Posts Tagged ‘GM’

GM’s Back to Its Old Tricks

Posted: January 19, 2011 in Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, General Motors, GMC, Opel
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One would hope that after GM’s massive bankruptcy, something would have shaken GM’s  infamous entrenched bureaucracy and Byzantine divisional structure to its core.  Once Saturn, Pontiac and Oldsmobile were vanquished to history’s dustbin, only Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC remained.  The old practice of taking a Chevy and cloning its products upstream to every division was supposed to be dead, right?  Not so much.

For as long as I can remember, GMC has had no unique products, but the premium GM gets for dressing up Chevy trucks is so seductive that it couldn’t give up that profit center. Okay, I get it, but I think GMC could have been jettisoned and a new sub-brand of Chevrolet could be created to sell Chevy trucks that look better and are laden with luxury.  My idea was to have the Black Tie division or sub-brand. It would be instantly recognizable as a Chevy and the Black Bow Tie on the grill would be prestigious.  That way, you didn’t have to feed a completely separate division and you could keep the profits within Chevrolet. No such luck. We are stuck with GMC.

Buick was supposed to be different. It was going to get some rebadged Opels, and that’s what you have with the LaCrosse and Regal – both based on the Opel Insignia platform. Sure the Enclave is just a Chevy Traverse or GMC Acadia, but that comes from the “old GM” where each division got a cloned Chevy.

I guess the temptation to fall back into its old ways was too much when the Chevy Cruze was introduced.  Chevy  uses the Cruze platform for the Volt and the Cruze is a world car sold in many markets outside the U.S.  The use of a world platform drives the costs down to the point were GM can build the Cruze in the US (Lordstown, OH) and still make money.

The car of no one's dreams: The Cadillac Cimmaron

A Chevy Cavalier: Looks a bit too much like that Cadillac, huh?

Enter the Buick Verano: A rebadged Chevy Cruze with some cheap-looking fake wood accents and a few more luxury appointments. What next? A modern Cadillac Cimmaron?  See if you see any family resemblances….

2012 Buick Verano: Front

2011 Chevy Cruze: Front

2012 Buick Verano: Rear

2011 Chevy Cruze: Rear

2012 Buick Verano: Cockpit

2011 Chevy Cruze: Cockpit

Sure, there are some subtle differences, but it all looks just a bit too familiar.  The Verano is better than other GM rebadged products in that the cockpit shows some different fascia and the door armrests are reshaped, but the size and look is still Chevrolet, in my humble opinion.  The exterior is also familiar in overall dimension, including the door cutouts and roof slant. The Buick gets a Buick grille and distinctive taillights. Whoop de doo.

GM is crowing about Buick’s sales renaissance; but when you start with such a low bar, it’s not hard to have double digit (55%) increases.  From my point of view in LA, Buick isn’t finding younger buyers; its finding its place in the rental fleets again. Hell, it’s hard to even find a Buick dealer in town.  The Santa Monica GM dealer now appears to share space with Santa Monica Infiniti!  This was a tiny dealership to begin with, so I don’t know how that’s going to work.  The  times I’ve gone there to  look at new models, they haven’t had any inventory.

Buick just doesn’t seem to have any traction in the LA market.  I doubt the Verano is going to help. I see a rental car fleet in its future.

The ‘Bu and Back Up Cameras

Posted: December 15, 2010 in Chevrolet, Safety
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It was just a couple weeks ago that I was cursing my rental Chevrolet Malibu because it’s hind quarters was too high for me to see the car I was backing into trying to parallel park. Since you rarely parallel park on a test drive, this is one of those nasty unexpected annoyances that pop up during your ownership of any given car. I was also profoundly annoyed by the blind spot created by the large B pillar every time I tried to check my left blind spot.

The Malibu's rear looks "normal" but it's too high when you look backwards.

It’s really hard to review an appliance like the 2010 Malibu LS. The styling is anonymous – neither exciting nor displeasing. It starts right up (as any car should) and stops with some level of assurance. The steering wheel is connected to the rack with a strand of al dente spaghetti, although in slow-speed parking tangos, the steering feel is more like freshly-poured cement. Only when pressed does the Malibu exhibit torque steer.

The anonymous styling of the 2010 Chevrolet Malibu. Better than the past, but that bar is so low almost anything would have been an improvement.

The Malibu has plenty of room for four passengers. It will be very tight with five adults. The picture makes it look even more like a rental car. Thanks, Chevrolet!

Most people would be hard-pressed to identify this as a Chevrolet Malibu, particularly if you get rid of the Chevy Bow Tie in the front.

The ‘Bu (an internal GM nickname, so the story goes) was an adequate rental appliance for our four days touring Richmond, Virginia and Washington DC. The trunk swallowed all the luggage with plenty of room to spare. The driver’s seat was relatively comfortable for the slog from Richmond to DC.

The base Malibu interior is well-designed and fairly straight forward. It didn't take long to find and master all the controls.

(Richmond is a lovely city, but I’m not sure they’ve been informed that the Civil War, uh I mean War for Southern Independence or War of Northern Aggression, ended 145 years ago.)

For most of the trip, the 6-speed automatic shifted unobtrusively, with a tendency to upshift to save fuel. When prodded, the silicon chips think for a moment, the transmission kicks down and the standard 2.4 liter, 169 hp Ecotec I-4 engine wails in misery. When I had to do some fast shifting from reverse to drive shoehorning the Malibu into rare and illusive DC parking spaces, the transmission actually clunked a couple times between gears.

The upgraded interior with leather in the top-of-the-line Malibu LTZ shows off the double dash design and is much more pleasing to the eyes.

As a daily transportation appliance, the Malibu rates a C+ or B-. It’s a solid effort from the “old GM” and in 2008, it was the best Chevrolet passenger car (damning with faint praise, I’m afraid). The switchgear, steering column stalks and center console displays are familiar parts bin stuff. The turn signal click clack is so annoying that anything longer than a couple seconds causes migraines.

On the plus side, we got an around 26 mpg during the trip, which is above average for this segment.

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