Fritz: Chevy will be competitive, top-quality brand in two years
2011 Chevy Orlando: Click above for gallery
General Motors is in the middle of a massive restructuring, and if it manages to escape catastrophe without going belly-up, good news could be in store for the Chevy brand. GM CEO Fritz Henderson told AutoWeek that the bowtie will emerge as the big winner in two years, with great quality and plenty of new product. The 2011 model year will (assuming there are no changes to the product calendar -- something that's hardly guaranteed) bring a variety of fuel-efficient vehicles to the Chevy brand with the arrival of the Cruze, Spark, Volt, and Orlando.
The Volt, with its purported extended-range electric capability, will get the limelight. But the Cruze, Spark, and Orlando are likely to be more impactful, since they're designed to be high-volume sellers with very competitive fuel economy figures. The new cars, combined with the drop-dead gorgeous Camaro (29 mpg hwy), the new Equinox (32 mpg hwy), and the Malibu, give Chevrolet a a significantly transformed, far more efficient product lineup.
With four new Chevys set to hit production in the next 19 months, the future of the brand looks bright... as long as GM can survive the tumultuous present.
[Source: AutoWeek]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Seanross 12:44PM (5/09/2009)
I'll believe it when I see it, unfortunately they'll be fighting a near vertical uphill battle...
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Tango 12:58PM (5/09/2009)
well said, they have to face a market that also continues to improve in quality and efficiency.
Sea Urchin 1:19PM (5/09/2009)
GM vehicles can be competative now but they won't be in the future. People have very, very short term memories, but if you remember GM has announced many times that they have reduced their R&D in money and people and that they will postpone redesigning certain cars by a year or two and those cars will be on the market for a year or two longer without updates.
If todays Malibu can compete with CamCord, it will stop doing so after 6 years on the market, by that time we will get brand new Camcords and GM will have same Malibu.
Also it is clear what the outcome of smaller R&D will be, less competitive product, which is what got GM here in the first place.
tuxchown 2:48PM (5/09/2009)
People say the lamest things when they are not armed with facts:
http://www.autoblog.com/tag/by+the+numbers/
Mr.Oak 3:16PM (5/09/2009)
Urchin, come on are you saying that 6 years from now, GM will have the same , Malibu, while Toyota and Honda will move on by two generations?
Man, how do you come up with this stuff? You really could not be that retarded.
Sea Urchin 3:34PM (5/09/2009)
Mr. Oak, ohh but i am.
Look i know that i am retarded but do read this article
http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=resources/auto&id=6476639
Jimbo 3:47PM (5/09/2009)
Oak, I gotta agree with Urchin. GM has a bad history of letting the same model stay on the market too long. Look at the Impala: it's been basically the same since 2000. Yes, there was a minor restyling in 2006 but it's still fundamentally the same vehicle. The Cobalt has been around since 2004 and won't be replaced by the Cruze for another 2 years. The Pontiac G6 will be almost 7 years old by the time it dies. Honda and Toyota have 4-5 year model cycles for the Civic, Accord, Camry, and Corolla.
Matt 4:32PM (5/09/2009)
I wish GM would take interviews like these to point the general public to some of their already available vehicles, like the Malibu, Camaro and Pontiac G8. The General has better product than a lot of America thinks. Hopefully they will stand the test of time long enough to prove themselves worthy of our hard-earned dollar to the Americans who don't currently know they are.
http://whybuydomestic.wordpress.com/
PJ 5:03PM (5/09/2009)
I have to agree with Urchin too on this one. GM has made lots of noise about "turnaround products" that were finally going toe to toe with the class best (and would sell without rebates) literally dozens of times since the 1980s.
Trouble is, GM always forgets that it's aiming at a moving target, and aims *just* high enough to land among the class best *the year that car is released.* So after a good year or two, the products sink into mediocrity and earn reputations as "losers" despite their initial appeal.
Cases in point: 2005 Cobalt, 2004 Malibu, 2000 Impala, 1998 Olds Intrigue, all the way back to the 1980 X-cars... all of these were released to great fanfare about the jig being up for the imports--in addition to that other famous GM PR stance: "for real this time."
zamafir 5:29PM (5/09/2009)
Well said PJ.
Mr.Oak 6:46PM (5/09/2009)
Urchin: The date below is the date of the article that you provided the link to.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 | 3:12 PM
That was seven (7) months ago. Quite a bit of water has passed under GM's bridge since then, and the dam is about to bust wide open. It all about to change.
Sea Urchin 7:18PM (5/09/2009)
Mr. Oak, yesssss, for the worse, they are about to file for BK. October was the good old days.
Look, i'll give GM this, the design of late has been amazing, Malibu, Camaro, Cruze, G8 (i'll ignore the G3), Caddy all look GREAT. But the issue is technology, with drastic cuts in R&D they will be behind, they need to learn how to do more with less, by that i mean provide all cars with SMART tech packages, like standard IPod connections, HDD based sound systems, those cost a few hundred and even the cheapest cars can be outfitted with them, same with GPS, should be standard in most cars.
And keep make sure that teams that designed those beautiful cars now design all cars.
Smegley 8:43PM (5/09/2009)
As long as GM is owned by the government and the UAW they are out of the picture for me.
The minute Geithner and Obama wanted that loan converted to capital I wrote off this company and its products. I don't care what they produce - I won't want it. A piece of crap produced in the private sector will always be better than the "People's Chocolate" the government will produce.
Tool 11:50PM (5/09/2009)
I'm actually pretty confident that the New GM (or whatever they end up calling it) can and will produce some great vehicles.
Once they jettison all these redundant brands -- which will allow them to focus on one great offering instead of 3-5 badge engineered variants -- I think we will see some of the finest vehicles GM has ever produced.
However, as a caveat, I think that selling off Opel is a big mistake since it seems like a lot of good engineering and ideas come out of GM Europe.
tanooki2003 12:47AM (5/10/2009)
As many have stated, I will believe it when I see it. I too have heard this whole song and dance many times before and frankly have already given up on them many years ago.
If they could show a smidgen of promise by sticking to their word and really staying on top of their R&D as well as reinnovation then they might actually possibly be competitive. I have no doubt that they can do it. I just don't think they can do it with the current group of people in charge of the company.
cdwrx 3:24AM (5/10/2009)
GM has a history of always shooting for quality equality. About nine months ago Ford's Mark Fields impressed the hell out of me in an interview on NPR. They lobbed him a softball about how maybe it was just perception that Japanese cars were more reliable. He said that Ford can't be equal to the other brands, they must be better and when they are perceptions will change and there's no marketing your way around it. I think Ford has been internally focused on their mission of superior quality for five or six years and we're only now seeing them go toe to toe with the competition. It's not internalized with GM and even if it were, there's no way they're going to change their corporate culture in two years, much less have products in production that reflect it. My best hope is that I am wrong and I hate that.
Randy 1:28PM (5/10/2009)
I agree with Sea Urchin too!
And Urchin.. You're not retarded! Just f-ed in the head sometimes ;) jk
Tim 12:46PM (5/09/2009)
Where have we heard this before oh maybe in 1990,1995,1998, 2001,2002, 2003, 2005, and 2007.
GM along with Ford and Chrysler used to have a monopoly on large cars and trucks across the globe. Obama wants GM to make small fuel-efficient cars. This throws it into competition with the 20 automakers of Europe and Asia. If they could not make money with high margin large cars how on earth can they make money with low margin small cars? GM, Chrysler and Ford avoided small cars in the US for a good reason.
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Mattias 2:52PM (5/09/2009)
In fact, GM builds light small fuel efficient cars all around the globe. The European and Latin American divisions of GM do quite well. It seems that there is something bad about those big cars with estimated large margins. The fact is, that here in Germany the average Opel Corsa sells for about the same price as the average Chevrolet Colorado in the US.
Chevrolets problems are not so much in the lineup but in the total incompetence for consolidating platforms, for scrapping redundant brands, for bringing essential products to essential brand. While Ford does best promoting the 2011 Ford Fiesta, GM still sells the cheapo Aveo insted of bringing in the FIAT Grande Punto based Corsa to the US. Instead of bringing the Astra family as a Chevrolet and killing of the Cobalt they try to sell it as Saturn.
zamafir 6:49PM (5/09/2009)
if gm and chrysler's avoidance of small cars was for good reason, than what's the point? They went bankrupt avoiding them, you're insinuating they'll go bankrupt building them, why have either?