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The Drive posts a scathing review of the 2019 Silverado


Anthony

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http://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/24472/2019-chevy-silverado-test-drive-review-gms-new-full-size-pickup-truck-is-an-all-around-letdown

 

Ugly styling, an unoriginal interior, and middling performance add up to two and a half tons of disappointment.

...Chevy half-assed the new Silverado. GM's franchise pickup truck is the most disappointing "all-new" vehicle I've driven this year. Aside from the utter face-plant of its styling, this Silverado reeks of cost-cutting and profit-padding. After two weeks in the Chevys embrace, I kept imagining a cigar-clouded boardroom atop GM headquarters in Detroit in which top executives said,

 

The Silverado is good enough. Most of our loyal owners arent even looking at Ford or Ram. We own these guys. And lets face it, if we were relying on profits from the Bolt, Volt, Dolt, whatever, wed all be out of work. Were going to mint money with this truck, and nobodys going to know the difference.

 

Edited by Anthony
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Heard this on Autoline Daily several days back. The new Ram was recently voted “2019 Truck of Texas.” No one expected Ford to enter the yearly competition since the F-series redesign is still a few years off, but everybody was surprised that GM didn’t enter the new Silverado or Sierra. Behind-the-scenes talk was GM knew their new truck didn’t match up to the Ram so they bowed out of the race. Interesting I thought.

 

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Its one review of course, but GM just got excoriated for essentially phoning it in. And from what I have seen with this truck, I cant say I entirely disagree. I cant believe they arent using the 10 speed transmission and more models. Thats pretty ridiculous.

Edited by tbone
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Honestly, I like the exterior design. Its bold yet similar enough to the styling of other full size trucks. We shall see how it resonates, if it doesnt, GMCs front end design will cater to the conservative GM crowd. The interior, however, is a let down.

Our Billion parts delivery driver HATES it. He said that 5 times in 2 minutes and he's a die hard GM guy.

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Its not just one review, but a few others are also stating that Chevy did "just enough", but certainly didn't move the bar or dethrone the F-150 king. I think Car and Driver was probably the most decent one overall. And their new 2.7L I-4 doesn't seem to be as fuel efficient as they had hoped,

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I've seen it at the auto show and one on the road. I do think the exterior looks ok - at least they actually changed it this redesign compared to the past ones, where it looked almost the same. The front end certainly has some design oddities (I'm looking at you, little fin winglet things on the bumper corners!).

 

The interior is the biggest letdown. It looks too similar to what it replaced, and the materials are just bad (well, maybe not bad, but they aren't anything to write home about, especially when you go sit in the Ram).

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In the grand scheme of things, when was the last time GM

actually did something with their full-sized pickup that actually made a threat to Ford? Seems like theyve been phoning in it for the past 20 years or so when it comes to styling/power etc with it. Same with their full sized SUVs-very little competition and the last redo seemed earth shattering because they basically replaced/upgraded a product that dated back to the 1990s or so. Then the New Expedition came along and made them go oh crap.

 

At least Dodge/Ram has been doing something with its trucks that move the ball forward.

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The most vehement complaints center on the low-grade interior materials and restricted availability of the 10-speed transmission.

 

Is GM deliberately "handicapping" Chevrolet to give prospective customers a reason to buy a GMC pickup?

Edited by grbeck
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The most vehement complaints center on the low-grade interior materials and restricted availability of the 10-speed transmission.

 

Is GM deliberately "handicapping" Chevrolet to give prospective customers a reason to buy a GMC pickup?

.

You'd think it would be the other way around to handicap GMC and eventually shutter the marquee to streamline GM. Once GMC gets closed, make Chevrolet Trucks available to all dealers that sold GMC trucks and get rid of their SUV's melding them into Chevrolet for the lower end and Buick for the upper end.

Edited by twintornados
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.

You'd think it would be the other way around to handicap GMC and eventually shutter the marquee to streamline GM. Once GMC gets closed, make Chevrolet Trucks available to all dealers that sold GMC trucks and get rid of their SUV's melding them into Chevrolet for the lower end and Buick for the upper end.

 

You say that like GM is smart. Seriously, that should have been done as part of bankruptcy, but GM wasn't intelligent enough to do that.

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The most vehement complaints center on the low-grade interior materials and restricted availability of the 10-speed transmission.

 

Is GM deliberately "handicapping" Chevrolet to give prospective customers a reason to buy a GMC pickup?

 

The interior is exactly the same in the Sierra, though. Same materials.

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.

You'd think it would be the other way around to handicap GMC and eventually shutter the marquee to streamline GM. Once GMC gets closed, make Chevrolet Trucks available to all dealers that sold GMC trucks and get rid of their SUV's melding them into Chevrolet for the lower end and Buick for the upper end.

 

They don't want to shutter GMC. They're convinced they need 2 brands because GMCs bring in higher ATPs so they have to handicap Silverado to some degree.

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You say that like GM is smart. Seriously, that should have been done as part of bankruptcy, but GM wasn't intelligent enough to do that.

 

You'd think they would have learned from killing Pontiac, Olds and Saturn or from seeing Ford kill Mercury. I know they kept Buick because of China but the only reason for keeping GMC that makes any sense whatsoever is the dealer network.

 

I wonder how many people cross shop Silverado and Sierra and pit the dealers against each other?

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They don't want to shutter GMC. They're convinced they need 2 brands because GMCs bring in higher ATPs so they have to handicap Silverado to some degree.

Exactly.

It's a contrived situation that GM maintains to justify multi-sales channels.

I'd love to be in a GM planning meeting to hear how their thinking works........

 

"One Ford" must have frightened the crap out of GM in BK, their main competitor

was showing GM and the government just how unnecessary all those extra brands are.

Edited by jpd80
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Well, it's a "Greater Made Chevy". Isn't that what GMC stands for? :-P

 

Yeah, I think Ford did the right thing with expanding the F150 line instead of keep trying to make a Lincoln. That is a move that I think many on the BON are forgetting. All the bitching about cars going away...

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Exactly.

It's a contrived situation that GM maintains to justify multi-sales channels.

I'd love to be in a GM planning meeting to hear how their thinking works........

 

"One Ford" must have frightened the crap out of GM in BK, their main competitor

was showing GM and the government just how unnecessary all those extra brands are.

 

I see this all the time in business cases. I'm sure if you look at the GMC business case by itself it makes sense and is positive. Likewise the Silverado business case.

 

However, what they should be doing is looking at the business case of merging them to one brand and comparing that to the other two separate business cases. Even if combining them results in some loss of sales (which I question but it is possible) you have a quite significant cost savings and you don't have to hamstring Silverado.

 

The issue is what to do with the dealer network - specifically Buick/GMC standalone dealers. The simple solution is to allow them to sell Chevy branded trucks and utilities (or the reverse - keep GMC and let the Chevy dealers sell GMC trucks and utilities).

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