DETROIT — DETROIT -- Gary Kovacic was putting the finishing touches on plans for the 2008 Chevrolet Malibu two years ago when his boss raised the bar.
What would it take to make the car better than the competing Camry that Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. had just put on sale, General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Officer G. Richard Wagoner Jr. wanted to know.
The question forced Kovacic and his engineering team to put two months into a part-by-part comparison of their car with the Camry and to propose hundreds of design upgrades. The result was a vehicle that Car and Driver magazine rated better than the Camry and close to Honda Motor Co.'s new Accord. The GM sedan was named North American Car of the Year by 45 auto reporters in an announcement at the Detroit auto show last week.
The Malibu "is probably the best sedan GM has ever produced in the midsize segment," the industry's most competitive, said Jesse Toprak, an analyst at Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, Calif. The company tracks vehicle pricing and shoppers' impressions.
One early measure of success is that the Malibu is selling for almost full sticker price in Southern California, a market dominated by Toyota, Toprak said. GM Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz has predicted that Malibu sales will top 200,000 this year, almost double the volume of the previous version.
"This was the car that we knew the company could build, but due to a lot of internal constraints, they hadn't built yet," said Michael Robinet, an auto forecaster at CSM Worldwide Inc. in Northville, Mich.
Toyota executives aren't conceding defeat, and nobody predicts Americans will buy more Malibus than Camrys. In 2007, the Camry was the best-selling car in the United States for a sixth straight year, at 473,108 models.
"Our guys have driven it," said Jim Lentz, president of Toyota's U.S. sales unit. "It's a good car. There are a lot of really good players in that segment."
GM's U.S. sales fell 6 percent in 2007 and its market share dropped to 23.7 percent, the lowest since 1925. The company hasn't had a sales increase in its home market since 1999.
Until January 2006, Kovacic's mission with the new Malibu was to improve exterior styling and upgrade the interior. Kovacic, 52, was lead engineer on three earlier car-development projects in his 29 years at GM.
"This is the first time someone has come in and said, `What are you going to do to beat them?' " Kovacic said.
