Tall people take note: the 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt might prove to be one of the few small cars on the market that you can fit into comfortably. Of course, rear seat passengers won’t have any room, but up front the seat tracks offer more travel than our duo of six-foot-tall test drivers needed. The front seats are firm, upholstered in fabric that looks good and feels durable, and the driver’s seat on our test car featured manual height and lumbar adjustment. All it needed to achieve greatness was a telescoping steering wheel and a tilt feature for the bottom cushion.

The Cobalt’s back seat, however, is a penalty box. Don’t let this photo from Chevrolet lead you to believe otherwise, because it was taken with the front seats moved up close to the dashboard. In reality, legroom is limited, foot space is tight, and the rear seatback angle is too vertical for comfort. Making the rear quarters more hospitable are softly padded front seatbacks and a bottom seat cushion that is firm and supportive. Still, adults over average height will not be happy unless front seat occupants are under average height.

Tight confines make getting into and out of the Cobalt’s rear seat harder than many competitors, but up front it’s much easier. The Cobalt’s standard 60/40-split folding rear seat must be released from inside the trunk, making expansion of cargo space a two-step process. Liftover height into the 13.9-cubic-foot trunk is high, which means lightly muscled people will probably drag heavy luggage over the bumper, scraping and scratching it in the process. Not only is liftover high, but the trunk opening is also small, though we must note that the Cobalt’s trunk lid is strut supported and includes a nice liner on the inner side of the lid, attention to detail uncommon for the class.

One of the nicest things about the Cobalt is how quiet and isolated the cabin is. Wind noise is the only aural irritant until the accelerator is mashed to the floor. Then, the four-cylinder’s whine is audible. So quiet is the Cobalt that when we came to a stop at intersections, we could hear the gasoline sloshing about in the tank. But to its detriment, the quiet interior also made numerous buzzes and squeaks more apparent when the Cobalt traversed rough patches of road.