Theater of the Absurd; The Rise & Fall of the Corvette

The Corvette SUV is actually happening. It sounds like a really bad meme, but it is real. Chevrolet has already confirmed that they view the Corvette as a ‘lifestyle brand’ and therefore wish to expand the Corvette name onto a variety of vehicles. Including SUV’s.

I think we can all agree that the Corvette has strayed considerably from the original vision from the fifties. The original Corvette was a masterpiece, especially given the times. Chevrolet believed that the market was ripe for an affordable sports car. Back in the 1950’s America had fully recovered from the devastation left by the economic crash in the 1930’s. President Franklin Roosevelt’s plan to put a ‘chicken in every pot and a car in every garage’ had come to fruition. Americans had become affluent enough to spend money on ‘luxury’ items, like the Corvette.

What Chevrolet had done was create a car capable of world class performance, at a price that most middle-class Americans could afford. A genius market plan. Let’s fast forward to today. It’s almost hard to believe that the Corvette is just over seventy years old. It’s even harder to believe that the idea of a Corvette SUV was ever taken seriously, much less actually approved. How did this happen? Granted we all understand that corporations are defined by incompetence and bad ideas, but the very idea of a Corvette SUV is very hard to to take seriously. Again, how did this happen?

In order to understand what happened at Chevrolet HQ, we might want to take a look at Ford. It’s no secret that Chevrolet and Ford have been bitter rivals for well over fifty years. About two years ago Ford decided to put a new piece on the board, the Mach-E. In some ways this is all a little deja vu. When the Mach-E was announced it seemed equally as strange. An electric SUV that seemed to struggle with defining itself. The Mach-E featured a neon Mustang logo, and yet doesn’t have the word Mustang anywhere on it. Listening to Ford describe the Mach-E’s position in the Ford lineup was confusing. Ford talked about how the Mustang name was now a ‘lifestyle brand’ and that the Mach-E was part of the ‘lifestyle brand’ but it isn’t actually a Mustang. With that no-mans land of comprehension the Mach-E debuted. Currently, the Mach-E is the second most popular vehicle sold by Ford, coming up just short of the immortal F-150.

Bitter rivals as Chevrolet and Ford may be, that hasn’t stopped either of them from borrowing ideas off one another. The upcoming Corvette SUV is a blatant imitation of the Mach-E. The line from Shakespeare comes to mind, ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’. Currently there aren’t many details of this strange new beast, just that there will be a bloated version of the American classic. Call it the middle age addition.

What Chevrolet and Ford haven’t figured out yet is they have managed to cannibalize their own products. In his book “Bean Counters & Car Guys” former GM CEO Bob Lutz discusses his experiences in dealing with the board of directors at GM wanting to green light really bad ideas. He explained that the issue is that the people making decisions at these big companies aren’t ‘car people’, that they don’t really understand the markets. That the issue lies with foresight, executives at big corporations have a bad habit of not being able to think ten years ahead. They only look ahead a year or so, thinking of the profits they could make.

All of which brings us back to the Corvette SUV. What exactly is GM thinking green lighting such a monstrosity? They’re thinking of Ford and the Mach-E. They’re thinking of Lamborghini and the Urus. Maserati’s Levante. Alfa Romeo. Bentley. Aston Martin. Even Ferrari is building an SUV right now. The whole world is building sporty SUV’s, GM is actually late to the party all things considered. From the perspective of GM, a Corvette SUV makes all the sense in the world.

The only issue with GM’s line of thinking is by applying the Corvette name to an SUV. Even Ford shied away from outright calling the Mach-E a Mustang. What every aforementioned automaker did in building their own sport/luxury SUV was create a brand new category. Lamborghini didn’t call it the ‘Gallorado SUV’ or the ‘Aventador SUV’. As stated, every automaker has simply carved out a brand new spot for their new product. That is the right move, and the sales prove my point. What GM is trying to do is shoehorn in this new SUV into an already existing category, and that is the issue.

In some respects the Corvette SUV feels a bit unnecessary. Chevrolet has already built their very popular Blazer. It seems to me that the smart play would be to expand on the popularity of the Blazer, perhaps create some new variants. The Corvette name has always been about creating world-class performance at an affordable cost. Not that the C8 Corvette is exactly within the reach of most people, but compared to its six figure competitors, the current-gen Corvette is a bargain. Creating an SUV with the Corvette name attached feels superfluous.

The other problem GM will run into is with marketing. Elon Musk is still trying to convince people that X is far better than Twitter. The issue isn’t with the name itself, I’m inclined to agree with Musk, X does have a better ring than Twitter. What Elon Musk is having trouble understanding is that people already have an association in their minds with the name Twitter, not so with X. It will take years before consumers ever associate X with anything, be it good or ill. With the Corvette, GM already has an association built in peoples minds. This will be the largest hurdle for them to overcome. No one associates the name Corvette with an SUV. Convincing people that this will be a product worth their time and attention is going to be a large headache for GM. It will take time, and millions of dollars worth of advertising, and even then it may not work out. Attempting to educate consumers out of a mindset is very difficult, impossible in many cases. I think that GM has severely underestimated the task ahead.

We haven’t seen the Corvette SUV just yet, but if I had to guess I will say that the upcoming vehicle will be a marvel of engineering. I don’t think GM is taking this lightly. It will undoubtedly be an excellent vehicle, loaded with all the latest tech and probably go 0-60 in about 4.0 seconds. Grocery trips will get infinitely more interesting. As stated, I think the issue is going to lie with branding. Attempting to turn Corvette into its own brand will be a very difficult task. Years back Dodge attempted to do something similar, they tried to convince consumers that Dodge, Ram and SRT were completely different brands. The Dodge Viper became the SRT Viper. The Dodge Ram, was simply the Ram. Not that it fooled anyone, all this served to do was baffle consumers and give the PR department a series of massive headaches. Eventually Dodge just gave up. GM hasn’t learned from their mistakes, but they will. Sadly, in order to learn this lesson the Corvette name will end up being dragged through the mud. It’s too bad really. In Dodge’s case it took almost ten years to pull themselves out of the hole they dug themselves into. Their failures cost the company millions of dollars and also lead to the dissolution of the Viper. I hope that history doesn’t repeat itself here, I hope that the Corvette name can survive the oncoming storm. Only time will tell.