...to slam General Motors? 
I can't believe the total about face at Car and Driver on the Chevy Avalanche. In order to understand this you have to look a three pieces of information. First, the unveiling of the Chevrolet Avalanche at the 2000 Detroit Auto Show in January of 2000. Here is a picture of the Avalanche then, and this is VERY important!
So this is one of many GM press release photos of the Avalanche show car in 2000. Notice - the Avalanche of today looks practically identical to the Avalanche of 2000. In other words, before we move to item two, Car & Driver knew what the Avalanche was going to look like and be.
Now, fast forward to July of 2000 and what Car & Driver had to say about the Avalanche, now that Chevrolet formally announced they are going forward with the project:
http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Cara...vrolet_avalanche.xml?keywords=chevy avalanche
They say the customer is always right. Well, according to the assistant brand manager of the Chevrolet Avalanche, Deborah Michael, the inspiration behind this "reconfigurable" truck came from a customer attending a focus group.
"Cars have pass-throughs," the customer said. "Why can't trucks have the same thing?"
Why, indeed? Turns out they can, and the truck pass-through from bed to cab became the launch pad for Chevy's new vehicle concept. Having a Midgate--a removable body panel between the passenger compartment and load bed of what otherwise would be an extended-cab pickup truck--lends the Avalanche enormous potential flexibility.
Seen for the first time at the Detroit auto show last January, the Avalanche will go into production early next year and go on sale sometime in the spring of 2001...
...will it sell? We think so, because the concept demonstrates a flexibility that enhances both the SUV and pickup-truck characteristics of this peculiarly schizophrenic vehicle.
You can read the rest of the preview yourself. So, when they already KNEW what it looked like and what it could do from the Detroit Auto Show, everything was fine - it will sell, enormous flexibility. We've got good things to say. Aahhh, but let's fast forward to a year later:
http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Cara...July/200107_roadtest_trucktransitionchevy.xml
In his 1975 indictment of modern art, The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe noted that the modern art world had become completely literary; paintings, he said, existed only to illustrate an idea or the theory behind the piece.
Artists were, said Wolfe, engaged less in representing reality in a beautiful or accurate way than they were in competing in a game of intellectual one-upmanship.
This was on our minds every time we drove the half-pickup/half-sport-ute thing called the Chevrolet Avalanche. It's certainly not a calculated insult, as Wolfe would describe modern art, against middle-brow tastes. But the Avalanche is about something...
...it's the idea, man, an idea that we first saw on the Nissan SUT concept a few years ago, although fiscal uncertainties precluded the company from developing it.
The Midgate is the only critical difference between the Avalanche and the herd of four-door pickup trucks that have poured into the market in the past few years. Without that Midgate feature, the existence in Chevy's truck lineup of both this vehicle and a four-door Silverado doesn't make much sense...
But the most damning commentary comes in the story byline and the verdict:
The clever answer to a question only marketing departments have asked...
Highs: Ever so clever. Light on its feet for a fat guy. Inherits Suburban's smooth ride, power.
Lows: Frightens small children, has acre upon acre of cheap gray plastic, you'll have to invent problems for all its clever solutions.
The Verdict: The world's most-versatile pickup, if anybody wants one.
OK, gray plastic wasn't a problem in 2000. The looks weren't a problem in 2000. The size wasn't a problem in 2000. The midgate was great in 2000. It will sell in 2000. Now the nicest thing we can say is, "light on its feet for a fat guy?"
Worse still, another Car & Driver editor dismissed the Avalanche as a novelty just a few days before Motor Trend named it truck of the year.
Hey - Car & Driver can BBBBBLLLLLLOOOOOWWWWWW me and answer the question - how much does Ford or Dodge pay 'ya
The interesting thing to see is how many other companies come out with the senseless novelty called a midgate in the next few years and how much praise and worship they'll get for their ingenunity.
I can't believe the total about face at Car and Driver on the Chevy Avalanche. In order to understand this you have to look a three pieces of information. First, the unveiling of the Chevrolet Avalanche at the 2000 Detroit Auto Show in January of 2000. Here is a picture of the Avalanche then, and this is VERY important!
So this is one of many GM press release photos of the Avalanche show car in 2000. Notice - the Avalanche of today looks practically identical to the Avalanche of 2000. In other words, before we move to item two, Car & Driver knew what the Avalanche was going to look like and be.
Now, fast forward to July of 2000 and what Car & Driver had to say about the Avalanche, now that Chevrolet formally announced they are going forward with the project:
http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Cara...vrolet_avalanche.xml?keywords=chevy avalanche
They say the customer is always right. Well, according to the assistant brand manager of the Chevrolet Avalanche, Deborah Michael, the inspiration behind this "reconfigurable" truck came from a customer attending a focus group.
"Cars have pass-throughs," the customer said. "Why can't trucks have the same thing?"
Why, indeed? Turns out they can, and the truck pass-through from bed to cab became the launch pad for Chevy's new vehicle concept. Having a Midgate--a removable body panel between the passenger compartment and load bed of what otherwise would be an extended-cab pickup truck--lends the Avalanche enormous potential flexibility.
Seen for the first time at the Detroit auto show last January, the Avalanche will go into production early next year and go on sale sometime in the spring of 2001...
...will it sell? We think so, because the concept demonstrates a flexibility that enhances both the SUV and pickup-truck characteristics of this peculiarly schizophrenic vehicle.
You can read the rest of the preview yourself. So, when they already KNEW what it looked like and what it could do from the Detroit Auto Show, everything was fine - it will sell, enormous flexibility. We've got good things to say. Aahhh, but let's fast forward to a year later:
http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Cara...July/200107_roadtest_trucktransitionchevy.xml
In his 1975 indictment of modern art, The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe noted that the modern art world had become completely literary; paintings, he said, existed only to illustrate an idea or the theory behind the piece.
Artists were, said Wolfe, engaged less in representing reality in a beautiful or accurate way than they were in competing in a game of intellectual one-upmanship.
This was on our minds every time we drove the half-pickup/half-sport-ute thing called the Chevrolet Avalanche. It's certainly not a calculated insult, as Wolfe would describe modern art, against middle-brow tastes. But the Avalanche is about something...
...it's the idea, man, an idea that we first saw on the Nissan SUT concept a few years ago, although fiscal uncertainties precluded the company from developing it.
The Midgate is the only critical difference between the Avalanche and the herd of four-door pickup trucks that have poured into the market in the past few years. Without that Midgate feature, the existence in Chevy's truck lineup of both this vehicle and a four-door Silverado doesn't make much sense...
But the most damning commentary comes in the story byline and the verdict:
The clever answer to a question only marketing departments have asked...
Highs: Ever so clever. Light on its feet for a fat guy. Inherits Suburban's smooth ride, power.
Lows: Frightens small children, has acre upon acre of cheap gray plastic, you'll have to invent problems for all its clever solutions.
The Verdict: The world's most-versatile pickup, if anybody wants one.
OK, gray plastic wasn't a problem in 2000. The looks weren't a problem in 2000. The size wasn't a problem in 2000. The midgate was great in 2000. It will sell in 2000. Now the nicest thing we can say is, "light on its feet for a fat guy?"
Worse still, another Car & Driver editor dismissed the Avalanche as a novelty just a few days before Motor Trend named it truck of the year.
Hey - Car & Driver can BBBBBLLLLLLOOOOOWWWWWW me and answer the question - how much does Ford or Dodge pay 'ya
The interesting thing to see is how many other companies come out with the senseless novelty called a midgate in the next few years and how much praise and worship they'll get for their ingenunity.
"CAR and Driver?"
if he has to think that hard to come up with uses for our baby's features!