Wednesday, July 16, 2008

GM: No Beat for U.S.



According to Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of Global Product Development, the U.S. will not be getting the Chevrolet Beat, which will be sold in Europe as the Spark. Apparently the little Beat wasn't designed to meet U.S. crash standards and it'd cost too much to re-engineer. Full story on Autoblog is here.

In my opinion, this means that GM is content with the way the Aveo is doing in North America. Although it's pretty apparent that the Aveo is a bottom-of-the-line car (and bottom of it's class, too), it does sell well. It doesn't, however, make GM look like much of a player in the subcompact market. Certainly not as much as Honda, Toyota, Kia, Hyundai, Mini, Smart, and soon, Ford. Oh, I guess that's nearly everyone. However, if the Aveo ain't broke, don't fix it, right? I guess another way to look at is at least GM has a subcompact in its lineup. Eh.

To me, this looks like another case of GM not bringing its A-game. Simply showing up is apparently enough for GM in the b-segment.

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