Detroit's Latest Moves: Old-School or Still Cool?
By Bill Visnic September 9, 2010The new marketing campaign for General Motors Co.'s 2011 Chevrolet Cruze compact car and the first teaser photos of the Chrysler Group LLC's all-new Dodge Durango make us wonder whether the government's work is altogether done at these two Detroit bastions.
Images of Dodge's 2011 Durango were front-and-center news just before the Labor Day holiday and judging from the Durango's wanna-bling flashy grillework and chrome wheels, it appears Chrysler's designers and Italian management still think it's 2002.
The press images show the new Durango in settings ranging from graffiti-laden urban blightscapes to the front gates of an estate, but the overwhelming impression is of a crossover that's trying too hard to be the Cadillac Escalade, itself a past-its-prime symbol of a Detroit fiddling while it burned its way to bankruptcy.
Dodge seems to be hewing to its own longstanding, male-leaning image of its brand for a Durango that's no longer an all-out SUV (it shares a unibody architecture with the new Jeep Grand Cherokee) and for other market-driven and perceptual considerations probably should be trying to downplay suggestions of truck influences.
Cruzing To Mediocrity?
Over at GM, television ads just broke for the Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan, which is GM's most important launch of the year. One disses on a segment stalwart, the Toyota Corolla, while the other has fun with being the kid who doesn't fit in.
The ads are sturdy enough, but hardly game-changing, whimsical though they are. Nor does Chevy's choice of celebrity Tim Allen for the voice-overs signal much in the way of non-standard thinking from the new management at the Renaissance Center.
The sporadically entertaining Allen hasn't exactly faded into solid B-list repute just yet - after all, his familiar Buzz Lightyear voice helped make Toy Story 3 one of this summer's more successful films - but his best work is long behind him. Yes, most are aware of Allen's connections to Michigan and his love for cars, but choosing him to be the voice of the Cruze exposes a GM and its subservient advertising agencies as still being slaves to conservatism and lacking drive for more contemporary - much less risky - thought.
It could be suggested the safety of the Cruze advertising is not an auspicious beginning for the regime of new GM marketing boss Joel Ewanick, but the Cruze creative - and probably Allen's work on the voice-overs - likely was too far completed to have Ewanick, who joined GM in June, shut down production and start anew.
The Cruze ads also could be a product of GM's need to lay low while it waits to pull off its initial public offering. Whatever the case, it's certain the industry is expecting Ewanick's influence to manifest more energy and risk than Chevrolet's delivering for the Cruze campaign - advertising that, like the plainly unimaginative Durango, is a little too much like what was being presented in the past.
Durango images by Chrysler
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Personally, I'm not overly concerned that the Durango has a lot of chrome (the R/T version or whatever the "sport" model will be called will probably avoid it). At least they're taking a stab at building something that should be practical and still reasonably good looking. At the end of the day, though, how much can you do with a machine that needs to be a box to be it's most useful? It's unfortunate that Mopar has passed through a couple of indifferent owners, but at least what's finally coming out the pipeline (Grand Cherokee, Durango) should be competitive in their segment. What attracts me to the Durango is that it isn't trying for the "swoopy curve" look of GM, or the "edgy" look of the recent Fords. I like all of them in this segment, and this just gives me another option that isn't trying to imitate the other guys in terms of appearance.
GM, however continues to look disorganized. They have adopted and dropped how many different approaches to just their TV ads? How many agencies are they going to go through before they finally make up their minds on a campaign? Are they going to try every agency out there? Maybe they want to collect the whole set.
What isn't helping GM is that they seem to have a revolving door for those in charge. If they are making C-level decisions that rapidly, and changing senior staff around more often than some people change their socks, how can they have any sort of continuity? If these executives were so ill-suited to their jobs that they are out in a matter of months, then how could they have been selected in the first place? Are they just picking names out of a hat? "Um, we'll put, uh, *you* in charge. Wait, you're not suitable, out you go. Damn, we're running out of executives". Maybe they need to be introduced to the concept of the "job interview", and perhaps do a bit more due diligence on a candidate than "okay, I see you breathing, you've got the job". It appears that all you need to be executive-for-a-day at GM is a good suit and a pulse. I know that they previously had issues with hanging on to executive teams for far too long, but this swing to the extreme has to stop. They have some very good product now, but the people who design and build these machines needs some kind of continuity at the top.
The Ford Edge, Toyota Venza, Buick Enclave, Nissan Murano, Chevrolet, Equinox, Volkswagen Touareg, Kia Borrego, GMC Terrain, Honda Pilot also come with six-minutes-ago standard or optional chrome grilles and wheels. I think the Subaru Forrester is probably the only crossover in the Durango's market segment that Doesn't; although its grille is on the chromey side.
There are several other areas that you can bash Chrysler-its shabby dealer terminations for example, but so far the products coming out look promising. And shiny.
Perhaps there was neither time nor money to do anything else?
Bill Visnic should be fired for as this article tells nobody anything worth reading. I'm sorry to have wasted my time reading this garbage. This truck looks good inside and out and kudos for dodge for not creating a hideous honda pilot or anything Toyota. Bill probably drives a beige corolla or some other yawnmobile and just gets jealous of people that can afford to drive big powerful vehicles.
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