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If you asked a child to draw a car, the result would probably be something that looked like the Chevrolet Malibu<\/a>.<\/p>\n For decades, this dependable midsize vehicle was a stalwart of the American road. Because that kind of thing is no longer in demand, it came as no surprise when General Motors announced on Wednesday that it would discontinue the model as it shifts its focus to sport utility vehicles and electric cars.<\/p>\n The Malibu never had the back-alley glamour of the Chevrolet Camaro or the brute force of the Chevrolet Impala. It was the ultimate normcore-mobile, made for a time when Americans were content to drive simple, gas-powered sedans, rather than rugged S.U.V.s, high-riding pickup trucks or electric vehicles that cruise along in near silence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Malibu originally appeared in the 1960s as part of Chevrolet\u2019s Chevelle line. It was a consistent seller through the 1970s. For a time, it was used as a patrol car<\/a> by police departments across the country. General Motors took it off the market in 1983 and brought it back in 1997.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Upon its return, the critics were not exactly kind. \u201cAh, Malibu,\u201d Car and Driver magazine wrote in a 1997 review. \u201cThe word evokes images of surf bunnies, movie stars and languid decadence by the sea. Not the sort of vision that comes to mind on first sight of this new Chevrolet sedan. Maybe Chevy misspelled it. Mall<\/em>ibu sounds more like it.\u201d<\/p>\n But the very basicness of the Malibu was what made it so appealing to the more than 10 million people who bought one. And perhaps surprisingly for a vehicle so unassuming, it had a large cultural footprint. Again and again, filmmakers and songwriters created scenarios centered on the Malibu that seemed to comment on its plainness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A customized version of a gray 1973 Malibu Coupe<\/a> is the main vehicle<\/a> for the protagonist of the moodily violent 2011 action film \u201cDrive,\u201d according to the automotive publications SlashGear and Car & Classic. Ryan Gosling, the film\u2019s star, is said to have found the car in a junkyard and worked on it himself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Malibu was the right vehicle for a new kind of antihero. Mr. Gosling\u2019s nameless character, a stunt driver for movies who works as a getaway driver on the side, is mild and taciturn. Like his prized Chevy, he is not a show-off.<\/p>\n Seventeen years before \u201cDrive,\u201d the director Quentin Tarantino gave a Malibu a key supporting role in \u201cPulp Fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Vincent Vega, the good-natured hit man played by John Travolta, is behind the wheel of a red 1964 Malibu when he takes his boss\u2019s wife, played by Uma Thurman, on a date that goes horribly awry. Like the 1950s-style restaurant where they form a bond, the vintage Malibu harks back to an idealized America that is just a fantasy for these two characters, given how deeply they are mixed up in a life of drugs and murder.<\/p>\n A Malibu is a focal point of the 1984 cult film \u201cRepo Man.\u201d Like other filmmakers, the writer and director Alex Cox played against the car\u2019s blandness. In the trunk of this unremarkable car is something remarkable indeed \u2014 perhaps a nuclear bomb. (Whatever is in the trunk is never explained.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n More recently, Lana Del Rey, who often comments on all-American tropes in her modern-day torch ballads, name-checks the Malibu in \u201cShades of Cool,\u201d a 2014 song about a woman\u2019s love for a tragic sort who seems lost in a haze of substance abuse and self-absorption.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Like Vincent Vega and the unnamed loner in \u201cDrive,\u201d the unreachable fellow in her song has only one thing that seems to bind him to the workaday world: \u201cHe drives a Chevy Malibu,\u201d she sings.<\/p>\n But the car was used to best effect in Cameron Crowe\u2019s 1989 romantic comedy-drama \u201cSay Anything.\u201d<\/p>\n The protagonist, Lloyd Dobler, an underachieving Everyman played by John Cusack, drives a 1977 Malibu sedan. The car sets him apart from the strutting yuppies of other 1980s films \u2014 think of the teenage cad played by James Spader in \u201cPretty in Pink,\u201d who has his own Porsche, or the stockbroker played by Charlie Sheen in \u201cWall Street,\u201d who drives a BMW.<\/p>\n Dobler embodies the slacker ethos that typified much of Generation X. When he is grilled by the father of the girl he loves, he explains that his main goal is to spend as much time with her as he can. When he is asked how he plans to make a living, he says, \u201cI don\u2019t want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career.\u201d<\/p>\n For this kind of guy \u2014 proudly unambitious, except when it comes to love \u2014 the unflashy Malibu was the perfect car.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n