QOTD: Are You Willing to Save a Sedan?

Of course you are, and that will be your mission for today.

Monday’s jarring news of GM plant closures and sedan scrapping came as a shock, despite it being a move many of us anticipated (feared?) for some time. GM went and pulled a Ford. Naturally, the Twitterati took to social media to blame (or gloat) that the closures and discontinuations were 100 percent the fault of the politician they hate the most, while others, harboring bad feelings about that GM car they owned two decades ago, blamed the move on the shittiness of the 1995 Pontiac Grand Am and Chevrolet Cavalier.

Maybe make a car that’s not so awful and bad and stupid, they tweeted, ignoring the prevailing light truck-focused attitude of American consumers and the legions of buyers lining up for the Silverado, Sierra, Equinox, Terrain, Yukon, Tahoe, Suburban, Escalade, XT5, Acadia, Enclave, Encore, Trax, Colorado, Canyon, and Traverse. Maybe stop being such a bloated maker of dinosaur cars, they added, ignoring the fact that, with this plan, GM is effectively attempting to do exactly that.

What would we do without such commentary?

As this writer harbors his own degree of fondness for the Chevrolet Cruze, one of the vehicles now slated for the chopping block, yesterday brought much sadness (and vomiting, but that’s an unrelated matter). It’s looking increasingly likely that my recent purchase of a stick-shift 2018 Cruze will be the final time I get behind the wheel of a mass-market, manual-transmission sedan. A domestic one, certainly.

What came before the 2018 Cruze? Three other GM sedans, each with a stick. There’s something to be said for comfortable, high-MPG vehicles with incentives galore and not much in the way of value retention.

The Cruze isn’t alone in weathering Mary Barra’s cost-cutting wrath. Joining it on death row are the Impala and Volt (arguably the best happy-medium green vehicle on sale today, albeit one devoid of marketing), the failure-to-launch CT6 and livery darling XTS, and the invisible LaCrosse, which has front seat room like you can’t imagine and a reputation as a retiree’s final vehicle. How long will it be before GM, like Ford, pares down its product offerings to include only sports cars and trucks? I give it three years at the most.

Okay, B&B, you’ve been selected to play the role of savior. One of the aforementioned models can be spared from the product guillotine at your request. Which Chevy, Buick, or Caddy gets the reprieve, and why?

[Image: General Motors]