An end of an era has truly come among one of America’s top three automakers. Car manufacturer Chevrolet has announced the discontinuation of the Malibu.
While many car manufacturers have completely shifted away from sedans, Chevy had been keeping its Malibu sedan until 2024 when it announced it would cease production, closing the chapter on Chevy’s sedan manufacturing for good.
Supposedly discontinuing the Malibu is part of Chevy’s bigger plans to invest in more electric vehicle production, quotas which it failed to meet in 2024.
While many could say that ceasing the Malibu was an inevitable conclusion, it marks the end of a classic mid-century car model. Released in 1964, the Malibu was a nameplate for a rear-engine Chevelle. Amid the muscle car era, the Malibu stood out as a fun, youthful car, named after a trendy west coast town. The car came with a variety of options and offered 300 horsepower on a small V8 block engine.
With fuel economic restrictions getting tighter and tighter, production of the Malibu went on a fourteen-year hiatus from 1983, only to reappear in the late 1990s as a front-drive sedan with a smaller V6 engine and radically softer appearance.
The last generation of the Malibu had been given a dramatic, aggressive styling with contoured panels flowing up into the rear taillights.
Is this simply a hiatus or an absolute finish for the midsize sedan? It’s hard to tell, especially with EV goals being unattainable. Both the current administration and California’s proposed EV goals for the coming decades are already lagging behind projected numbers. Maybe there is hope for the Malibu in the future, as it had become a midcentury classic and then transformed into a family daily driver.