GM Delays J-Car Replacement After It Bombs In Clinic

Automotive Industries,  July, 1999  by Lindsay Brooke

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General Motors is taking the replacement for its aging J-cars back to the drawing board after a prototype shown to a small group of consumers was widely panned, mainly for its styling.

A ranking company source confirms to AI recent story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that "a model representative of the production vehicle basically bombed" in a consumer clinic. The move will delay introduction of the new model, originally slated for the 2002 model year. That means the current Cavalier and Sunfire platform, already five years old, must soldier on until 2004.

The models are GM's top-selling North American passenger cars, though manufacturing analysts say the automaker loses over $1,000 on each one.

The replacements are part of GM's Delta program, the new global platform intended to consolidate most of the automaker's compact fwd vehicles, plus an all-wheel drive Saturn SUV due in the same time-frame. The company plans to build most of the North American Delta models under its so-called Project Yellowstone, a plan to build small cars profitably using high modular content from suppliers.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Cahners Publishing Company
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group