#ChevroletBlazer

GM churned out examples of the full-size, two-door Blazer well into the ‘90s, before relegating the nameplate to its littler brother. Traditionalists frothed at the time, just as we are now after viewing the 2019 Blazer. And the circle continues.

For ’94, Chevy offered the Blazer in a couple of different flavors. You know my pick, of course – base 5.7-liter V8 engine, 4WD, and a big ol’ baseball bat of a manual shifter sticking out of the floor.

The new Chevrolet Blazer is the hot-ticket auto creating the most buzz right now, but it’s also generating mild controversy. Many who remember the original were more than a little disappointed seeing the name affixed to a unibody crossover with front-drive origins. While mainstream shoppers aren’t likely to mind, former Blazer owners aren’t thrilled with General Motors’ decision.

It’s probably more financially viable for the automaker to do it this way. GM can definitely serve most customers for less money. But you get the sense that they’ve watered down the automotive broth to stretch the C1XX platform as far as it will go. At least it means more jobs for Americans, though, right? Well, not exactly.

It seems there were no shortage of comments left on our 2019 Chevrolet Blazer story after it went up last night. Sorry for keeping you all up, feverishly pounding those keys. But could there not be? The decision to resurrect a fairly fondly remembered name and apply it to a less-rugged vehicle was bound to spark controversy. Twitter, that bastion of right-thinking hot takes, was aflame.

You can’t always get what you want, some might say. The middle ground in Chevy’s crossover space is too lucrative to field anything other than what we got. Sure, the model isn’t what us die-hards hoped for, they’d say, but a two-door, body-on-frame SUV just doesn’t fly, and the development costs and resulting MSRP would place it outside the hole Chevy intended to fill.

Screw that, others might say. Ever heard of the Bronco? No one shoved a .38 in the small of Chevy’s back, forcing it to dust off the Blazer name for this particular model.

General Motors has pulled the wraps off its 2019 Chevrolet Blazer, a vehicle that in no way reminds anyone of past vehicles bearing that heritage-steeped nameplate.

Sporting two rows of seating, an edgier profile than either its smaller Equinox sibling or its hulking Traverse big brother, and two engine choices, the Blazer’s main competition seems to be the Ford Edge, rather than its three-row GMC Acadia platform mate.

General Motors enlivened the perpetually grim Twitterscape Wednesday with a tweet depicting what Corey Lewis calls a “pure trust fund” gentleman wearing natty duds. After the initial discussion surrounding the nature of the tweet, your author, Chris Tonn, and Lewis attempted to pin down the particular hue of this fellow’s outerwear.

Celery. Pistachio pudding. 1960s motel bathroom. All applicable.

But wait, that wasn’t the purpose of the tweet! Surely this can’t have something to do with a gaping hole in the Chevrolet brand’s crossover lineup?

Oh man, they even got the paint right. Who knew retro design cues could feel so authentic?

Hold on, that’s not the upcoming midsize Chevrolet Blazer — it’s a 1979 model (in alluring Cheyenne trim). Obviously, General Motors expects the public to hold fond memories of the Blazers of yesteryear, otherwise it wouldn’t affix the brawny, rugged name to its newest crossover. Yes, crossover. The Tahoe, which replaced the two-door K5 Blazer back in the mid ’90s, remains the top choice for drivers looking for bowties and body-on-frame construction.

However, there’s plenty of space between the newly downsized Equinox and sprawling Traverse. Into the breach drives the Blazer.

After numerous sightings in the wild, clothed in deceptive padding to hide the bodywork, Chevrolet’s midsize SUV is approaching its final form. Sharing a platform with the newly downsized GMC Acadia, the latest incarnation of the vehicle looks a little more like an upscale crossover and a lot less like the rugged Blazer from which it draws its rumored moniker.

Slipping into the Chevy lineup between the Equinox and Traverse, the relaunched Blazer should target other family crossovers in the Goldilocks segment — competing with the likes of the Ford Edge and Nissan Murano, among others. Spotted as a pair of test vehicles, the Chevrolets were reportedly sporting the Acadia’s 2.5-liter LCV inline-four and 3.6-liter LGX V6.

General Motors has been repeatedly busted testing a vehicle that should be Chevrolet’s next midsize SUV. The automaker has been restructuring its model portfolio to fulfill the desires of today’s crossover-obsessed consumer and needs a model between the Traverse and soon to be downsized Equinox.

Recent spy shots of a moderately camouflaged test vehicle seem to allude to dimensions similar to GMC’s Acadia, refuting theories surrounding earlier photos that it might be the redesigned 2018 Traverse.

The Olds Bravada started out as an Oldsmobized Chevy Blazer and ended (along with Oldsmobile itself) as an Oldsmobated Chevy Trailblazer. They show up in Colorado junkyards in startlingly large numbers. Who bought Bravadas? For that matter, who bought Isuzu Ascenders? Anyway, because the idea of an Oldsmobile-badged midsize SUV made about as much sense as an Oldsmobile-badged cruel-parody-of-a-luxury-car J-body and is thus sort of interesting, I’ve finally decided to do a Bravada Junkyard Find. We’ll return to the usual Pontiac-badged Daewoos soon enough.