GM Wants To Be Bad, Does What It Can, Beats It
Remember when Farago asked what wasn’t wrong with this picture of the Chevy Spark? It turns out that despite 74 comments, nobody correctly identified the Spark’s major flaw: it’s a hunk of foam. The Spark was first teased on the Today show, where GM Design guru Ed Welburn first showed off the city car’s Pokemonesque snout. At the time, we (and everyone else in the autoblogosphere) concluded it was a Beat Concept, ignoring Welburn’s promise that it was a “new” city car concept set to debut on Sunday at the Detroit Auto Show. When Sunday came, GM only rolled a Beat into COBO Hall but posted a picture of the Spark on its corporate webpage promising a production model by 2011. Confused, the guys at Kickingtires contacted GM and learned that the Spark wasn’t rolled out because they don’t even have a rolling prototype of it, just the foam model that was trotted out for Today. The “real” Spark prototype will be revealed at the Geneva Auto Show later this year, but for the record, GM’s Beat/Spark policy seems to currently stand as follows. Beat was shown a year ago, 2.5m webizens voted for it over its Trax and Groove concept-mates, and it was then ruled out for an American launch. Now there’s not even a prototype Spark, but we’re told it will definitely come to the US. Confused? You probably should be.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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There's an answer to these "What's wrong with this picture" questions? I always thought those where rhetorical questions designed to elicit more comments to support the rhetoric...
More vapor-ware from GM. Ho-hum. Next?
Also, why would any marketing department allow a car to be named the Beat? Just two measley letters away from the famous pejorative car description..... In Michigan, a POS car is called a Beater. The moniker is not usually an affectionate term. In the former days of Michigan prosperity, a beater was an annual fall purchase so that one's prime ride could reside comfortably in the garage during the horrid winter months, to avoid salt and road damage until the snow melted and the potholes were fixed in Spring. Of course, now that the dead economy in Michigan means few in that state can afford a prime car, "beaters" are the transpo order of the day for the masses. So, what lame-brain, group-think committee at GM thought "the Beat" was a good idea?
It will be called Spark