First 2018 Chevrolet Equinox Design Sucked So Bad That Mark Reuss Has Vowed You'll Never See It

Timothy Cain
by Timothy Cain

After a long eight-year run for the second-generation Chevrolet Equinox, General Motors finally dropped the third-generation 2018 Chevrolet Equinox in September 2016. The 2018 Chevrolet Equinox might not be your cup of tea — I like the look, and the diesel option — but we learned late last month that it could have been downright awful.

How bad was it? It looked too bulky, too odd, too underwhelming, according to focus groups. The Equinox’s chief engineer, Mark Cieslak, said, “What we have on paper we felt was not going to win.”

So GM went back to the drawing board.

But seriously, how bad was it? We want to know, as does Autoweek, which tweeted last Saturday, “We really want to see what the abandoned version looked like.”

GM’s executive vice president for global product development, the Twitter-affable Mark Reuss, responded just 10 minutes later. And, uh, my guess is they really don’t want us to see the first third-gen Equinox.

“Too bad. Ain’t gonna happen,” Mark Reuss replied to the Autoweek tweet.

Of course that’s what he’s going to say. If GM relented and showed us pictures and specs of a small crossover that wasn’t good enough to bring to an auto show, let alone bring to market, the automaker would have to suffer the consequences. Images of a failed GM design would be passed around the internet for the rest of time.

And yet, Mark Reuss didn’t really have to say anything. He wasn’t forced to comment on a tweet by a single publication on a Saturday afternoon.

Mark Reuss went out of his way to tell Autoweek’s editors and readers that they can’t, they shall not, they will never feast their eyes upon the failure that was the early Equinox draft.

Was it really that bad?

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.

Timothy Cain
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  • Kyree Kyree on Apr 05, 2017

    I personally think this one looks terrible. It's like someone left the current-gen outside too long and it melted in the sun.

  • Freddie Freddie on Apr 05, 2017

    Style-wise there is only so much you can do with a CUV. The CUV has become the most bland, generic body style. I can't tell one model from another without looking at the grill.

    • Drzhivago138 Drzhivago138 on Apr 05, 2017

      Arguably, you can do more because there's more vertical space to work with. And the "all cars are indistinguishable nowadays" trope is true of any era, for those who aren't familiar with the styling cues of each make.

  • Honda1 The FJB Inflation Reduction Act will end up causing more inflation down the road, fact! Go ahead and flame me libbies, get back to me in a few years!
  • Cprescott Fisker is another brand that Heir Yutz has killed.
  • Dwford Every country is allowed to have trade restrictions except the US.
  • 1995 SC Are there any mitigation systems that would have prevented this though? We had a ship hit a bridge in Jacksonville a few years back and it was basically dumb luck it didn't collapse. This looked like a direct hit.
  • Cprescott Oh, well.
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