Orlando Sentinel's view

Isuzu finally is getting serious.

After years of mediocrity and ho-hum sales, the Japanese company is rollinginto the 1991 model year with a well-rounded, revamped lineup of sportssedans, sport-utility vehicles and the redesigned Impulse sports coupe.

If you’ve seen the new Impulse and think it looks vaguely familiar, that’sbecause its older brother lives at the Chevy dealership with a Geo Storm badgeon its nose. The Isuzu-built Storm has been on the market for about a year,and it has proven to be one of the brightest stars in GM’s galaxy of cars. TheImpulse has just been shipped to dealers within the past few months.

The Impulse is slightly more expensive than the Storm, and it shines quitebrightly, but in a slightly different way. The difference: The Storm comes offmore as a fun car cast in the same mold as the old Toyota MR2, while theImpulse has a more serious look and feel to it.

For starters, Isuzu – 25 percent owned by General Motors – turned to GM’sEnglish subsidiary, Lotus, and asked engineers there to make thefront-wheel-drive Impulse XS a lean, mean handling machine.

For the most part, they were successful.

Unless you push the XS to excess, the 2,400-pound sports car will chew upnearly every curve you toss it into. The suspension is unusually firm, but notrock hard. This gives the car the ability to handle most high-speed maneuverseasily while providing a very comfortable ride on long highway cruises. Butthe car can get ragged.

A full throttle blast out of a curve in, say, second gear, is enough tocause the front wheels to lose their grip. Hard braking in a curve rips therear end loose from the road – a common characteristic of smallfront-wheel-drive cars. In normal everyday driving, the chances are neither ofthese two handling traits would surface.

The test car featured power rack and pinion steering, which I found to ahave a nice, tight feel to it.

The 1.6-liter, 16-valve, double-overhead-cam dynamo under the hood ispowerful and economical. Like many 16-valve units, though, the engine is alittle flat until it gets wound up. However, from 2,300 rpm to the 7,700 redline, the engine delivers sizzling performance. At about 5,500 rpm, it beginsto emit an expensive-sounding high-pitched whine.

Isuzu says the Impulse XS will do 0 to 60 mph in 8.2 seconds. That’s a lotof bang for the buck in a car with a base price of less than $12,000. The testcar returned just over 30 miles per gallon in combined city/highway drivingwith the air conditioner on.

The Impulse can be ordered with a four-speed automatic transmission. Thetest car came equipped with a five-speed manual. The gears are spacedperfectly to take full advantage of the engine’s power.

Of all small cars I have driven lately, the four-wheel-disc brakes on theImpulse are the best. The Impulse’s peppy engine and sporty shape will coerceyou to go out and have some fun. The brakes will keep you out of trouble.

Three item s on the car need work: the pedal assembly, the shiftingmechanism and the air conditioner.

I found the shifter to be sloppy and sometimes hard to use. Several times Icould not engage reverse without putting the shifter back in neutral andtaking my foot off the clutch.

The pedal assembly, for lack of a better word, felt flimsy. The pedalsseemed loose and combined with the notchiness of the shifter, greatlyundermined any feeling of solidity.

The air conditioner works fine – but only after you get moving. The systemloses its efficiency if you are stalled for a long time in traffic. This is,apparently, a common trait of the Impulse/Storm. I’ve driven three models andall had the same characteristic.

There is one other item in the interior that puzzles me. The front seats -comfortable and firm – were covered with a pretty, striped gray and bluematerial. However, the rear seat was upholstered in a non-matching solid graymaterial. I never before have seen a car that had eats with two styles ofupholstery.

As in the Geo Storm, rear passengers will not find the interior hospitable.Think of the rear seat area as a place to stow cargo, and you will save yourpassengers from claustrophobia. With the rear seat folded down, the Impulse isable to handle a large amount of cargo.

The test car came equipped with Isuzu’s $1,195 Sport Package, whichincludes aluminum alloy wheels, cruise control, power windows and door locks,fog lamps and an AM/FM stereo cassette player with equalizer.

Though a pricey option, I’d go for it. The power accessories and the cruisecontrol make the car feel like it is worth every penny of the $14,298 price.

If you have decided you like this car, you should know that even though theGeo Storm GSi can be bought for a several hundred dollars less, you can’t getthe Chevy version with cruise control, power steering, door locks or the Lotussuspension.

These options – plus a nicely styled front end – set the Impulse apart fromthe Storm. Either way, Isuzu finally is moving in the right direction. TheImpulse and its Geo-badged relative are excellent cars for the money and muchfun to drive.