Professional Opinion from Edmunds
My personal opinon
Efficent and practical or not, I dont wanna see it in my driveway, and really dont wanna drive it.
My roomate had one of these as a rental in Houston. His opinion, slow, handles like crap, ugly as sin.
I would suggest to atleast take a look at a
Scion XB its slightly less ugly (in person they really look interesting) and about the same price as the HHR. Gets the same EPA mpg, and handels better.
Edit:
Woops didnt realize there was an SS model, I only ever saw the basic one. So what I said is pretty much useless.