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Brand loyalty can only go so far. Lets look at the Chevrolet lineup and see whats there. I'll start with the obvious good; Camaro, Corvette, Equinox and light/heaav duty trucks. Now these are the good choices in the Chevy line-up and its obvious due to strong consumer sales and reviews.
The Cruze is nice but it costs WAY too much compared to its competitors. The Malibu is getting stale and is in need of a drastic update. The SUVs (body on frame) are nice but they are by no means fuel efficient enough to carry much interest going forward. Lets face it the Volt is way, way, WAY overpriced even with a government rebate. None of these vehicles are terrible but there are alternatives that are better in almost every way.
Now there are two unforgivable eyesores in the Chevy lineup and IMO. Lets start with the old W-body, the Impala. Is there any reason for this car still exist outside of rental fleet sales? Seriously this is the worst full-size car available today and it doesn't even sell that well anymore. I can't believe GM won't give us a rear-drive Zeta to compete with the Taurus, Charger and 300 its not the development costs haven't been paid. This brings me to the Aveo....
The Aveo is infamous to anyone who knows anything about car quality. The Aveo build quality that I have experience is worse than cars that were built 20 years ago. The Aveo is underpowered, poorly equipped, uncomfortable and ugly as sin. This isn't helped by the fact that the Aveo is a Daewoo rebadge, everyone knows Daewoo is junk. GM went as far to replace all Daewoo badged cars as Chevy's for obvious reasons. The Aveo name itself is being rebadged as the Sonic just so US consumers won't have that negative Aveo taste in their mouth when potentially buying the car.
Now in the case of my Camaro, Chevy and GM offered something that I couldn't pass on in the 2010 model. The 2010 Camaro is dynamically better in every single way compared to its 2010 competitors and was an easy buy for me. However, when it came to buy a sub-compact for my new job earlier this year as much as I tried my hate for the Aveo was just as strong as ever. I wanted so badly to be a loyal GM consumer but the Aveo just couldn't pass, especially compared to the Fiesta I did buy. Had this been a compact or mid-size I might have bought a Cruze or Malibu as they at least offer something competitive.
Now I'll say this about Chevy, its all GM no matter what division you go with. GM has been platform sharing since the 60s and there wasn't any real difference between platform siblings until recently, in fact this is largely what killed Pontiac's customer base. At least now Buick offers higher content than the Chevy line and hopefully that will last. All praise and negativity towards any GM brand model should start and end with the company and not the division. At least GM vehicles as a whole are a lot better and more competitive in today's market. Every automaker has good and bad vehicles, its up to the consumer to pick the right one. Like I said brand loyalty only goes so far, buy the best car....
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