These are not the kinds of cars that get me to stop walking (or biking) to take a shot. I might take a shot at it, but that’s another story. But when a Malibu of this very milquetoast generation is sporting racing stripes, then I just might stop. Apparently so, in this case.
The question is, what to say about it?
My mind is on more interesting car right now, so I’ll do what ‘Ive done so often: leave it to you.
Useless racing stripes are the next logical step after useless rear wings.
racing stripes make the car faster and more powerful.
aesthetic wise some cars look good with them. some not.
Don’t tell anybody, but it belongs to a Soviet country spy who in fact wanted to make you stop to photograph YOU. You are being followed….Oh well….TGI Friday!
This does put some jelly on that Malibu milquetoast.
What? No window decals about Dale Earnhardt or of Calvin urinating on a Ford logo? And the lack of a “USA-1” license plate shows us that this guy is no true fan.
Dang, I wish I had photographed the 2000-ish Buick Century that lived near me for a while last year — it was white with blue racing stripes and would make a great companion to this Malibu.
I called it the Racing Buick, and I loved seeing it. As far as I know it belonged to a college student who was renting a room in a house nearby, and both the Buick and its owner have since moved on.
The development of this four-wheeled Deadly Sin was covered in Peter DeLorenzo’s excellent “The United States of Toyota.”
GM set itself up for failure by benchmarking the then-current fifth-gen Honda Accord – a vehicle that had already been on the market for a couple years. And they had to have noticed the fifth generation Accord wasn’t as dynamic a vehicle as the fourth, arguably the best Accord ever.
But the result was that just as the reborn ‘Bu was appearing in showrooms…so did the sixth-generation Accord. The Malibu and its cynical Cutlass sibling were OUA…
…Obsolete Upon Arrival.
We’d owned a Corsica a decade prior, a stripper special with a 4/stick. It was actually enjoyable and could knock back 34 mpg on a trip. My wife drove one of these new ’98 Malibus as a rental and noted the hard seats and harsh ride. Also that it wasn’t particularly powerful. Overall, a chore to drive.
So I cant help but look at each and every one of these as another example of 1990s GM total Bart Simpson engineering. Amazing to contemplate this was the same company that developed the outstanding Gen III “LS” Small-Block within this same time frame.
Thankfully, this GM is long gone…and I like the new one much better…but there was a time…
These were one of my least favorite rental cars. Awful inside, awful driving. Which was disappointing, because it looked good – far better than the generation that followed.
The Olds version was a little bit better.
Their Pontiac platform mate was one of my favorite rentals – despite the interior designed by Sears, Roebuck on a space-ship kick and built by Fisher-Price. The Grand Ams were always a pleasant drive, well-quipped and roomy.
The bad old days of General Motors…
I mean, I hate to be rude, but this car… I mean, I get a kick out of driving some truly terrible cars, but I wouldn’t be caught dead in this thing. This hits all the right marks, but somehow it misses the target. I once rolled around in an electric blue Chrysler LeBaron convertible, with the roof down, in January, just because that is the kind of thing a $500 LeBaron is for… But this?
Somehow, this thing manages to be both generic and ostentatious. The stripes do not communicate any notion of speed or performance, or even delusions of those things. Instead, the stripes are just there, somehow accentuating the boredom. This car is aggressively boring. I do not hate it, but I also do not love it. But It is exactly the kind of car I love, and yet I cannot even bring myself to care.
“Somehow, this thing manages to be both generic and ostentatious.”
Nicely put.
“Nice stripes!”
….on with life.
It looks like those stripes were applied at the dealership where this car was originally bought new. Anyone else have those thoughts? I cannot help, but find it amusing to see mediocre Detroit three cars being driven in a place like Eugene where import cars are more common.
Wow. Probably has a bright pink strut tower brace, was dropped 1/8th of an inch and has a fart can and neon underbody lights which you wouldn’t have seen during daylight…
Wow, a white Malibu, nothing shouts generic louder.
I’ll bet this is or was recently owned by a high school student.
After a string of Ford Escorts were torn up by my brother, my father (who thought Corsicas were the most reliable Chevys on the planet) steered my brother onto a Corsica and when he couldn’t replace it my brother was given a Malibu of this generation. When he tore that up, he got the next generation Malibu.
The automotive equivalent of a white undershirt.
When was the racing stripe born anyway? I never saw it on the Blue Bird, or a jet fighter. Perhaps it started with the hand painted pinstripe and went acid trip from there.
Racing stripes,among other uses, was used to show nationality of the car’s origin. American racing colors were white with blue stripes (also blue with white stripes), while other countries had single colors and did not need stripes (British racing green, German silver, French blue, Italian red). Briggs Cunningham wore it proudly when winning at LeMans. This color combo would make the car a bastardization of either Polish or Monaco’s colors, white with red striping (bands instead of striping on the “real” colors).
The funny thing is, this would make a great LeMons car.
I think Germany was white, with the infamous silver coming when a Mercedes GP car was found to be overweight by so little that stripping the paint off put it under the limit.
Not that I have researched it, but I think Briggs Cunningham had the first racing stripes. I stand to be corrected though.
This instantly came to mind…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3ja6Hn8ps4&w=854&h=480%5D
Stripes miss the mark. On this car, all that white metal is just begging for forest cammo. Once in such suitable livery, it should never be driven on a paved road again.
I used to own a graphics shop and dealers would want all kinds of stuff like this to get a car selling. Or to get people to at least stop and look.
I got stuck behind a Holden Malibu last week, Ive no idea what kind of powertrain they use but this particular rental was very slow, maybe some stripes would have helped but I doubt it more than likely it was another foreign tourist completely overwhelmed by our road conditions and going very slowly.
Maybe it’s supposed to be ironic? Either way, it’s still way less depressing than any variety of the same generation Cutlass
Hey the kid wanted a Shelby. Gotta start somewhere.
I’d be more concerned with the intake manifold gaskets…
I see a lot of assumption that the stripes were added on by the current young owner, but to me this reeks of a dealer special edition, either as part of a sales promotion or a used lot trying to spiff up a loser of a car. The stripe application looks both a little too “good” and the execution a little too safe (not applying them over the roof or spoiler) for it to be a teenagers weekend project. Plus I don’t think lemans stripes are all that appealing to kids these days, unless it is the irony, of course.
As for the Malibu, this car was GM’s unquestionable rock bottom as far as I’m concerned. the worst Irv Rybicki car during the Roger Smith era was more exciting than this.
Oh, I don’t know that it’s really that bad. I remember having one of these as a rental in the late ’90s too, and compared to my parents’ ’94 Olds Cutlass Supreme (with the same 3.1L pushrod V6), it certainly represented incremental progress. The steering had some firmness and precision next to the Olds, its seats were firmly stuffed in a fake-Euro fashion (which I’ll take over fake-plush), the driving position and sightlines were quite excellent, and the control ergonomics had a few flashes of brilliance. Considering that GM was selling A-body Centuries and Cutlass Cieras only a year before this model debuted, I think it gets a bum rap. Yes, the design aspects it copied from Japanese cars were all boring ones (controls, packaging, seating, etc), but those were the steps that actually put GM on the path to making modern cars, not just downsized and somewhat-remediated versions of the ’70s concept of a family car.
All that progress and flashes of brilliance were there on the original Ford Taurus, ELEVEN years earlier, and that was a better car than these N-Body Malibus.
The stripes need to continue over the roof to tie the idea together. Otherwise the stripes are just two ” = ” symbols.
That signals a deeper meaning than racing stripes. Perhaps it’s a comment on society.
A message to aliens ? Code for some flounder ? Maybe it’s read left to right: ” II II “. But what does it mean ?
It is in Eugene isn’t it ?
Signing off now. I’ve made my heads hurt.
…Or they just emulated the 70-72 SS treatment
Now that is a car I wouldn’t be embarrassed to drive with it’s stripes.
I’ve noticed for the last couple of years that the racing stripe has made a comeback on certain cars. Or for certain owners/drivers.
I remember as a kid in the 60’s and a teenager in the 70’s thinking they looked cool if done right. Now? Not so much.
I think you all are making the wrong assumption on the origins of this car. It is not a car that was owned by a grandparent and handed down to a grandson who put stripes on it to make it look cool.
This is probably a retired Red Stripe Beer car. The logo was removed but the stripe stays. “Red Stripe It’s beer, hooray beer!!!!!”
Oh come on y’all. .. whoever owns this car was given the dubious joy of a refrigerator white Malibu and did something actually fairly tasteful to spiff it up, not spliff it up. It could have horrible wheels that extend beyond the fenders, or be lowered and a neon nail varnish colour, or be bedizened with Pep Boys Plastichrome, or the Calvin peeing stickers another commenter mentioned. I wouldn’t want a Malibu, red stripes or not, but the red stripes are actually well done and not too over the top.
I don’t know what the red stripe would look good on, a compact pickup? a two door Cavalier/cobalt? A Miata/Mustang/Camaro? This strikes me as a possibly good idea, well executed, applied to a below-mediocre product.
The malibu itself suffered from a complete and total lack of ideas executed in a below mediocre fashion.
When I first got my silver Caravan back in 2009 I threatened several times to paint racing stripes on it. This usually occurred after walking up to the wrong one in a parking lot.
Maybe back in the day the owner of this one had the same problem and actually did something about it?
I remember being excited to hear that Chevy was bringing the Malibu back. I also remember seeing my first “new” Malibu. They’ve come a long way.