It's big. Not as long as my Yukon XL's but wider and the seats are more comfortable. Tows my 7.5'W x 34'L enclosed trailer with no issues. Best full size SUV I have owned to date but I have only had it for 18 months now.

 

So, is the Corvette Ute most people are asking for here sized like a Trax, Equinox, Traverse, Tahoe or Suburban? Or is the ask for a completely new lineup of SUV's not under the Chevrolet brand but moving the Corvette name away from specifically existing as a two seat sports car to its own brand like Dodge did with RAM?

 

That blazer is a sin if I ever saw one. It's a done up traverse iirc.
Friend has a new durango 392. She sat in our tahoe for one drive and her exact words were "how can this thing be this quiet?" Having owned one dodge I can only imagine fiat managed to make it worse. The dodge interior was cheap compared to the tahoe. the whole thing felt cheap and I had war flash backs to the dash disintegrating... Not even a year old and it has a crack in it. Then again she trades leases in every 2 years or so so it really doesn't matter. I've always found the dodges/jeeps to be the crappiest of the big three. Just my humble opinion. They sure look nice in the beginning though.
Personally told mom to go to something besides the tahoe. She wouldn't. But we test drove a ton of vehicles. (that being said the one she got was loaded and was a lot closer to 45k than 65k, but most people don't know the people I know) I'm in the boat where i'm looking to replace my daily, an 04 trailblazer. The problem is, the only company that makes anything comparable is Toyota. I do need that 5k towing capacity for work and for the boat. The only thing GM offers in my price range are the midsize pickups. I won't do that to myself. It's just too much money. In all honesty the prices of everything are outrageous. I found the window sticker for our 00 3500. A whopping 20k. that won't even buy you the crappiest of crap anymore. (Well it can, but really is isn't worth even that much) So I think I'll just keep band aiding the trailblazer back together. The way I beat the snot out of that thing I'm surprised it hasn't let a rod loose yet. In all honesty, if it did today I wouldn't even be mad. There are very very few people who can keep pace with how I drive that truck... GM has the ability to offer a better warranty and better pricing but look at the numbers, gm sells half a million plus trucks a year, it ain't hurting them but they already have the segment cornered. They sell just as many trucks as ford and have a larger market share all together so why bother? They're ahead of both ford and dodge quality wise so really they have no competition. Their money is made for them there. They make no money on corvettes or camaros because they can afford to expend those narrow margins on the rest of the lineup. All the tech in them comes from those two programs. It's a market driven economy. Tell me, how many other outlanders do you see around compared to tahoes or silverados etc? You don't. I'm not arguing with you either. People don't buy what they need. They buy what they want. Your approach is right. My approach is right. My mothers wasn't. Mitsubishi builds a good vehicle, Isuzu did too. My only problem is if I came home with anything other than something with the GM badge of excellence on it, I probably would be disowned. It sucks. That being said, mopar and the blue oval are out. Anything else is fair game to me imo.

I am not sure that makes sense so let me reiterate: SUVs are hot, sporty ones are hotter. GM already shoved an ls2 in a midsized suv so who says they can't do it again 10 years later. Everything is market driven and because of that, a tahoe is 60k. Gm owns the market right now. Everything crashes and people will come back to reality sooner or later. I've seen this same thing happen once before... I believe around 2007.... We shall see if history is damned to repeat itself. The CUV is stupid, because 80% of what it does can be done better with something else. There is a need but again its blown out of proportion because it's cool. GM has enough crap crossovers available that they probably would be smart to not add another one. All it really does is hurt them.

 

 

GM builds a relatively solid truck/SUV platform. They build crap CUVs and frankly a corvette one is a waste. It's a model, not a brand.

and yea, they do look older than they are. Generally speaking the design is around for 6 or 7 years before it hits market. That's just gms thing. Even my trailblazer is like that. My boss had an 87 s10 blazer or whatever it was... may have been before the body switch but she got in mine and said it was literally exactly the same inside. Function over form I guess. (Honestly, as long as its comfortable I really don't care what it looks like...) I've been in a lot of vehicles and that truck still has one of the most comfortable rides/seats I've ever been in. Hell that seat is more comfortable than some of the private jets I've been on. For whatever reason, I felt that truck aged a lot better then most others of the same era. Back to the topic.

 

Yes, the whole concept of a "sports car" suv is crazy. Yet, Porsche suv owners still somehow think that they own a sports car!

 

And therein lies at least some of the rub for a Chevy Corvette CUV. While Porsche trades on their legacy of "more" for "more" the Corvette legacy is one of providing "more" for "less." What exactly does this mean? Porsche has the luxury of taking what essentially begins as a platform that is flawed, from an overall performance design standpoint, but can leverage their cost model to help make up for the required elements to make it a "Porsche." In short, their customers are willing to pay for all that trick stuff.

GM has never had that luxury specifically with the Corvette fan base. Those fans expect a vehicle that delivers on many critical factors above its listed price point. This gets even harder when you start with a platform that is not optimal - i.e. making a pig fly. This is extremely obvious simply reviewing many responses in all the C8 threads where a huge swath of enthusiasts are almost demanding a finished product for $60K or less that will punch with cars that are 2X or even 3X the price. Again, all the more reason Chevy would not be successful in taking a miniature minivan and attempting to make it perform like a sports car and at a price that will be significantly less than Porsche would charge for it.

 

I'm in no hurry to see a Corvette SUV but honestly the discussion of a Corvette sub-brand comes down to, well, branding. Branding and accounting. Accountants and executives make decisions in "interesting" ways. For example, Porsche was able to take money from the Macan and keep the 911 alive. This was easy to do as it is a single brand and company. The argument that "the 911 creates the Porsche brand, the Macan capitalizes on it" is really easy one to make. So the 911 gets to live while the Macan makes all the money in today's market.

For GM, it isn't as easy. Say that the new Cadillac SUVs do really well and sell like hotcakes. Could the Corvette team argue to GM executives "the Corvette creates the brand, the XT6 capitalizes on it"? Nope. It is really easy for an executive to say "sorry, we are cancelling the Corvette" if it doesn't make a profit on its own. It isn't creating a brand that makes the XT6 sell. Now if there were (horrors) a Corvette SUV then you can make the argument that guys dream of buying a Corvette but when their family situation demands they get an SUV instead, the Corvette SUV somehow becomes a compromise in their minds.

Again, I'm not saying I want it, but a Corvette SUV is pretty easy to design. Build an SUV on a chassis that can take it--probably one of the Cadillac S/CUV chassis. Put a V8 in it, maybe that twin turbo Cadillac V8 being built in the Corvette plant. Add the iconic flags (horrors) to the back and a little Corvette badging. Interior quality same as a C7 with some infotainment screens in the back for kids. Sell it for $80K. Watch the Corvette faithful cry as it outsells actual Vettes 3:1. I get that many people here may recoil in horror from it but it would sell faster than they could build it. I mean, there's a reason Ford is getting rid of all sedans but the Mustang. No one (in America) wants sedans anymore. S/CUVs aren't a craze, they (along with trucks) are the market.

 

Speaking of quality how's that STEVIO?

 

GM could sell those things so fast as fast as they could build them can't you just imagine the QUALITY on those things..."cough cough "

 

They love those Cherokees though. Someone in the family gets one pretty regular despite the problems.

 

 

 

I think this would be GM doing more of what it is already not doing a great job of. I think what you have described is exactly GM's problem. Marketing 5 different vehicles that are essentially the same platform? They do this today and I think this is exactly their problem. Trying to be all things to all buyers and really not very good at meeting anyone's needs. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Corvette is the ONLY vehicle they produce right now that nails their target market and really has no substitute - at least at a comparable price anyway. Think about it. The Vette is the only car being compared to a Porsche at a much higher price point. In every other category there are direct competitors that can be named that are either a better value, have better features or are just simply better options for that type of vehicle.

In your specific situation, just as you have described it, there are emotional factors at play in your purchasing decision that could not be met by any GM/Corvette branded product. And specifically if that exact same product existed in one way shape or form with a plain Chevy, GMC, Buick or Cadillac badge on it. The Alpha CUV, the Porsche CUV, they only exist in their purest forms and as the brand they represent. The Corvette version of the Buick version of the Chevy or Cadillac version of the same CUV would always largely be compared to each other and at how many price points could each one of these be successful?

I simply think that GM could take on Alpha and Porsche directly with a performance minded CUV that carries any of the badges that already exist - GMC, Buick, Cadillac and crush the competition with just a little more focus on the competition. This would then happen with zero risk to the one brand they own that continues to be highly successful at hitting the target.

I would also like to know if GM really needs the Corvette brand to be "saved" from a cash flow perspective similar to the Porsche situation. This point keeps being brought up as a reason they need to do this but is it actually the case? Does Corvette need to be saved financially by a specific Corvette branded CUV?

 

 

[QUOTE=JerriVette;1598037105]

 

 

I'm still confused as to why everyone says the corvette is a brand. If it were I would be able to go online and type in Corvette then select the trim and order parts. I still have to check that Chevrolet box. My registration still says chevy. I have to go to a chevy dealer, not a corvette dealer, to look at one. It's a model within a brand and GM doesn't make much effort to say or show otherwise.

And it's funny how everyone likes GMC so much. Ip until 15 years ago or so that was the cheaper chevy. That's why all our work trucks were GMC. Now the replacements are chevys because GMC hardly has work trim vehicles and even still they cost more. And judging by GMs market share, they ain't missing nothing.

 

 

I think I read somewhere that Cadillac was considering doing a "V" version of the new XT4. I wonder if something like that would make a good Corvette CUC/SUV. Here's some renderings of the XT4-V.