Note to GM, stop leaving your bread and butter vehicles on their 30 year old chassi.

 

AND/OR Building a great chassi and letting it get stale over 10+ years without a refresh

 

I'm not too impressed, but it won't take much to improve on the current design.

 

Two Chevy's on Epsilon? Would the Impala still be a larger car, on a stretched version of the platform?

 

I'm not that impressed. It looks like a modern, bland car. It doesn't have anything really new or fresh to bring to the table. It is better than before, but doesn't say Ford to me at all, is that a good thing?

 

That is what I was thinking. If they stretch Epsilon and moved the Impala upscale, I would think it would fit nicely as a lower volume, high profit car.

 

Correct, Impala would have to go to a LWB of Epsilon, which is what is reported to underpin the upcoming Saab 9-5. This would mirror the Camry/Avalon plan of chassis sharing. Still brings up several questions.
1) If it goes to Epsilon II, where will it be built? Doesnt Oshawa have rights to the Impala name?
2) If it stays at Oshawa, is Oshawa's flex-build system have the ability to make Epsilon cars?
3) What other plant has the capacity and ability to make another 200k or so Epsilon based Impalas?

What Guy said has also brought some questions. Nothing is set in stone for cars past 2012. So that one could take that as we wont see ANY new Impala, either fwd or rwd, hit the market for a looong while? Or its cause Impala is so under the radar, being hidden under Caprice or Commodore sheetmetal, that we wont see preproduction mules with new sheetmetal till late this year?

 

:yawn:

 

Too generic. Looks Korean.
The illustration is better than the actual car.

 

Yep.

The W-chassis is dead. The Lacrosse is being replaced by an Epsilon, and we should be seeing it during the next Auto Show season. Impala is doing it's last tour on the W, and I'm guessing will be replaced the following year.



1) You're 100% correct.
2) It's going to make Camaros, Impalas, and Lacrosses for a year, so it can no doubt do Espilons.
3) Buick & Cadillac's Zeta was moved out of Oshawa (to Lansing if memory serves correctly), so I suspect 250K Espilon 2 Impalas and another 100K Lacrosses can be made there as well.


There has to be something else made on the Camaro's Zeta assembly line. Camaro alone won't be enough to keep the line going or make it profitable. Keep in mind, the whole assembly line setup (which hasn't been changed) was made when GM planned to also make a high volume of Zeta Impalas. This leaves 3 options.

1. Use Camaro's assembly line for niche vehicles. This would include Zeta based crossover pickup trucks (Chevy El Camino, GMC Denali XT), lower production coupes (basically reskinned Camaros), among others.

2. A modest production sedan that would most likely be sold by Chevrolet as a premium sedan and possibly a police vehicle.

3. A combination of both.

With Lacrosse going to Espilon late next year, and Impala the year following, I think that would bring Oshawa up to full capacity and make full use of it's flex assembly processes.

 

Looks good. Wonder what is under the hood.

 

Didn't Bob Lutz say something recently (within the past 3 months) about a "crossover" vehicle on Zeta?

I'm wondering if a "wagonesque" rwd suv isn't on the horizon.

 

I don't know if they will be bringing back an old name like Caprice or not. If they stick with Impala, make the base cars, LS, LT, LTZ on espilon and a distinctive Impala SS and 9C1 on Zeta. But that is probably unlikely.

 

Back to the new Taurus....that car looks alot like this one

 

Agreed on the current car. I think its because it's so tall it looks much gigantic than it actually is.

I suspect that because modern mid-sizers (Camry/Accord/Malibu) are so large, there's not a huge demand for a real fullsized car any more.