WARREN, MI – Chevrolet, the engine that drives General Motors, storms the Windy City this week with six updated models its leadership hopes will accelerate a budding resurgence for the bow-tie brand.
“Chevy definitely has momentum,” says Paul Edwards, vice president-U.S. marketing at Chevrolet.
At the Chicago Auto Show, which starts with press previews today, Chevy will show a ’17 Trax with updated exterior and interior styling, as well as a new suite of connectivity technology. A pair of ’17 Camaro models will bow in 1LE performance trim, including for the first time a V-6 execution of the track-oriented variant.
Three Midnight Special Editions for the brand’s ’16 pickup line round out the introductions. Blacked-out Z71 versions of the Colorado, Silverado and Silverado 2500 HD target off-road enthusiasts who want to make a styling statement.
The Chicago sextet come on the heels of Chevy pulling the cover off the Bolt electric vehicle and Cruze Hatch in January, and are meant to double down on a product offensive begun last year and aimed at pulling away from rivals Ford and Toyota.
According to WardsAuto data, Chevy sales last year in the U.S. expanded 4.5% to 2.1 million units from 2.0 million in 2014 on the strength of a string of new-product launches. But the brand’s overall share of the U.S. light-vehicle market contracted to 12.2% from 12.4%. One month into 2016, Chevy’s market share is 12.1%, down from 12.8% four years ago.
Rivals Ford and Toyota saw their namesake-brand sales volumes gain 5.3% and 4.5%, respectively. Ford’s market share held its ground at 14.1%, while Toyota’s slipped to 11.8 from 12.1%.
Meanwhile, the overall industry grew a more brisk 5.8% on the strength of truck and SUV demand, a segment that seemingly would have spurred Chevy share gains. The 104-year-old brand also is winning customers from outside the GM family at an industry-leading pace. Opinion of its vehicles are higher than ever, and more than 90% of its product portfolio is new.
As Paul Harvey Said
So for all intents and purposes, Chevy should be gobbling up market share instead of shedding it. Edwards says there’s much more to the story.
“We focus on retail share,” he tells WardsAuto during a preview here of its Chicago introductions. “That’s our focus, growing that going forward.”
Beginning in March of last year, Chevy booked retail share gains every month to finish 2015 up 0.4 percentage points compared with 2014. Last month, the brand added close to two percentage points of additional retail share vs. year-ago, marking the first time it has seen that sort of growth since October 2009.
No fewer than 10 Chevy nameplates grew retail share in January, propelling the brand to 100,349 retail sales and into six figures on that side of the business for the first time in many years.
“That was our performance in 2015, and in 2016 all early indications are that (it) continues to be positive,” Edwards says.
At the same time, GM continues to pull back on fleet sales at every brand as competitors are flooding the rental and commercial markets, a spokesman says.
GM’s fleet sales last year were 22.0% of overall deliveries for the automaker, compared with 24.0% in 2014. Shortly after the automaker exited bankruptcy in 2010, it booked 28.2% of sales to fleet customers.
GM expects Chevy’s fleet sales to finish 2016 at around 20% after trimming 50,000 units, or 11%, last year from rental, traditionally the least profitable channel of the market. In January, Chevy’s rental sales were down 13,000, and GM expects those large year-over-year percentage declines to continue as the year unfolds.
This year, Chevy has a few aces in the hole, too.
Retail sales should get another charge with the two redesigned core products in the Cruze small sedan, which will get a hatchback for the first time, and the Malibu midsize sedan. Those two nameplates combined for 421,456 sales last year.
The Silverado, GM’s best-selling vehicle across all four U.S. brands, just received a midcycle refresh. Given the market’s appetite for trucks right now, the pickup should exceed the 600,554 copies it sold in 2015.
“All the momentum we built in 2015, we’re looking to accelerate as we go into 2016,” Edwards says.
The ’17 Trax slated for Chicago features a more contemporary exterior design, a new premium interior execution, active safety additions such as blindspot detection and forward-collision alert and enhanced connectivity with available Apply CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.
The updates come just 13 months after the car’s introduction to the U.S.
“Trax is in an opportunity segment, with an upgrade that is perfectly timed,” Edwards says, adding that he sees no limit to the market’s insatiable appetite for CUVs.
The Camaro’s 1LE performance package returns for ’17. The track-oriented trim package includes items such as aggressive suspension tuning, Brembo brakes and Goodyear Eagle F1 tires, available Recaro seats and a Performance Data Recorder for video of memorable drives and track-performance feedback.
The 1LE package is new to V-6 models with 1LT and 2LT trims. On V-8 SS models, the package adds an electronic limited-slip rear differential, available Recaro seats and the PDR for the first time.
Midnight Special Editions of Chevy pickups with the Z71 off-road package include black monochromatic side moldings, belt-line moldings, black alloy wheels and black Chevy badges in the front and rear.
