Buick LaCross Vs. Chevy SSR

[Guest]

First off, I am not knocking the SSR. Any cool concept car to reality is a good move for GM (as far as I am concerned).<P>At the 2000 NAIAS, the SSR and the LaCrosse made their respective concept debuts.<P>People were 20 deep or more around the LaCrosse. Wide eyed men, women and children. I couldn't even get a clean pic of the LaCrosse because people would not leave the stand. So, I went over the the Chevy Display. That year, GM had a new display with the entire GM family (Holden, Opel, etc.) I saw the SSR on the stand. NO ONE WAS ANYWHERE NEAR IT! I looked at it and thought it was an interesting styling exercise but nothing more. This was opening day to the public and there were only a few folks walking around the Chevy display. You had to walk past the Chevy display to have a look at the Buick Display in the back of the GM Display. The big Chevy at the show was a new sort of Truck. I forget the name of it. It wasn't the SSR.<P>So, here is the question: It only took two years to bring the Chevy SSR to light, why don't we have the LaCrosse? Think about it, the SSR with an automatic retracting hard top roof, an aluminium V8-300+HP, full frame, rear wheel drive, 18" wheels? How many SSR's will they make? 20,000/year? I don't know. For how much? $35,000? For goodness sakes, a Park Avenue Ultra sells for $40,000! I think they could make the LaCrosse for about the same price and sell 100,000/year.<P>confused....<BR>Paul pwilkens@herc.com

[Guest]

GMs deep thinkers and study group studiers would disagree with you. Of course, they are the same group of pranksters who fomented the Aztec, and predicted 30K first year sales.

[Guest]

Paul, "I have witnessed the power of Chevrolet, and it is mighty". I have no explanation for what you saw, my experiance is, if there is a friggin Chevy EMBLEM on a turn table it gets more attention than any Buick. Chevy calls the shots at GM because it is the seller. People flock to Chevy because it is GIVEN all the attention by GM. It is simple marketing, Chevy gets GMs best work.

[The Old Guy]

Martinsr ,you are absolutely right , but the funny thing is Chevrolet did not get the machinery to build engines with that Buick did! I worked 37 years for Chevrolet in Flint Mich( Buicktown) and we got old machines from Buick to make engines and they got everything new. Buick wrote off the machines and then we got them and did it all over again.The guys that worked at Buick would tell us how good they had it compared to us, and now both plants are history.