TTAC commentator Brent asked why fellow members of our Best and Brightest aren't cutting the new Cruze some slack. "All I ever see are comments (rightly) digging on GM for having no truly competitive small cars, and for having none in the pipeline. Now we learn of one that in fact *is* in the pipeline. Furthermore, it just might be competitive. And what do I see? A bunch of comments digging on GM for even trying." As a cynical bastard, I think the cynicism has been well and truly earned, through dozens of less-than-stellar (i.e. crap) GM small cars. And, lest we forget, Chevy is a brand that touts itself as "An American Revolution" whilst selling a Korean car. In fact, what equity/credibility remains within the Chevy brand? Like a Rock reliability? Not for cars. (Not yet, anyway.) So, really, it all comes down to one word: Corvette. And if that's true, what IS a Chevy? No matter how good the Cruze may be (Jonny), it simply can't traverse GM's branding issues. Nothing can. [PS: DON'T FORGET THERE'S A PODCAST BELOW]
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Ah, yes, America loves trucks! And the Corvette is a truck. Always has been. In this economic climate who, in his right mind, needs 648 HP and where exactly are you going to use it? As Bugatti once said “Bentley builds very good lorries” so does Chevrolet.
Know why they’ll sell the Cruze opposite the Cobalt? Sitting next to a Cobalt, the Cruze will HAVE to look good.
Cars for everyone?
Cars for everyday?
Cars for humans?
Cars for normal people?
take your pick, Ford, Dodge, Toyota and Nissan are the same thing.
As lousy as Chevy’s small cars may be, they sure sell a bunch of them. Must be doing something right.
Here’s a little “handwriting on the wall”.
Locally, the mega-pressure always-advertising (with inevitable screaming high-pitched voiced spokesmen) Chevrolet dealer took on a Kia franchise a few years ago. Now we get twice as many “we finance anyone with a pulse” annoying ads on TV (which I studiously try to avoid). Recently, not so much on the Chevy side (and there are literally hundreds of new pickups and SUVs just sitting there on the lot with cobwebs, no doubt).
Now, interestingly enough, at work we get a local business magazine which recently indicated that 3 of the top 10 selling cars (including #1 and #2) in the area, were both Kias.
And, here’s the kicker. This is northwestern MICHIGAN.
Pretty well sums up GM’s future, once the rest of the GM sales network get wind of the stench of death, doesn’t it?
I think Corvette is a brand unto itself.
Chevrolet isn’t anything. It sells cars in all ranges. Top trim levels of some Chevies can be fairly nice cars, taking them out of the basic transport category. They aren’t the cheapest, or most reliable, or best value for money, or ….or… anything. They aren’t bad cars (and trucks) either. It’s just that Chevrolet doesn’t mean anything. They sell cars and SUVs ranging in price from $10k to $48K. A bit of everything for everybody, which is ok I guess, but it leaves the brand w/o an identity.
In my neck of the woods, the lexicon has shifted.
Now when you say that you bought a new Chev, it doesn’t mean an Impala. Likely it means a Silverado.
And that’s all there is to it.
“…it simply can’t traverse GM’s branding issues.”
Pun intended, I’m sure.
As for Corvette being it’s own brand, it may as well be. Does today’s ‘Vette have a stand-alone bowtie anywhere on it?
The Impala is one of the top selling cars in the US.
The new Malibu is heading that way.
They do have something going for them.
Chevy has always been my fav GM unit, until Caddy has started improving.
And to tell you the truth, the Solstice, Sky and the entire Saturn line are good.
In fact, the new Vue Dual Hybrid this fall is going to be the top Hybrid, if not top small SUV available.
Everyone I know who’s bought a bowtie car in the past 10 years had been impressed with its reliability, at least as far as major issues go. Yes, they may get rattles, or switchgear problems, but as far as the important stuff – drivetrain, body, getting you from A to B – a new Chevy is something you can count on for a long time. (Well, ok, I know someone with a Monte Carlo with a leaky roof).
In flyover country, Chevy = affordable reliability. Cars that you buy at deep discounts and expect to keep for 10+ years without too much hassle.
You’ll still see lots of 2000 Impalas on the road well into the Evan Bayh Administration.
If you look at what Chevrolet was in it’s heyday it’s easy to see what Chevrolet is. Plenty of them were on display, driving around and being celebrated at the Woodward Dream Cruise this past weekend.
GM should be looking into their own history and at car shows like the Dream Cruise across the country to see what really makes a Chevrolet. It certainly isn’t Korean crap cars or a Toyota-looking FWD Impala.
It’s vehicles like the Corvette, or like the upcoming Camaro. They bristle with American panache and are right-wheel drive as an American car should be. The Impala GM was working on based on the Camaro’s guts was a knockout and GM has pretty much canned it in their knee-jerk reaction to fuel prices and CAFE.
The Cruze looks okay but it’s not the revolutionary car GM needs it to be. Chevrolet isn’t a play-it-safe brand with derivative styling. It’s an American brand and their most loved compact car was the Nova. Why not look at the best Novas of the past and bring that into the 21st century compact car market? Base it on the Solstice and use Delaware to build it. If Holden can make a compact four-door sport sedan out of the Solstice I’m sure GM could make a Civic-sized RWD and AWD compact with awesome styling and a performance oriented SS model out of it.
Basically, GM’s brands were once all very strong and very distinctive, they have rich and proud heritages that GM is failing to draw on to remake them into what they should have always been. What GM has done with their two core brands, Chevrolet and Cadillac, is the biggest travesty of all.
I’d pick the Malibu or Aura over a Camry any day.
I’m not so sure that calling every Daewoo a Chevy, worldwide, is the key to building a strong brand.
Chevy is in trouble when the chaps at Top Gear have a standing competition whereby various UK celebs race a piece-o-crap Korean “Chevy” around a track to try and post the fastest time. To them, the inherent humor in that is self-evident.
As for Corvette being it’s own brand, it may as well be. Does today’s ‘Vette have a stand-alone bowtie anywhere on it?
Only embedded in the Corvette flags.
N85523 :
I don’t think there’s any standalone bowties on new Vettes (the corvette flag has a small Chevy bowtie on it if you look closely), I think the only time you even see “Chevrolet” mentioned is when you start the car up, the driver information screen displays “Corvette by Chevrolet” briefly
ppellico
The Impala is one of the top selling cars in the US.
True, because half of them made end up in fleets of one kind or the other.
The new Malibu is heading that way.
Yeah. It’s at only 33% fleet sales so far.
Where is the squabble? No brand sell their entire lineup worldwide. They couldn’t.
You won’t see a fully loaded Armada in Austrilia. Or a TaTa in the U.s.
So this poses the question again, why beat up GM over badging a Daewoo as a Chevy?
Gm has been doing this for eons in all the third world countries.
I’ve seen 1971 VW Beetles in Mexico “NEW” in 1994.” So let’s take a huge swipe at VW??!
Not true about the fleet vehicles. I see more families than rentals of Impalas. If I owned a huge company, I’d like to have a fleet of dependable roomy, easily repaired, economical vehicles too. You want cramped expensive, hard to repair and undependable? Wouldn’t be in business for very long…
And if statistics serve, 66% of Malibus are in private hands.
A Chevy today is probably GM’s salvation if it in fact has one at all.
Chevy at one time was the value leader at GM, the entry level car that competed with Ford.
In the mid-50’s it decided to move up-scale and compete with Pontiac, Mercury and Dodge along with traditional brands like Ford & Plymouth.
In the sixties, GM had the tiger by the tail and it was Chevrolet that was the big stick. Look at the Barrett-Jackson auction, the cars that bring the really big $$$ are 60’s Chevies and that’s due to people’s fond memories. Chevrolet is the reason that the Justice Department wanted to break up GM in the late fifties and early sixties.
Anymore, Chevrolet, like the rest of GM, has somewhat lost its focus. As of late, they have been known for good SUV’s and pick-up trucks, mundane, reliable sedans (Impala) and lousy (in some cases really lousy) small cars like the Vega, Monza, Chevette, Cavalier and Aveo. The Cobalt, I consider, to be marginally better than the aforementioned models.
Chevrolet is an amalgam of GM and probably its future. Pontiac, GMC, Saturn and Buick, except for its name in Asia, are superfluous and not needed. Pitch Hummer and Saab and all you have left is Chevrolet and Cadillac and Cadillac is not large enough to support itself as an individual brand.
I have cribbed this from a previous post of mine, but here is an assessment of GM’s brand positioning here in North America.
-Chevy: Corvettes, trucks and rental cars
-Cadillac: Trucks, cars for old folks and a bright spot or two
-Pontiac: Rental cars
-Buick: Cars for old folks, and rental cars
-GMC: Trucks
-Saturn: Supposed to be a Toyota, but isn’t
-Saab: Who knows, who cares?
-Hummer: Trucks that piss people off
As you can see, there is a lot of needless overlap there, and not much positive to work with.
It would do Chevy a lot of good if it had a few standout products that it could brag about, without all that second-rate swill blocking the view. To the extent that brands are product-driven, the products would provide the basis for building brand credibility.
What kills this is the lack of quality small cars. This is GM’s chance to make a first impression with young buyers, and the impression isn’t all that great. Apparently, Chevrolet translated from the original French must mean “Please Stay The Hell Away From Here And Go Buy A Honda.”
As lousy as Chevy’s small cars may be, they sure sell a bunch of them. Must be doing something right.
Um, no. I help (advise) literally dozens of people buy a car every year. People end up in Chevys only because of the extreme deals or risky credit situations. The only Chevys I’ve seen people aspire to the last few years are the Malibu (occasionally, but interestingly college degreed people usually go towards the Cam-cord-barus), Corvette, Tahoe, and Silverado.
Daily I see many Cobalts, HHRs, and Impalas with the little green ‘e’ on the trunk.
“What kills this is the lack of quality small cars. This is GM’s chance to make a first impression with young buyers, and the impression isn’t all that great.”
Hopefully the Cruze will remedy that.
Chevy depends on the brand image of its stellar trucks. It has no brand identity on the car side of things, but then again…What is a Nissan? What is a Chrysler? What is a VW? What is a Mistubishi? All these manufacturers make half-decent, everyday-person cars, with a bright spot in the lineup here or there. Why do they HAVE to have one or two things to define their brand??
“What kills this is the lack of quality small cars. This is GM’s chance to make a first impression with young buyers, and the impression isn’t all that great.”
Hopefully the Cruze will remedy that.
The presence of the Aveo makes that far more difficult.
GM doesn’t seem to understand that their reputation has slipped to the point that they can’t afford to have any losers at all. Some companies will be forgiven for their mistakes, but GM has made too many mistakes with too many customers to make any more.
For the brand rebuilding to work, EVERY Chevy has to be OUTSTANDING. Some being OK, while others are not, is simply not enough at this point in the game.
They are out of chances and bluffs. They need to have all winning cards in their next hand, not just one or two, or else they’re going to have leave the tournament.
I’m glad to see my name getting the top billing it deserves here, Mr. Farago. ;-)
And you’re all in luck:
I’m under deadline for three of my clients this afternoon — which means I won’t have time to fire off a completely irrefutable response to this until much later this evening, or even tomorrow morning [cue maniacal laughing to self].
Its a lot like asking “What is a Volkswagen?”. Or even more mysterious questons like “What is a Saturn/Mercury/Saab/GMC/Acura?”
While Chevy’s branding as the car and truck for “regular” Americans might be slipping, I still think their main problems are mainly product related and not image issues. Image is more of a Hyundai problem.
Chevy=Big (unwanted) truck or rental car.
The American car buyer can be found standing in line for a Honda or Prius.
Question-
How is it that GM claims it can get a radically different PHV to market in 2010 and they can’t get a (hopefully) competitive conventional small car, that will frankly have far more potential to help them, until 2011?
Quizically,
Bunter
Worth noting-in the recent JDP VDS survey Chevy lost ground in an industry that improved overall.
They came in well below the industry average.
Below Toyota. Of course.
Below Honda. Of course.
Below Hyundia. Ouch.
Similar story at CR and True Delta.
What is a Chevy?
Sub-par.
Which way is their market share headed?
Bunter
Frank Williams.
Unlike most writers, I do not think fleet sales is(are) a bad thing.
As in our plant, my brothers and I work hard to keep machines running around the clock.
This makes everything less costly to manufacture.
So volume is very important.
So, I am not really sure the bad part about seeing every 20th (or whatever…its just seems like it) car on the road as yours.
Fleet sales or not, sales are sales…
Plus, I am not as well informed about what the science is in brand fleet sales as you and others are.
I understand talking to many that the imports also play the fleet sales/numbers game.
Not sure how, but perhaps you can once again explain it.
I think someone on this sight did.
I know many salespeople drive the Impala.
The highways are full of the highway warriors in their Impalas.
So, their companies must see some value in the leasing or purchasing of these for their sales forces.
Perhaps I am giving value to much power and influence in this calculation.
Thanks in advance for the fleet information.
TriShield- I see Cobalts and Cavaliers at car shows and at races so you can’t say that Chevy doesn’t still have a bit of “car people” in it.
pch101- Saturn is VW GM now. Trying to be Toyota was too difficult and unprofitable.
the last real Chevy besides the Vette was the Caprice. There have been very few real Chevies since the ’60s.
What is a Chevy?”
Forgettable… like a rock.
What Chevy should be is what Toyota is now and what it itself was once: the go-to brand for the majority of car buyers.
There’s no phantom “heritage” involved here. Heritage only gets you fewer buyers each year and a declining marketshare; trying to tap into that is a really quick way to wipe out your relevancy as a mainstream brand. It sounds good to talk about the greatness of the ’57 Chevy, but the reason for that model’s success isn’t it’s ’57 Chevyness, but that it was the best car for the bulk of consumers at the time.
GM needs to stop making excuses or throwing Hail Marys and ask why Chevy sold as much as they did during that heritage period. The answer is above: build the best cars that satisfy the most people and, for the love of Pete, don’t stop doing it. Don’t chase niches, cut corners or give up on a car after three years. Don’t whine about perception gaps and cost gaps and market factors beyond your control, just build good cars and stop making excuses for not having done so.
@carguy
Or even more mysterious questons like “What is a Saturn/Mercury/Saab/GMC/Acura?”
A Saab is easy: A Saab is a quirky hatchback with a unusual-for-the-time engine (2-stroke/V4/turbo I4)
There’s no phantom “heritage” involved here. Heritage only gets you fewer buyers each year and a declining marketshare; trying to tap into that is a really quick way to wipe out your relevancy as a mainstream brand. It sounds good to talk about the greatness of the ‘57 Chevy, but the reason for that model’s success isn’t it’s ‘57 Chevyness, but that it was the best car for the bulk of consumers at the time.
I agree with your point. I just want to note that in 1957 Ford outsold Chevy – at least in the US. I don’t know about Canada.
People considered the ’57 Chevy styling a bit over the top.
But you make a good point. The heritage is being the go to car for most people, not some specific past model.
On the GTR;
At least (for now) the GTRs will have 480HP or more which I think is better than say, a Shelby GT500, that alledgedly has 500HP but generates 440-450HP at best in reality.
Also, in Japan underrating the HP figures has been a long standing practise because of the government regulations (recently cancelled) that roadcars weren’t allowed to have more than 280HP.
And there are other examples as well, such as the 335i that probably has 330HP standard instead of the officially stated 300HP. In fact I’m kind of surprised they didn’t change the rating yet with the facelift now the new M3 is here.
However, on the subject of the difference between the two cars being that big; I completely agree that it at least appears to be quite strange, but maybe there is some reason that we don’t know about which makes it acceptable. I’m thinking some technological innovations by those Japanese fellows like the ‘sealed production facility’ or something like that Jeremy Clarkson was talking about. Obviously he has no clue of what’s exactly going on but still…
Wasn’t Chevrolet’s actual purpose that they were the entry division and brought people into the “GM” family? Isn’t that how Alfred wrote his doctrines? There just became too many market segments that diluted each division that they cut each other’s throats!
Didn’t President Donner that declared that all brands will share platforms in the early sixties, and thereby, create the confusion over “Brand Management”? I guess the hope became to out-sell to their fellow divisions with up-scaled products; I’ll go upscale to compete with the sister division. Cue in the tunes here; “This Is the Beginning of the End”
The complete catastrophe here is that it completely destroys the pricing principle that Sloan created. If GM had continued to follow the principle that Sloan had laid out, things might be a bit different now. It was forgotten that Chevrolet was the entry division as they attempted to be all things to all consumers. Once they started marketing everything from entry to “near-luxury”, how could they keep their concentration on the entry market after the go-go sixties? The decade where Chevy was following Ford’s lead entering the market segments that Ford, itself, had created. This baloney created the likes of the Cadillac Cimarron, but also the Lincoln Versailles in the seventies and eighties.
Chevrolet – Entry level and trucks
Pontiac — Midsized, but entry
Oldsmobile – Mix of full sized and midsized entries
Buick — Full Sized and near luxury
Cadillac — Full sized luxury
GMC — Once truck sale took off at Chevrolet, this division was no longer needed.
Hummer — What where they thinking? Seriously, anybody? Why buy an AM GEN division?
Saab — European Sport and Luxury division.
All of this could have been done with four or five good expandable platforms, but the General refused all of this for the adventures of divisional sharing. They have glutted the market and can no longer grasp the American Market as it lies before them.
The question was, “What is a Chevy”, it’s a disastrously marketed product that is assembled by a corporation with out a clue. Remember that, Toyota created the Lexus division to compete in the luxury segment, and GM had Buick and Cadillac all along, but never knew how to use them.
Its existence presently is terrible. There are some good offering right now, but the durability reports aren’t quite in yet. Buying a car right now means keeping it for six to seven years, the question becomes; “Will it hold up for the long run?” The answer is that their products won’t go the distance, compared to Toyota and Honda.
Retail sales for Chevy first 6 months 2008
Aveo- 23767 4th in segment behind Yaris, Fit, Versa
Cobalt- 59310 4th in segment behind Corolla,Civic, Focus
Impala -66485 1st in segment
Malibu 44574 5th in segment behind Camry, Accord, Altima, G6
Corvette 10614
Colorado 25102 2nd in segment behind Tacoma
Avalanche 23584
Silverado 216263 1st in segment and the best selling retail vehicle in the US
Equinox 32445 5th in segment behind CR-V,Rav4, Escape, VUE
Tahoe 56943 1st in segment
Suburban 27507 1st in segment
Trailblazer 33636 2nd in segment behind the Grand Cherokee. compared to BOF mid size SUVs only. Compared to Mid Size Crossovers+ SUVs it would be
6th
Admittedly the Cobalt and Equinox sales could be higher but real people are buying Chevys.