A lukewarm hot rod

IN its search for fresh, edgy attitude that will resonate with Generation iPod, Chevy has turned, inevitably, to the Truman administration. The styling of the HHR -- it stands for “Heritage High Roof” -- is inspired, so they tell me, by the 1949 Chevy Suburban. One must be particular in these matters, since Plymouth and Dodge built Suburbans in those years too.

This is a most curious source of nostalgia, if indeed it is, since most kids in the 18-to-30 age bracket -- the happy hunting grounds for a $20,000 crossover van -- wouldn’t know a ’49 Chevy Suburban if they had carnal knowledge of one. Tell the truth, I’m a little hazy on it too. I mean, I could probably pick one out of a police lineup, but this vehicle -- this set of styling semantics -- isn’t exactly cultural bedrock. In this respect, the HHR has little in common with retro riffs like the VW New Beetle, the Ford Thunderbird, the BMW Mini, all based on universally recognized automotive icons that ring more bells than the Salvation Army’s kettle tenders.

If you reverse engineer the styling of the HHR, to discern what sort of sensibility signed off on it, you would have to conclude that person is older, a lifetime car enthusiast, even an expert, for whom the ’49 Sub is not at all esoteric but as familiar as Smoot-Hawley is to Milton Friedman. And, given the popularity of this model in the hermetic culture of hot rodding, you’d be right to conclude that person is a bit of a performance geek.

Taken a step further, considering the exceptional headroom of the HHR, you’d be right to conclude that person is also very tall.

Just call me Poirot. The man behind the HHR is none other than the very tall and snowcapped 73-year-old classic-car enthusiast Robert Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors and the whip hand over the styling department.

The trouble is, outside of lifetime subscribers to Hot Rod magazine, the HHR doesn’t remind anybody of anything except the Chrysler PT Cruiser, thus the unfortunate and irresistible sobriquet “Me Too Cruiser.” Lutz has scorned the comparison. His case is somewhat weakened by the fact that the man who led the design for the PT Cruiser, Bryan Nesbitt, also held the pen for the HHR.

The PT Cruiser is the 3,176-pound elephant in the HHR’s living room. Both are front-drive, transverse-engine, four-door, five-seat wagons with adjustable load space and fold-flat rear seats. Cargo capacity is nearly identical. Both cars are strikingly comfortable due to their tall, upright captain’s chairs. Dimensionally the cars are nearly equal in every direction -- the HHR does have more snout, giving it a 7.4-inch advantage in overall length -- and they work essentially the same. Both start at under $16,000 and can be loaded to groaning with dealer options until they reach the low $20,000s.

And both the PT Cruiser and the HHR are wayback-machine versions of their companies’ corporate small-car platforms. The HHR is based on GM’s Delta architecture found under the Cobalt, and you can think of the HHR as the Cobalt wagon hijacked to Toontown.

There is a Detroit-cloistered quality to the HHR, and not simply because it is such a pointed response to a crosstown rival. The HHR wants to capitalize on a sentiment -- a longing for the rockin’ good times on Woodward Avenue? -- that just doesn’t exist in large measure in the mass market. In terms of car culture, the HHR’s bid for nostalgia has no antecedent, no referent, no master narrative. It is all echo and no sound.

The HHR is also intended as a breeching charge into the custom- and tuner-car culture; one of the first preproduction cars went to West Coast Customs, which did a very appealing chop-top version for last year’s L.A. Auto Show. Soon after, Chevy handed off four HHR’s to high-end customizers for a “build-off.” Two of these shops proceeded to rip the four-cylinder, front-drive guts out of their cars and drop in rear-drive V-8s so that the cars would perform like the hot rods they are supposed to look like.

Maybe the HHR will find favor with import-tuning kids and car customizers, but I doubt it. The HHR is troubled with the same sort of inauthenticity as the prefab hot rod SSR pickup, which went down in flames after a couple of years. Custom-car building and hot rodding are mechanical folk arts. Their very appeal lies in their perversion of the ordinary -- like a ’32 Ford or a ’49 Hudson -- into something extraordinary, something irreverent and ornery. Hot rodding is a kind of insurgency that cannot be commodified.

Maybe I’ve made too much of the styling. But what’s left, under the retro-themed skin of the HHR, isn’t much to talk about. There are two engine packages available: a 2.2-liter Ecotec four-cylinder (143 horsepower) in the LS and 1LT; and a 2.4-liter version with dual-overhead cams and variable-valve timing in the 2LT. I tested the 2LT version of the car, with the four-speed automatic transmission, 260-watt Pioneer stereo, chrome package, anti-lock brakes, sport suspension and 17-inch polished rims.

This is purely a case of automotive anhedonia. For a car that’s supposed to be a kind of hot-rod starter kit, the HHR handles like a retirement community golf cart. The electric-power steering glides from lock to lock with barely any resistance, or feel, and any communication that comes from the four tires is strictly by telegraph. The braking and acceleration are only tolerable and the body roll isn’t. Like the Pontiac Solstice, this car would be transformed with the addition of GM’s supercharged Ecotec.

That said, the HHR is not a bad place to tend to grocery getting. The car is reasonably quiet unless you grind your heel into the accelerator. The interior is airy, comfortable and easy to get in and out of. It does have a couple of odd dimensions, however. The windshield seems quite small and pretty close, like the glass plate of a diving mask.

Also, while I understand this is a very price-sensitive car, the interior of the HHR looks cheap in places. There’s no flashing around the door-lock pins -- just holes drilled in the molded plastic -- and many of the surfaces feel like recycled milk jugs. On the other hand, the central console with the audio and climate controls is nicely arranged and constructed.

Even with its iPod connections, the HHR couldn’t hit hip with a hand grenade. And yet, I suspect it will do all right in the market for a year or two. I can easily imagine people in their 50s and 60s picking up the car because of its practical value and because it is essentially effortless to drive. It also gets very respectable gas mileage. But I also suspect it will have a high fatigue factor because, whether it means to or not, it imitates that which is inimitable. The past is not always prologue.

Automotive critic Dan Neil can be reached at dan.neil@latimes.com.

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006 Chevy HHR

Base price: $15,990

Price, as tested: $21,355

Powertrain: 2.4-liter DOHC inline four-cylinder with variable-valve timing; four-speed automatic transmission; front-wheel drive.

Horsepower: 172 at 6,200 rpm

Torque: 162 pound-feet at 5,000 rpm

Curb weight: 3,155 pounds

0-60 mph: 9 seconds (est.)

Wheelbase: 103.5 inches

Overall length: 176.2 inches

EPA fuel economy: 22 miles per gallon city, 30 mpg highway

Final thoughts: K-tel collection of hot rodding’s oldies.