can de-throne the coupe's 8:22.8

 

This

 

My bone stock sedan went around Beaverun at low 1:09s consistently (out of about 20 laps 10 were in the 1:09s, limited traffic, transponder timed). I highly doubt a coupe would be any quicker. Haven't been able to find anyone else who had any stock lap times there besides me.

 

What I saw/felt when I was doing my thing between the two cars had nothing to do with rigidity - seemed more that the weight distribution seemed to keep the rear tires a tiny bit more planted. I noticed the coupe seemed to transfer weight backward a little less on acceleration - less tendency to hop when you got on it.

I'm assuming that the spring rates and such are the same, and I highly doubt there's any significant change to the chassis between the two. Maybe the little bit of weight change has a noticeable effect on the torsion rear on this car.