I say the Aveo is DEEEEAAAD!

From Motor Trend
B-Segment Surprise: 2011 Chevrolet Viva

General Motors said Friday morning, 10 days after President Obama announced new fuel mileage standards and three days before the automaker declares bankruptcy, that it will build a new small car in an idled U.S. plant.

Thursday afternoon, retiring GM Vice Chairman/Product Chief Bob Lutz showed the Automotive Press Association a chart with recently produced and near-future product names in tiny letters. Most were known to the automotive press. One was not: Chevrolet Viva.

[omitted paragraph concerning anti-auto industry, anti-UAW frippery spewed from Jerry Flint's gaping asshole of a mouth.]

The reopened plant will be a UAW shop, of course. GM says in its release that the retooled plant will have capacity of 160,000 per year, building a combo of small and compact vehicles. GM will determine the sight selection in the future. Lake Orion, Michigan, Wilmington, Delaware or Shreveport, Louisiana, all have potential.

What about the small car? It's not the Chevrolet Spark. That car, a four-door hatchback version of the Beat two-door hatch concept (which used a name Honda still owns), is on an old Daewoo platform. It cost GM some cash to beef up the body structure after it had been designed to meet U.S. and European crash standards.

The new b-segment small car and c-segment compact to be built in the U.S. must be on new, flexible platforms that could be assembled at any GM plant in the world that builds on those same platforms.

The next-generation Chevy Aveo is set for the 2011 model year. If the new car has the kind of design excellence Lutz claims GM has rediscovered, it should be a serious competitor for Ford's 2011 Fiesta. In that case, the Aveo name will do it no favors, so "Viva" seems likely (the moniker dates back to a 1960s Vauxhall and has recently been used on compact GMs in Russia and Australia), if too directly influenced by the Ford's Spanish name.

Building a Chevy Viva in a UAW plant will cost more than building the Aveo in South Korea. It should be much more stylish and upmarket compared with the current Aveo. Chevy would have the advantage over Ford of a more ready supply of its competitor if the b-segment, fueled also by the coming Fiat 500 and a small Dodge, takes off in the next few years.

GM says about 67-percent of GM cars and trucks sold in the U.S. are built in the U.S. (remember, this doesn't include Canadian or Mexican NAFTA production) and that the number will rise to about 70 percent with the addition of the 160,000-unit b-/c-segment plant. An important fact as GM goes into Chapter 11 with help from the federal government, which wants to preserve U.S. jobs.

And addition of a relatively high-volume b-segment car won't hurt when the 2012-16 Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations kick in.

What about the c-segment car to be built in the same factory? GM already has committed its Chevy Vega/Cavalier/Cobalt factory in Lordstown, Ohio, to production of the 2011 Chevy Cruze. And Volt is slated for Hamtramck, Michigan. That leaves the 2012 Chevy Orlando MPV and a 2012 Buick compact (go ahead, call it "Skylark"), both to be built on the same platform as the Cruze. Either is likely, although side-by-side production with the Cruze in Lordstown would make more sense for the Buick.

From Jalopnik.com
2011 Chevy Viva To Breath [sic] Life Into GM Compact Segment

Nearly Ex-Product VP for GM Bob Lutz has revealed plans for the American-built 2011 Chevy Viva, a replacement for the Korean-built Aveo, which will offset CAFE requirements while being a car Americans might actually buy.

Yes, yes, GM filed for bankruptcy this morning, but such nonsense doesn't stop the march of new product, and competitive product is the only way GM is going to get out of the hole they've dug for themselves. The 2011 Chevy Viva hopes to erase the memory of years, and years, and years of truly terrible compact cars from GM (Geo Metro, Pontiac Lemans, Chevy Vega...) with a platform flexible enough to be built anywhere in GM's shrinking empire and stylish enough to be more than an also-ran. Lutz claims the new car will take on the B-car segment, and the Ford Fiesta in particular, with a level of competency rarely seen from GM in this segment. We expect to see the car get a version of the Chevy Cruze's 1.4 liter inline-four, though probably turbo-free like the version in the Chevy Volt. The car will be built in a reawakened GM plant somewhere in US, and was probably the car intended for Chinese assembly, but brought back as part of negotiations for UAW concessions.

thewalrus wrote:GM is just really really screwed. Even if that car is incredible, the fact that it has to go up against the good will that cars like the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Nissan Versa, and even the Ford Focus have basically condemns it from the get go. Unless they can undercut that cometition on price so significantly that people are willing to take the risk.

1300ZUK wrote:

thewalrus wrote:GM is just really really screwed. Even if that car is incredible, the fact that it has to go up against the good will that cars like the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Nissan Versa, and even the Ford Focus have basically condemns it from the get go. Unless they can undercut that cometition on price so significantly that people are willing to take the risk.

not necessarily, assuming everything goes as plan, Toyota could be sort of fucked and if Honda is Smart, I almost see them getting out of the strictly IC/Gas engine domain and focusing on small alternative energy cars.

Versa really isn't that nice, Fit isn't what it was when it first hit the states, yaris is about as exciting as vanilla ice cream (along with the rest of Toyota's line up)

I think/hope customers go back to the domestics if everything works out perfectly and the upcoming cars are hits and not misses.

1300ZUK wrote:Its still a South Korean designed car with maybe some Opel oversight. You know kind of like a LeMans

I ain't holdin' my breathe, an aveo by a different name is still a pile of garbage.