Is it time to kill off the Chevrolet Impala?

6/7/2011

One of the bigger mysteries of the auto industry has been how the Chevrolet Impala has managed to survive. It's a little larger than a Chevy Malibu -- just a tad, really -- and it's been a favorite of rental car fleets, not individual buyers.

So imagine the surprise when Chevrolet announced that the next generation of the Impala will be built at the Hamtramck plant, right alongside Malibu and the Chevrolet Volt wonder car. It took Mark Phelan from the Detroit Free Press to ask the obvious question: Why?

Why build a car that isn't all that popular with individual customers in a segment that seems to have lost its appeal? Ford isn't having any more luck with the full-size Taurus than Chevy has had with the Impala.

"It's in a dying segment," said analyst Rebecca Lindland of IHS Automotive.
"Midsize cars have gotten better and bigger, while large crossovers have
squeezed the market for utilitarian large front-wheel-drive family cars from the upper end."

Makes you wonder about all the promises General Motors made to rewrite the rules, break the mold and altogether become a different kind of car company when it reformed after its bankruptcy reorganization. Here it is, once again, staying in an underperforming segment just so it can say it's there.

Via: USA Today