#2014ChevroletImpala

While the all new 2014 Impala is impressing reviewers, like Consumer Reports calling it this year’s highest scoring sedan, General Motors has decided to keep the outgoing Impala as a low cost option for fleet customers until 2016. According to Automotive News, the automaker had originally planned to keep the old Impala, branded the Impala Limited, in production for rental operators as well as government and corporate fleet customers, into next year. “The Impala Limited has done extremely well. Our fleet customers know the car and like it,” a GM spokesman said last week. “It’s a business opportunity that we want to continue to fulfill.”

The continued production of the Impala Limited means that the Oshawa Car Assembly plant in Ontario will remain open until at least 2016.

“New York, New York, a helluva town. The Bronx is up but the Battery’s down.”

New York City. The World’s Capital. It has something for everyone and everything for someone. One can travel the globe and never find better restaurants, theatre, shopping, museums, or music.

It’s also an awful, awful place to drive.

Parking is non-existent or hellaciously expensive. Taxi drivers show no concern for surrounding vehicles, changing lanes at will. Pedestrians leap out in front of vehicles–sometimes sober, but most of the time not. And the traffic! Sitting in the Lincoln Tunnel for ninety minutes “just because” is a daily occurrence. What vehicle can survive such a test?

Enter the 2014 Chevrolet Impala.

I have this feeling that our most impressionable automotive years are our high school years. Maybe it’s because I was so eager to drive that I noticed anything with wheels. Maybe it’s that auto shop class where I got to wrench on a Wankel (that sounds wrong doesn’t it?). Whatever the reason, it seems many of my brand and model name identities were formed in the mid 1990s. For me, “Impala” doesn’t conjure up the W-Body abomination GM has been selling for the past 13 years. Instead “my” Impala has always been the 1994-1996 Caprice Impala SS with the 5.7L Corvette LT1 engine. This is my benchmark on which every Impala must be judged.

Good news for Canada’s manufacturing sector; GM has confirmed plans to add a third shift to the Oshawa Flex Line to help meet demand for the 2014 Chevrolet Impala.

Earlier today, Derek expressed his hope that we’d be seeing the Impala t the show in a color other than black. No such luck. Live shots from Julie Hyde and commentary from Byron Hurd below.