Z284ever

I was reading GM's annual report and found an interesting passage on Chevrolet.

"Chevrolet is the foundation of GM's brand spectrum in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and now Europe as well."

Let that sink in for a minute.


Hope we see some Chevrolet cars and trucks soon, that can match that statement.

SGT Posaune

Isn't this how it always should have been!?!

Some of Chevys cars are great however, some should be improved. There are also some holes in their line-up (Not just the pony car market)!

guionM

....before other divisions ended up with too many models they didn't need?

Z284ever

I get the feeling that this time it's more than mere lip service. I think that this time, there is a realization that Chevy really is important...and is not just the throw away division, where all the appliances end up.

Chevy is...and will be... as important to GM as the Ford brand is to Ford and the Toyota brand is to Toyota.

redzed

If the Chevrolet name was anything other than a "throw away division" in Europe, would GM be sticking the Chevy bow-tie on Daewoos? GM is simply leveraging the Chevrolet name for short term gains in Europe. The Daewoo brand had been run into the ground, so a quick name change seemed to be in order.

The upshot is that European consumers will soon learn to associate the Chevrolet name with Korean-built garbage.

Z284ever

Hard to argue with that.

redzed

I only wish that someone at GM had successfully argued against slapping the Chevy name on Daewoos.

GM has squandered yet another opportunity (and probably the last one) to turn around GM Europe.

It's a shame that the American-built Cobalt couldn't have become the centerpiece of the relaunched Chevrolet brand in Europe instead of the current crop of Daewoos. With the fall of the American dollar, exports from North America to Europe might have had more offered more sustainable profits than exports from Korea to Europe.

If GM had played it's cards right, the Europe-oriented Cobalt design could have been a profit generator. It might have also made a dent in the America's negative balance of payments with Europe. As it is, the watered down North American Cobalt will only contribute to the continuing decline of GM.

2001Z28man

Thing is that thay have Opel Astra which is hi-tech Cobalt.
Cobalt and new Mailbu are downgraded versions of possibly the same, great car (Astra -Cobalt , Vectra- Malibu).

AnthonyHSV

We have had Astra's here for years..great little car. I would say its by far the best small car in the GM lineup. Its biggest downer is when they went to new model it gained weight. However it has retained the same 1.8 4cyl engine so performance has dropped.

Z28x

I wish the Cobalt could get some of those Ecotec engines. The new 1.8L puts out 140HP and gets 4% better milage than the curent 1.8L. Chevy needs the base Cobalts and Aveos to be MPG class leaders.

bossco

Right, so do the good thing and drive a stake through the hearts of pontiac and buick. IMO should be Chevy for cars, GMC for trucks, and Cadillac for well I dunno, but Cadillacs are so damn cool.

Z284ever

On that, LaNeve made an interesting point in a recent interview. He said that GM is not looking to kill off any more brands. GM, he said, still hasn't recovered the volume lost by the killing of Oldsmobile.

At any rate, I think bundling Pontiac/Buick/GMC together is a great idea.

Mutiny32

Great job on turning this thread into that discussion.

Don't even reply to him.

bossco

Hehe... to late

besides that qoute was nothing but pure troll bait, even if it wasn't intended to be.

What I'm getting from that is "we only sell buicks and pontiacs in america" which also means to me "we had to spread development costs around so that we could effectively rebadge this chevy as a pontiac and a buick" and makes me think "man how much better could that chevy had been if it didn't have to carry the dead weight of those losers".

Mutiny32

WE ALREADY HAVE A THREAD DISCUSSING THIS. STOP DERAILING THE THREAD.