balthazar

It's 'Bel Air', by the way.

SUVs are one thing, but the bulk of small & mid-size CUVs are merely cars.

40 minutes ago, A Horse With No Name said:

They only sold varients that took a lot of engeneering expense in small volumes. 

Corvair volumes were very solid- over 300,000 in some years (not including the Corvair truck lines). Honda doesn’t move that many accords now.

31 minutes ago, A Horse With No Name said:

They were a sales failure

Wherever did you get that idea from?

'38 Ford panel delivery, looked solid but was lettered up like a static business advertisement [40 miles/hr in the dark].

18 minutes ago, smk4565 said:

If that is the case, the Corvette can't be a crossover.

I never should be. And if it stays pure, it'd be one of only a couple such long-running vehicles out there anywhere.

I have said the Mach-E is too pricey starting at $43K, but that was when I was still under the impression that the average new vehicle price was still down around $35K (It's now $40K). It's above average, but it's certainly within reach of the average buyer. Ford would sell more if it was starting -say- around $33K, but the spectre of Red Ink always lurks around BEVs.

1. You're splitting hairs / playing semantics with 'model / brand'.
2. Making a distinction between SUV and 4-door sedans is more of the same. Sedans are going the way of the tailfin and the twelve-cylinder. No one was buying 911s, the BRAND had to build SUVs. A sports car-only brand building bloated SUVs. Still a perversion... but the way of the future.

Taycan is a 911 in everything but badge and door count (and motive power). Porsche took a 911 and stretched it into a long sedan.

IMO, as part of a mega conglomerate, Porsche should've stuck to only sports cars to preserve the heritage. But that's not the Way of Things anymore.
Corvette is also a part of a mega conglomerate, but there's far less pressure there to dilute.

I don't think there's a more heritaged and pure model/brand in existence, than the Chevrolet Corvette.

- - - - -
On another note; how's life, smk? Tell us a story.

7 minutes ago, smk4565 said:

A Corvette SUV would be like if Mercedes made an SL electric crossover, or Porsche made a 911 3-row crossover.  Makes no sense.

Corvette is 2 seat coupe/convertible and has been for 60+ years, it can't be an SUV.

Or how Porsche took a 50+ year 911 rear-engined sports car and made it a battery 4-dr sedan?

I agree that there's no reason or market desire for a 'Corvette SUV', but there ARE like production examples out there in the industry.

6 hours ago, David said:

Blah, that is as attractive as a Tesla, just no passion in that bland body shape to me.

^ Sorry about that, sometimes the reply / editing on this site confoozles me.

EDIT :: fixeded!

5 hours ago, smk4565 said:

GM needs to make the Chevy brand cool, not trash the Corvette name with SUVs

LITERALLY what saved Porsche; trashing the brand name with (relatively) high volume SUVs.

That must be the adaptive cruise / pedestrian warning/ front camera sensors. Mercedes is also notoriously bad at making them subtle. When I was sitting in the GMC dealer staring into the giant face of a Yukon Denali, GMC's treatment is very well done.

‘78-era Elky, navy blue, very solid/unrestored original, likely relatively low-miles.

Since we were mentioning it elsewhere, another XT6 : 

30 minutes ago, smk4565 said:

My point was more that the engineers and designers don't run the company, the finance people do.

That's the exact same scenario for every mainstream brand. Daimler included. Look at how the 300SL Gullwing was dropped after only 3 years, in order to crank out 4-cylinder ragtop SLs for decades. Beancounters. Had the kept it running it could've been competition for the C2 Corvette.

There is no fundamental Tesla is doing that supports it's stock price. That's not stockholder demands, it's investor mania. And what stock holder wouldn't like to see a Corp's share price skyrocket after they bought it?

4 hours ago, smk4565 said:

But he'll one day retire or be forced out.

So what?
One day Duntov retired (1975), and look what the Corvette went on to become (even by '84).  Juechter could retire and the Corvette could go on to even greater heights. He's not the only person that can helm the ship.

^ That would include all mainstreams brands. The auto industry has been seeing 'suburban sprawl' for decades (tromping thru each other's segments), and CAFE & consumer demands have been forcing homogenization for just as long. When a mercedes & a hyundai are commonly mistaken for each other, you know we're on the downside of the curve and the ride's end is nigh.

No big deal, didn't mean to alarm.

I tried a... gummie.

UPDATE : Apprently GM closes down completely for a month starting at Christmas. So my order placed 12/23 isn't, actually, "placed" yet. That means: order in in beginning of Feb, then add 8-12 weeks. Suddenly, March has become May.

Sadness.

On the other hand, this gives me the rest of January to stalk gmclocator.com, and possibly find an on lot version I can make a better deal on. It's grotesquely unlikely, because anytime I search within a 250 radius, there's like 4 trucks that match my baseline. And 3.75 of them are either white or black.

'62 Plymouth full-size, white. Saw the nose inside a barn/garage, car was clean and even in the quick drive-by glance, appeared to be a racer.

What a shame we can't get linework like that this side of, roughly, 1970. What a gorgeous phantom!!

Nothing. Took other half; 30 mins later and maybe some tingling...
Will report back in 2 more hours.

I went to one Detroit show in the mid '80s, and one here in NJ probably 15 years ago.
Not really my thing.