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So why dump them? True they aren't the vehicle of choice for the masses anymore and they never were designed to be that. But they are profitable, cheap to make and market and they sell in decent numbers:
Tahoe/Yukon/Escalade 75K units in 2012
Suburban/Yukon XL/Escalade EXT 64K units in 2012.
Until they aren't worth the profit they make, GM should continue to offer them.
Now, in the old days they didn't bother to differentiate them hardly at all. A Chevy Suburban and a GMC Suburban used the same dash, and it was the same as the pickup trucks. Not sure if that's the case anymore. They also didn't bother to differentiate sheetmetal. You could take the doors off of a Chevy crew cab pickup and put them onto a GMC Suburban, for example. Dunno if you could take a door off a Silverado and put it on an Escalade nowadays though, as the sheetmetal might be a bit different.
But, I agree...as long as the things are profitable, they should keep selling them. Maybe drop the Cadillac version if its sales fall off too much, although I have a feeling the Escalade is the most profitable of them all.
The Escalade is good for 10K+ units a year and commands somewhere around a 20% premium.
Yeah, in the 70's and 80's there were more vehicles that had similar capabilities to a Suburban. The average family could pull a small camper or boat with the family sedan or wagon. Or you could get a full-size van. I seem to recall full-size vans were more popular in the 80's than Suburbans. My FIL had 3 Dodge Ramvans from the late 70's through the late 80's.
Now days, if you want tow anything larger than a pop up camper or a small boat, a SUV, full-size van, or pickup is about the only choices.
I don't think that Impala was all that specially-equipped, either, so he might have been taking a chance towing that much weight. I think those pre-downsized 70's mastodons could be equipped to tow up to 7,000 lb. But I'd imagine that was usually with the biggest engine, a quick axle ratio, heavy duty cooling system, etc. Dunno what they'd be good for, stock.
In 1980 he bought a new Chevy 3/4 ton truck with a 350 and used that for towing. My great-aunt started driving the Impala, and gave her old car, a beat-up '72 or so Chevelle, to one of her grandkids.
He passed away in 1989, and my uncle bought that pickup from my great-aunt. I drove it a few times, and was surprised at how much of a dog it was. Even though it had the 350, Granddad's '85 1/2-ton, equipped with a 305-4bbl, was a lot faster. My uncle said that was because the '80 had a tall axle ratio in it...which seems odd to me. If you're going to tow something, wouldn't you want a shorter axle so you don't stress out the engine/tranny as much?
And yeah, looking back, I remember full-sized vans seemed to be all over the place back in the day.
I bet it was heavier than that. We have a 32' Coachman that weighs about 7,500lbs. But it does have two slide outs that add quite a bit of weight which wasn't available in the 70's. OTOH, I'd bet a 70's camper was likely built with heavier components than today, either way, I bet a 70's 30' Terry had to be a minimum of 6-7klbs.
My grandpa always had a boat and he had a few small campers <23' which he always towed them with GM cars. He had a late 70's 23' Shasta that weighed about 5klbs. He towed it with a '75 Buick Regal coupe with a 350 (which he later gave to me when I turned 16). Basically, he added air shocks and a trans cooler. He towed that camper to Florida and back several times from northern Indiana.
I've towed a lot of different trailers of various lengths and weight with a variety of vehicles. What I've learned is power is low on the requirement list to safely tow something. Most important is having a vehicle that can handle the tongue weight, having enough wheelbase to maintain stability, and having enough braking capacity to safely stop. Then when it comes to power, torque and proper gearing is more important than peak HP. I'd think any fullsize domestic from the 70's and 80's with a good size v8 (say 350 and above) could easily be modified to handle reasonably sized trailer.
Minivans are about room and utility, not style. (At any rate, a lot of people didn't care for the style of the Dustbuster minivans, either.)
As for the "feel" of switches - that does make a difference. I remember how flimsy the switchgear and HVAC controls felt in my parents' 1973 AMC Gremlin. Or how the sliding HVAC levels in my parents' Oldsmobiles felt as though they were initially too tight, which made it harder to adjust the temperature, particularly while driving the car.
It should very apparent by now that buyers have shown a willingness to pay a little more for a car with a "quality feel." A car company that says, "It's not quite as good, but it's cheaper" will end up as the Walmart of car companies. Just as no aspires to shop at Walmart, no one aspires to drive the Walmart of cars.
Given that GM and Ford have made tremendous improvements to their vehicles in this area over the past decade, I'd say that management felt it was a very important area to address. Losing lots of market share eventually does make even the dumbest executive take notice.
I know to me, interior space and price meant more to me than 'tactile feel of switches'. As long as they don't come off and continue to operate, I couldn't lose sleep over that.
Actually, no, his point was that several of the things that you were pointing out as "benefits" were not seen as such by many people. An inexpensive price is not an advantage when the tradeoff is cheap-feeling switchgear that feels like it'll snap off in your hand. Not to me anyway, or most others. Maybe to you, but you're not the demographic that GM needs to convince to buy its cars.
What do they call that? Hedonistic creep or something like that?
To use one example, when I first started driving, I used to think my Granddad's '85 Silverado felt pretty fast. It was probably good for 0-60 in about 12 seconds. But back then, when my regular driver was a Malibu with a 229 V-6 and most of my friends were driving 4-cyl Mustangs, Cavaliers, Pintos, 65 hp Accords, and so on, it *was* fast. Well, I still have the truck. And, it's still good for 0-60 in about 12 seconds, so mechanically at least, it's aged well. But, after getting used to faster and faster vehicles, good lord that thing feels slow!
And, after getting used to more substantial switchgear in many newer cars, I'm amazed that I don't get back into some of those older cars, and end up snapping off the headlight knob, turn signal switch, etc! Now some of that real old stuff, like back when they used to use metal, that felt substantial. But once they started learning how to make chrome stick on plastic long enough to get past the initial warranty period, it was all over...
My neighbor's daughter drives one of the X5's in the recall, and the local dealer performed the "fix" on her vehicle this morning, so it seems that there is, at a minimum, some replacement parts already available in normal stock for at east some BMW repairs.
Growing up in South GA without A/C until I was about 8 years old, I understand what he meant. It would be difficult to go back to summers without A/C now.
The DID finally figure it out at least, you look at the Cruze's interior and it's night and day. Still missing a hatch though. Among other things. :shades:
Ford Focus
Mazda3
Hyundai Elantra (GT)
Toyota Corolla/Matrix
Kia Forte
Subaru Impreza
Mini Cooper (if you want to include it)
Sedans only:
Chevy Cruze
Dodge Dart
Honda Civic
Nissan Sentra
Wow, only four holdouts in the compact class.
Edmunds' article must be wrong then. Not a crisis, and not the first time.
It said that the recall was anticipated to start in January, and that parts were 'in transit' from Germany for the repair. The article was dated yesterday (12/6).
If your neighbor's dealer had parts in stock, it was probably because they had had folks in with the issue before, and stocked the parts, prior to the issue becoming a recall.
I also seem to recall that they had horrible crash test results.
There's certainly logic to that. However, market performance of the industry seems to show that for an awful lot of buyers, cheap and big are NOT the important criteria. So for a make to be broadly successful, it needs to cater to those buyers, too.
The Dustbusters pioneered modular seating and power sliding doors.
And around here, they look better than same year anything-else vans, when I see them. No-rust body panels and panels that apparently paint adhered to better than other vehicles.
Now, exactly what that reason IS, I can't say.
You can even get a 1-series hatch on some islands in the Caribbean, but I suspect BMW doesn't want to tempt 3-series buyers in the USA that are looking more at utility than style.
Now, I can't imagine what GM model GM thinks a Cruze hatchback would steal sales from.
You know, at one time Henry Ford thought every car buyer preferred a black car, until buyers finally got the option to get other colors. I wonder if the hatch style is in the same category.
Then again, I've never been in the cockpit of a fighter jet.
I had a coworker that bought one shortly after they came out and his wife drove the wheels off of it, transporting their kids to school, ball games, etc.
IIRC, he got a really good price on it, and since he had small kids, he felt that anything he got would be trashed by the time he needed to replace it.
I don't think he ever had any expensive issues, but I do remember it was full of squeaks and rattles.
Here's the video for the 97-05 models, it looks pretty horrible to me:
Crash video
I guess the IIHS is just pro-import. :P
I didn't find any video for the first "dustbusters" but I wonder how they could have been better, only to have GM make them worse with a redesign? It looks like it was the earlier models that were poor; the later designs did better:
Early years, overall Poor: '97-05
Redesigns, overall Good: Redesigned post '05
But these are the sorts of reasons that people sometimes call GM designs junky. Their competition of the same era had no problem achieving Good ratings.
Odyssey for the earlier years (overall Good): Early Odyssey
And the Sienna, overall Good: Early Sienna
I wonder if GM just thinks it's too big of a hatch for your typical domestic buyer? Hatchbacks sell well in the US, up to a size point. And cars like the Cruze, Dart, Civic, and Sentra, are pushing the limit of what a "compact" car is, to the point that the EPA actually classifies them as midsized cars. But, the likes of the Focus and Corolla are still compacts. I believe the Mazda3 is, too.
The Elantra, however, is another car that's a "big compact" and classified as a midsize, but it offers both sedan and hatch. However, that GT hatch looks like it's a bit shorter than the sedan, so it might lose a bit of functionality.
With regards to the Corolla/Matrix, I wonder how many Matrixes they sell these days? I see newer Corollas all over the place, but the Matrix seems pretty rare in comparison.
The Sentra makes sense as a sedan-only IMO, because if you want a hatch they have the Versa, and it's not that much smaller.
I wonder if GM worries that a Cruze hatch would steal sales from a more profitable vehicle...namely the Equinox?
In a word... Ouch!
We had two Ventures, a '99 and an '02. The '99 was the only vehicle we've ever leased. The '02, we bought. Both were good vehicles and the wife drove them mostly. At the time, we liked the power sliding door (right side only) and the rear seat (separate) audio, which we got on both. Good crashworthiness is a good thing obviously, but it wouldn't keep me from buying a vehicle I otherwise liked, from a dealer I trusted...i.e., it's not the main thing I'm buying...just like 'tactile' switches over interior space and choices in models, colors, options, etc.
The guy selling the dustbusters was by far the most aggressive of the sales people which was funny because it was third on our list of three vans. Would that I had left well enough alone on that. Oh, well...
I'm fully aware of that - my hypothesis was that if it was a redesign, then I doubt they would have been worse, so likely the earlier ones were horrible, too. But if it is as you say (where the older models were COMPLETELY different from the '97-05), then I stand corrected. But if so, then GM went from safer to more dangerous vehicles for the sake of styling. And that's not a good story, either.
Which case is it?
Try Wells Fargo's ATM's - never had a problem with them at all and IMHO they're pretty fast-actin', too.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Bottom line, GM's really going against the industry trend of offering a hatch option. I've seen the Cruze hatch, and it's fairly sweet.
I hear Toyota may axe the Matrix when the Corolla is redesigned, but they could also bring a Corolla hatch. With so much of their competition selling hatches they may give in. I doubt Honda will, but Honda almost doesn't need to: the Fit's got a more comfortable back seat than the Civic anyway.
GM has the Sonic hatch, I'd love to know their actual non-fleet sales mix of hatch vs sedan on those. When you're dealing with compact and smaller cars, space efficiency is important, and hatches provide the flexibility to reconfigure for either passengers or cargo, something you can't really do with a trunk.
Anyway, GM's really holding tight to the antiquated notion that Americans don't buy hatcbacks. It's possible GM buyers don't buy hatches. Or it's possible Americans don't buy GM. :shades: But given Ford, Mazda, Subaru, VW, etc etc, it's pretty clear Americans DO in fact buy hatchbacks.
I do like that subtle orange one sees on the Sonic.
Certainly, from a practicality POV, a hatch offers much more than a sedan/trunk in most applications.
My younger daughter (still in college) has a Versa hatchback, and there simply isn't any way she could cram as much stuff in her car if she owned the sedan model.
No question about that. When my wife and i were in college, I had an '89 Mercury Tracer 2dr hatch and my wife had a '92 Saturn SL2. It was much easier to load up my Tracer, particularly bulky items. A hatch makes far more since, particularly if it's your only vehicle.
This is unfortunate for GM since they don't sell hatchbacks because Americans don't buy hatchbacks though. :shades:
Workers at its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant soon will be off the job for three weeks instead of a planned two-week Christmas shutdown as the Detroit auto maker curtails Chevrolet Cruze output.
A second U.S. plant also may be idled according to a person familiar with the matter.
General Motors Cutting Production to Control Inventory
This month will be the time to buy a Silverado! :P
Regards,
OW
Then maybe after that they can consider world domination. After they start selling more hatches.
They can't discount a Silverado enough for me to buy it over a Ram or F150
Cars Sold
Toyota = 1,093,894
GM = 950,414
Game over this year! :shades:
Regards,
OW
I got a flyer from Chevrolet in the mail today. I already can't find it, but it's touting the Malibu as having more interior room than the previous model (100 cu. ft. versus 90-something). I'm not convinced that width in a car is as important as legroom, though. But, they are apparently aware of the comments about less rear legroom than before.
GM = 950,414
Game over this year! :shades:
Take out fleet sales and the numbers are likely real ugly.