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Understeer is always preferable. Because when something unusual happens, people have two instincts:
1. Let go of the gas.
2. Hit the brakes.
Either of these actions will tend to cancel out understeer and cause oversteer.
If the car is set to oversteer, the way to counter this will be to not do either, but to maintain steady throttle (for rear wheel drive) or to increase throttle (for front-wheel drive) and countersteer. Countersteering is intuitive, but what you do with the pedals is not... not unless you know what you're doing.
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In that Cobalt, you're experiencing oversteer and understeer for two different reasons.
In a front wheel drive, if you are getting terminal understeer, you are going too fast. Way too fast. On a car that is set to oversteer, the only difference in that situation will be you are hitting the obstacle sideways. And no, that is not preferable.
If you get oversteer, you are getting oversteer in a car that is set to naturally understeer because you've upset its balance by jigging where you should have jagged or because you hit a slippery or rough patch midcorner. Without any input from the driver, it will tend to try to straighten itself out, whatever the driver does. Lucky for you. Some cars are not so good at self-centering, particularly cheap ones with no anti-roll bars and crude suspensions.
But if you change that balance... for example, by putting less grippy tires on the back... then your annoyingly dangerous understeer becomes annoyingly dangerous oversteer.
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