I agree. Chevrolet should be a mainstream brand like Toyota, and how many rear wheel drive cars do they make? The facts of the matter are that the majority of car buyers probably do not care or prefer front wheel drive in their everyday cars.

 

If Chevy was Toyota, then we wouldn't be on this website. Chevy has loyalty from people like us. The only reason people buy crappy Malibus is because they liked a fun Chevy car at some point in their life and have loyalty to the brand. GM modeling themselves after Toyota strips them of everything that got them where they are today.

If GM settles for making the worthless piece of crap cars they make now, they'll spiral out of business. And I'd say good riddance, because the cars GM is making are boring and crap.

Even if the only goal GM has is to emulate Toyota....why would anyone buy a GM car over Toyota? GM can't beat Toyota at their own game, and to gain any market share they need to do what got them where they are today, which is make cars that actually excite the masses. Chevy got where it was on the backs of cars like the Camaro, the Corvette, and the SS models from the 60's to the mid 90s that got people's blood pumping.

The type of thinking you have is short term thinking that's going to drive the company into the ground. Funny enough, on TV right now I'm watching American Muscle Car, talking about Pontiac. In the 50's, Pontiac made boring cars that had nothing to inspire anything in anyone, and the brand was failing and about to get the axe. Bunky Knudsen gave the whole brand an excitement injection, and the SuperDuty engines came along, restyled the cars to make them exciting. Saved the Pontiac brand which was failing.

You'd think people would look back to the past to realize how not to repeat the same mistakes, but apparently that is lost on GM.

 

*******WARNING, RANT BELOW, DONT MIND SPELLING AND RUN ONS*******


The above post is really what nails it down and hollars the same message which I have been screaming lately, and what really was going on in my minds.

I do not recall the last time I was in a chevy dealership.

I am russian and came over here 13 years ago... our first cars were pontiac bonnie's and caprices.... when I was young, all I ever wanted was a camaro, the excitement that was breathing. Imports were out of hte question because they didnt have much going for them, GM specifically was the king, it represented america and the american dream.

Now.....Chevrolet and GM represent the bargain basement with the likes of Wallmart, Wallmart doesnt have anything good, but is hte place to go if you want something cheap, or what you really want is not avail. I am in the process of getting a new vehicle, and as much as I want to get a GM, there is absolutely nothing that screams excitement with the exception of the c6 which is still lacking and not what I want.

Where is the 4 door coupe, euro styled, great interior that screams quality and power to boot? Where is GM's Altima, Passat, a6, Maxima, Accord, g35?

With GM trying to have everything, and with their goals of being good at everything, and best at nothing.... in reality.... they are sub par with everything, and best at nothing at all. Caddie is the only division that has things going for it. CTS, XLR steps in the right direction. But the Caddie of today sure is not the caddie of yesteryear. When caddilac was a symbol of status quo, and not bling bling escalade and who cares about the cars?

For value cars....Hyundai is a leader.
Mid Size sedans, you have Nissan, Toyota and Honda eating into GM's marketshare every day, see other post....
Full Size cars.....Does gm even have any? oh wait, supposedly there is no market for full size cars, a buick will have to do.... Just tell that to all the 300, magnum, 500, and crown vic/ town car owners.

Performance Excitement? Um.... we have the vette......, then we have a car taking up a classic name, assraping the name, but its ok.... in 2005 it will have hood scoops, GTO.... YOU MIGHT AS WELL CALL IT A MONARO HERE! IF YOU CANT DO A GTO PROPERLY, DONT FUGGIN DO IT AT ALL!

So... we know GM lacks in this respect... they are transitioning, lets give them benefit of the doubt.... so then what would any company do to sell cars.....lower price, ah wait... rebates!! but isnt something wrong when even with rebates the cars are not selling?!?!?! you have to put rebates on new 05 models? $3500 rebate on GP, 3500 rebate on new 05 trailblazer....$6000 rebate on 04 trailblazer. on top of this.... add getting the car at invoice and low financing..... you can get a $35k truck for under $25k. But THEY ARE STILL NOT SELLING THAT WELL. Whats worse is you have people now, myself included, that would not even look at a gm car without a rebate. I feel sorry for the first gto owners who paid markups for the sake of owning a GTO, when you have dealers selling NEW GTO'S. $34K STICKER PRICE FOR $24K!

The G6 is the only car looking to give me hope.... $20k starting sticker, and 23k for gt.... yay, $1,000 rebate on it as well.... go to gmbuypower, try to find a GT g6 for under $25k. Most of them are $28k stickers on the lots.....yeah, I didnt know that a G6 commended a higher price than a fully loaded 3.5 altima, or maxima. Or a fully loaded accord, or camry, or a base acura tsx for that matter.

My whole big thing with GM also comes to to resale values and the logo on the grill not being worth the metal/plastic it is made from. Even though i am in the market for a 4 door sporty sedan, ala passat/a4, I was open to spending more for a GTO...whoever even say picking up a gto for $26k......it is relatively big bucks for a car, especially if you finance, when you know you will not be able to get that much 2 years from now, even a year from now, hell, 90 days from now. If a person who bought an 04 gto paid $30k for theirs, how can they sell theirs used if they wanted to get a new 05 with ls2, or anything, when 6 months after they bought their GTO, they lost 1/3 the cost, as they can only sell theirs for $20k because a dealer on ebay, and soon down the street is selling identical car brand new with 10 miles on the clock for $24-25k?

Rebates which were meant to temporarilly boost sales for holidays, are now permanently etched into the minds of consumers and resale values.....so yes, I do feel sorry for anyone that purchases their Gm vehicle above invoice price.....Why should you pay more than invoice as you also have coupons and bargains in form of rebates..... kinda like russian roulette.....your halo car, GTO, needs big rebates to sell itself, so you buy it, and dont know if it wil lbecome classic and hold its value, or go straight to the clearence rack.

I doubt anyone who buys a Mustang Cobra, or a ford GT has to worry about ford having to put big rebates on their cars to sell themselves.

Ok, enough ranting. hehe.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

Looking at the current styling cues that GM is giving their new cars, I'm not looking forward to seeing what the 5th gen will look like. Especially since they say it won't be retro.

If Pontiac puts out a RWD coupe, I'll bet it has the same generic double-kidney grill as most all of their other products do.

The 91/92, 93-97 Camaros were the best looking ones IMO.

 

I guess you'd be on supraforums...
Enthusiasts are a small part of the auto buying public. I'm sure there are plenty of people that bought Malibus that did not have a sporty Chevrolet way back in the day. My father has bought all of his new cars from GM since the mid 80's. He had Mopar's when he was younger.

Hmm so GM cars are worthless pieces of crap because in your opinion they are boring and crap? By that logic Toyota would be out of business already, instead of making more profit than anyone else. I guess there really isn't a market for cars that are reliable, get good mileage, and get you to work in the morning.

Besides, GM has plenty of exciting cars that are in fact exciting whether or not people will recognize them as such or not.

Ah here is the heart of the matter. Why can't GM compete with Toyota (nevermind the fact that I said Chevrolet should be going after the segment that Toyota has, not all of General Motors)? Building cars isn't rocket science, and Toyota sure as hell does not control the world's only supply of magic pixy dust that they sprinkle on their cars as they roll down the line that improves quality by eleventy billion percent and makes people want to buy them. If company A can build it, company B can build it.

Did I say Pontiac or Chevrolet, I can't remember? Oh wait, I said Chevrolet should be more like Toyota. Chevrolet is supposed to be a bread and butter car and truck division that just happens to have some sporty models thrown in. Who is the leader in bread and butter cars right now?

Pontiac is supposed to be the excitement division. Pontiac is supposed to be the poor man's BMW.

The mistake was allowing the quaility gap to occur during the 70's and 80's. The 90's did much to repair the gap, their image is still in the crapper. Even you, who purports to be a GM enthusiast, think that there is no way for GM to compete with Toyota.

 

Toyota has some good things and some bad things.

Toyota puts out a great product. Top end build quality, good materials, great long term reliability. They also have some generally boring designs and not so sporty suspension settings. It's the good things about Toyota that has made them such a juggernaut. It's the good things that have essentially replaced Chevy with Toyota as "America's Car". And now Toyota realizes that to get to the next level...to unseat GM perhaps, as number #1.... they need some more snazzy designs. And they are going to get them.

I'd say it's a mistake to take everything I just wrote and sum it up as... "If Chevy wants to compete with Toyota, it needs boring cars". That's a HUGE mistake.

If Chevy merely tries to mimmick Toyota, (and do a poor impersonation of it at that), it will always be 5-10 years behind. Sounds like a formula for failure to me.

How about if.............

Chevy tries to get a jump on Toyota, with some hot exciting product.

 

GM cars are boring and uninspiring to the automotive public at large and that's why they're requiring many thousands of dollars in rebates to move off of lots at all.

Why can't GM compete with Toyota? It was summed up pretty well by Z28 up there. Mimicing Toyotas weaknesses while lacking it's strengths won't help anything at all.

Who cares what you said? I made the point that when Pontiac was a brand full of boring, generic cars, it was going out of business, and that adding excitement saved the brand. It doesn't matter what brand name it has, any car company needs to excite it's buyers, otherwise the buyers aren't going to buy anything. The lesson applies to any car brand, and perhaps you should open your mind a bit and realize just because it happened to Pontiac then doesn't mean it isn't happening to Chevy now. Pontiac may have been marketed as the excitement brand, but Chevy has had excitement built in up until the last 5 or so years.

Can GM compete with Toyota? Sure. They just need to build a better, more attractive car and sell it for less money, and pay their dues for a decade or two to get back into having a good reputation. Building an ugly duckling, boring car at a higher price than the competition is going to get GM/Chevy nowhere. Any company could compete, I just don't think GM WILL.

And as was said, mimicing what's wrong with Toyota while not having what's right is why GM/Chevy's cars have such trouble selling. Z284ever said it better than I could....why not build a quality, exciting product and watch your sales turn around?

Chrysler has had a crap reputation, worse than GM. Look at the 300 fly off the lots. If you build it, they will come.