Chevy is always making stupid decisions, I like the design of it though. --- Post updated --- . That would have been awesome
It's not just American cars that this is happening to, and there's a lot more to it than what you said. The first thing hit me recently when I saw someone's dumb "Little Dark Age" edit about the fall of Mitsubishi, and the footage it showed of Lancers rallying through forests and Pajeros conquering sand dunes in Africa: cars, at least to some degree, used to be designed with capability in mind. Even if the cars were heavily modified for racing, the basic potential was still there, and even if the vast majority of buyers never used a car's full capabilities, the capabilities were still there as well. Modern cars, on the other hand, seem designed specifically to be helpless in any situation other than minimum-intensity commuter driving. Too tall, too heavy, and too automatic-transmission to carve the corners, but still too low and street-oriented to be any good off-road either. If you want a car that does any more than move you around in the most basic sense, then you're looking at the additional cost of a higher-end car, the reduced practicality of a dedicated sports/off-road model, or both. The cars that buck this trend tend to be either so visually aggressive that some might consider them embarrassing to be seen in (Veloster/Elantra N, Civic Si, etc), or still blander, techier, and more obsessively "premium" than their predecessors (Golf GTi). True, there were always vehicles designed entirely around riding comfort, but they tended to be large, heavy things sharing space in the lineup with smaller, easier-to-drive cars - and even the barges got sports models sometimes, from the Impala SS and 300SEL 6.3 of the late 1960s all the way down to such semi-modern monstrosities as the Mercury Marauder. And speaking of sports models, remember when they were common? At one point it seemed like just about every car had some sort of sports trim, sport package, or sport suspension available, and many manufacturers also had dedicated sporty models on the low end, even if they were just coupe/liftback versions of ordinary cars. Hyundai, to their credit, did seem to be trying to keep this alive with the Veloster, but failed, possibly due to its odd styling and asymmetrical door placement (one on the driver's side, two on the passenger side, and yes, it is actually different depending on which side is which in a given market). The body styles, too. What happened to coupe and sedan as the universal standards, with possible wagon, convertible, or both depending on the car? Coupes are near dead outside of dedicated sports models, wagons too, convertibles even more so. The remaining sedans have been pressured by regulation into combining the pug nose of a pickup truck (muh pedestrian safety, of course) with the doorstop profile of a Prius, which only works from an aesthetic perspective with mid-engine supercars that don't bother with practicality. Everything, as usual, is converging towards the most boring possible point: short-roof hatchbacks which are space-efficient but not very exciting to look at. Since you mentioned brown-on-brown-on-brown cars from before, have you noticed how dull the color choices are with modern cars? Depending on the car, you might get a decent gloss red, and some sports models might have OK blues or an occasional orange. Otherwise? Dull metallic medium blue, dull metallic ruby, dull metallic burnt orange. Maybe a dark green or very dark teal, also metallic. Lots of gray and white, sometimes also metallic. Occasionally a metallic brown. There's so little personality or fun to be had with car colors anymore - now it's all about muh resale value and looking vaguely "upscale" or "premium" without actually standing out. Two-tone brown would actually be an improvement to most cars these days - at least that way you'd have two different shades on the same car, and not just a blob of metallic weak coffee blending into traffic. If you want something more interesting, you just have to full body wrap it, I guess. (Also since you mentioned boring cars from before, I actually don't find that type of car very interesting in its stock form. When I go to car shows, I'm always looking for the modded ones. Some stockers and restos are pretty special, but if someone showed up with the car you described, my first thought would be, "but what have they done to make it faster?") And going back around to my first point about capability and sanctioned racing, remember when racing was actually production-relevant? Remember when manufacturers treated their racing operations and sponsorships as important public faces of their brands? Remember when racing programs, not EV programs, got the spotlight? Back in the 1990s, in Europe (which has since become the world capital of safety/emissions worship), manufacturers were fitting out station wagons to go racing, from the well-known BTCC Volvos to the hillclimb car prepared by Skoda's Italian office. "Sure, our wagon can get all your kids to school safely and carry blah blah blah amount of cargo, but what's really important is that this thing rips!" When you think about it, just the fact that even the original "safety uber alles" manufacturer saw racing as a worthwhile means of advertising speaks for itself. Before, sportiness was a sort of universal constant in the automotive universe, even if it wasn't meant to be. If you wanted your car to coddle you, you had to move upmarket and pay for the privilege, but there was (as I said above) a sports version of nearly everything, on top of the base level of engagement from by things like cable-actuated throttle and hydraulic (as opposed to electric) power steering. Performance, or at least the appearance of it, was a desirable thing even outside of enthusiast circles. Then everything flipped 180 degrees. Suddenly, you could get luxury, technology, and interior appointments in low-end cars, but if you wanted to have a little fun with the thing, then that was what you'd have to move upwards and pay more for. The replacement of Cobalt with Cruze is, again, a perfect example - from a tuner car in rental clothing to a fun-hostile Passive Transportation Module. The 2018 model I test drove even had a "teen driver" feature in the touchscreen menus. I couldn't get into it because it required a password that had apparently already been set, but I bet it wasn't a simulated water cup for tofu delivery runs. In the 1990s, with the Saturn brand, GM actually set out to design the blandest, least-characterful car they could. I think it really says something that the result still had more character, more visual distinctiveness, and probably more fun-to-drive than the ordinary cars of today - and still got its own sports label (Red Line) in the end. I'm not so sure that the manufacturers are entirely innocent here, either. I mean, sure, the Hyundai Veloster did fail against the more conventional (and, having driven a 2016 manual version, significantly more driver-hostile) Elantra - but other than that, it seems that outwardly capability-oriented cars are still viable. The Dodge Challenger, Toyobaru BRZ86, Jeep Wrangler, and Ford Bronco are all successful, some of them wildly so, despite being the physical incarnations of what we are constantly told no one wants anymore. I remember the Challenger once getting top marks for owner satisfaction (over 90% and highest on the list) even from the kind of person who subscribes to Consumer Reports. It's as if, sometime around 2008, a signal went out that the paradigm was to change. Passive comfort, rather than active engagement, was to be the new universal constant of the automotive world. Active engagement, rather than passive comfort, was to be the thing you had to move (and pay) upward to get. "Normcore car culture", i.e. the possibility that someone who couldn't afford or didn't want to put up with a full-on sports car might still think fast cars were cool and want their car to be exciting once in a while, or that someone who didn't want to manhandle a Jeep to work and back might still leave the beaten trail sometimes, would be ignored into nonexistence. Dodge missed the memo, and for a few years the Koreans did too - unfortunately it seems like they're the only ones. Then I remember something I heard during the lead-up to the launch of the C8 Corvette - some bigwig involved in the program, talking about ECU tuning. He didn't necessarily want to make that impossible, but he wanted to make sure of who the good guys were, or something like that - likely meaning he only wanted big-money, factory-connected outfits like Hennessy, and not you or your local speed shop, to be able to tune it. Because emissions, I'm sure. If that attitude has even managed to infect the halo sports car program, how many genuine car enthusiasts do you really think are working on the everyday cars? How likely is it that the paradigm of "crouching commute turd, hidden downhill destroyer" will ever come back?
I hate this whole "Suvs and crossovers" trend. Just because there is a demand for them doesn't mean you have to discontinue cars FORD! Chevrolet is right with them though, they killed off the spark a couple months ago. The Malibu is on of the only American cars left that isn't a $60,000 Cadillac. However for other brands like Toyota or Nissan Which still have cars like the Camry or Versa. Even Mitsubishi has a compact car, the Mirage, But no American brand has a car that Isn't a Malibu or CT4. Same goes for Europe and their Mondeo. This car ran for about 25 years and stupid Ford kills it off. WHY?? I'm not a European but I still think it's stupid to kill of such a reliable sedan. The Galaxy was cut off to. Not everybody wants a Crossover or a SUV But American brands can't see that. They are blindly following the SUV trend, completely abandoning the sedan, hatch markets.
The reason car manufacturers are killing off certain cars is because there’s no market for them anymore (because everyone wants an SUV), therefore continuing to build said cars would not be a wise financial decision as nobody would buy them and no profit would be made.
This thing... I know it's not an actual production car and more of a marketing/PR stunt by Opel. But I think we all wish it was in production. Sadly, SUV's sell better than quirky 3-door sedans.
Yes! The MK2 CLS has got to be one of my favorite looking Mercedes OT: Another one of my favorite looking Mercedes (S63 AMG W221)
