#Tracker

Today we remind you that Geo existed. Not all that long ago!

This 1994 Geo Tracker looks clean and offers shift-for-yourself fun.

General Motors plans on giving attendees of Auto Shanghai a crossover-themed enema later this month. Buick will introduce the second-generation Encore, as well as its larger GX variant, while Chevrolet focuses on the 2020 Trailblazer and Tracker.

While both models have vanished in the United States, replaced with the more tersely named Traverse and Trax, the Trailblazer and Tracker persist in Asia, Australia, and parts of South America. GM plans on debuting new editions of the pair in Shanghai on April 16th and has issued a teaser image (above) as a reminder — just like it did with the Encore.

When The General created the Geo brand in 1989, the idea was that cars designed and/or built by Toyota, Isuzu, and Suzuki could be sold in the United States under the GM flag (Geos became Chevrolets after 1997). Of all the cars that bore Geo badging, the Tracker stayed in production the longest, when a Suzuki Grand Vitara-based Chevy Tracker could be purchased through 2004.Here’s a frighteningly corroded 1993 Geo Tracker, spotted in a self-service wrecking yard in Joliet, Illinois.

Writing up a post about GM’s activities in Uzbekistan got us thinking about badge-engineered cars. Not just those produced by The General, although there are plenty of examples of those, but all of the just-different-enough models around the world.

What models immediately spring to your mind when someone starts talking about badge-engineering?

Imagine if you will.

The world’s largest and most consistently successful automaker is in deep trouble. Not because of profits, but because of products.

The second-gen Chevrolet Tracker, a badge-engineered version of the Suzuki Vitara and the descendent of the Geo Tracker Suzuki Sidekick sibling, was sold all over the world with many nameplates. It was never much of a big seller in the United States, so this ZR-2 is an unusual Junkyard Find.

During my visit to Vietnam last month, I photographed many Honda Super Cubs, but I always kept one eye open for other interesting vehicles. I spotted a few Toyota Crown Royal Saloons, which was cool, but catching a Geo Chevrolet Tracker at a Hanoi intersection was one of the weirder sightings. Studying the photograph later, I realized that three of the four (non-two-wheeled) vehicles in the frame were GM products that show the breadth of The General’s Asian empire.

The privileged life of the Chinese government employee is coming to an end. The southern metropolis of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) will be using GPS to track usage of the city’s government vehicles, with the aim of preventing their unauthorized personal use. It’s not that the city is trying to curb unnecessary spending.