If you missed it, General Motors and Chevrolet had original plans for the 2018 Equinox that were nothing like the production vehicle buyers will be perusing on dealership lots. Specifically, the design received such poor remarks from consumer focus groups, designers and engineers went back to the drawing board despite being under a time crunch in development.
In the end, the team completed the program on time and the result is what you see today. However, we’d love to see what consumers called “too bulky”, said housed “odd styling” and was “not compelling enough.” But, if Mark Reuss, GM product chief, has anything to say about the request, it’s a firm no.
Reuss responded to Autoweek’s calls to see what the abandoned design originally looked like on Twitter. Specifically, Reuss tweeted, “Too bad. Ain’t gonna happen.”
We know the original design wasn’t riding on the Chevrolet Cruze‘s D2XX platform, which may have meant the outgoing, in-betweener design was present. And if the Equinox was lamented so much, we can’t imagine what the 2018 GMC Terrain may have looked like.
But, the past is the past, as they say. The 2018 Chevrolet Equinox will likely find more than a few homes as it begins to trickle into dealerships. We found it to be quite good in our initial first test.
Comments
Bunch of crap.
They need to man-up and show it.
I’m still curious to see what it looks like
On the plus side, it didn’t make it to production — unlike vehicles in GM’s past (Aztek, the bulbous Caprice in the 1990s).
On the bad side, whoever designed and thought that the original design was acceptable should have new jobs. There was a lot of time and money wasted.
There’s a nice, in-depth article on Autos of Interest about the 1991 Caprice design if you google it. (And maybe even an Aztek article, come to think of it.)
The Caprice was a nice car in its day, in my opinion, particularly when you consider the constraints that GM’s designers had to work with. And let’s not forget it did give way to the last great Impala SS!
I would rather see designs that swing for the fences and miss, or are a few years ahead of their time, than a bunch of watered down copycat, designed by Mattel crap, like we’re seeing today.
The Aztek… yeah, awful execution.
I was a past 2010 Equinox owner and was waiting to see the new redesigned Equinox. I was slightly disappointed to see how the 2018 Equinox looked. I thought it lost some of the sporty edge appearance and looked pretty much bland. I decided to purchase a 2017 Buick Envision and so far I am very pleased with this vehicle. I am however curious to see the original design of GM’s 2018 Equinox and let us decide if it was really a not so good choice to build it.
Are you aware the Envision is imported from China? That would’ve been a disqualifying factor on the Buick for me.
I’m from Ontario Canada, and I knew that the Envision is built in China before I purchased the car. The Equinox is built in Canada. Would that also disqualify you from ever considering this vehicle?
Absolutely not. Canada isn’t a Communist country seeking world domination that, if they ever succeed, would usher in a very different world than what we’ve known under hundreds of years of Western control.
I have zero issues with purchasing Canadian products or British, French, Italian, German, Japanese, etc. in fact, I seek out products from those places. I don’t have a Canadian built car but did happily buy a considerable amount of Canadian-made furniture.
Canada is like the US as I see it. We are both the children of the same parent; Great Britain. As such, we have a similar culture, belief system, values, etc. When the United States became the dominant nation in the first half of the 20th Century it was as if a parent handed off control of their enterprise to a child. Nothing really changed. The kid continued on pretty much in the same fashion as the parent had. Canada could’ve just as easily taken the baton from Britain or Australia and nothing in the world would’ve changed much.
China as the world’s super power will usher in something entirely different and I think inherently less free and less good. I personally try not to be a participant in making them a stronger nation.
So right now we’re judging a vehicle based on where it’s built? Okay…. has anybody ever think of how the Japanese or Korean think of a U.S. built Camry or sonata?
No, Canada is a good neighbor and doesn’t crush its people under an oppressive, authoritarian, commie regime.
They never showed the original 2004 Buick LaCrosse that was rejected and only one very rare photo of the failed 04 GP showed up for a short while.
Image is hard enough to build with out displaying the dirty laundry.
You may be disappointed but there is a good reason why.
GM needs a leaker like that of which goes on in the Federal Gov’t.
I hope they made the right choice to abandon the “tweener” philosophy. The only reason we have a 2016 Equinox in our garage is because it was much larger than an Escape/CR-V/etc and is great for long trips with our family of 4.
I know the new Equinox isn’t MUCH smaller, but a little here and there does add up to a less spacious feeling vehicle.
Consider that there is 20″ of difference in overall length between the new Equinox and the new Traverse! TWENTY inches. That is a huge gap in Chevy’s crossover portfolio.
GM fortunately has another brand, GMC, and the Acadia. It also shrank and is now only 5″ longer than the old Equinox, so we are leaning in that direction.
I think the last gen was about the size of the Ford Edge. So unless Chevy is thinking about having a Edge-sized crossover then they would gain customers from the last gen equinox.
A new Blazer is reportedly in the works, which would help split the difference between the 183″ Equinox and the 203″ Traverse.