As the cliché goes, “respect must be earned”, and in the case of earning the respect of the brand-loyal and often JDM-centric sport compact crowd, earning some respect has proved especially difficult for Chevrolet and the Cobalt SS. Despite having solid out-of-the box performance from the 205hp supercharged SS back in 2004 and FWD class-leading performance out of the heavily revised 260hp turbocharged SS introduced in 2008, the Cobalt hasn’t found nearly as much traction with young enthusiasts as GM would have liked.
Its domestic-car exterior styling may not be for everyone, but in an era of renewed pride and interest in domestically produced cars of all varieties, perhaps now is the time for the Cobalt SS to earn its stripes with the tuner crowd. Matt Omiotek certainly seems to think so, given all the sweat equity he’s invested in his murdered-out and masterfully modified ’08 SS Turbo.
“I acquired my Cobalt in March of 2009 after a long, hard road of car shopping,” Matt says. “Originally, I was looking for a SRT-4, but they were all beat to crap, and when I finally found a clean one the dealer was unwilling to negotiate on price. So I moved on to looking for a ’04–07 STI, but the astronomical insurance rates shut me down on that one. Next I started looking into EVOs, but they were mostly beat, too, but I did finally find one I had my heart set on. After the papers were signed, the night before I was going to pick it up someone broke into the dealership and stole a bunch of parts off six of his cars, including the EVO, which had about $18K worth of exterior, interior and performance parts on it. That’s when I picked up the Cobalt for a steal from a dealership here in Illinois. At first I told myself this was just going to be my daily driver, and I wasn’t going to do anything more than bolt-ons. As you can see, that didn’t last long too long. Sure, I did bolt-ons, but then I wanted more from the car.”
To get the “more” he was after, the usual off-the-shelf performance parts for his turbo SS just weren’t going to cut it for a hardcore guy like Matt (who works at Dupage Autobody while also putting in hours at his dad’s automotive coil spring manufacturing facility and fabricating custom parts like dash gauge pods and tinted lights for the Cobalt SS community). More power would require a custom solution rather than the usual GM Performance Stage X treatment, so for this Matt turned to his friend Dave Gilbert and his crew at Performance Autowerks, where a custom WERKS PTE 5557 billet wheel turbo kit was developed, along with an intercooler, intake manifold, intake, downpipe and cat-back exhaust. Tuned by Dave on Performance Autowerks’ in-house AWD Mustang dyno, Matt’s SS now pumps out 442 whp and 450 wtq at 6200 rpm, more than enough jam to lay a beating on the more popular FWD sport compact culprits.