Here’s Why 2021 Blazer Premier, Traverse Premier No Longer Offer Dual-Clutch AWD
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The 2021 Blazer Premier and 2021 Traverse Premier no longer offer dual-clutch all-wheel drive systems. GM Authority did some digging to find out why.
First, a little background. Previously, the Chevrolet Blazer and Chevrolet Traverse both offered an advanced, dual-clutch AWD system that could split torque front to back, as well as between the two rear wheels. Available for the 2020 model year on both RS and Premier trim levels, the system provided greater control and less braking intervention than the “regular,” less-complex AWD system offered on other trim levels.
Now, although it’s still available on RS trims, the 2021 Blazer Premier and 2021 Traverse Premier no longer offer the advanced dual-clutch AWD system. GM Authority reached out to senior marketing director, Chevrolet SUVs, Brad Franz for an answer as to why General Motors elected to no longer offer the advanced AWD system on the Premier trims in the 2021 model year.
“It was a tough decision,” Franz told GM Authority executive editor, Alex Luft, in an interview. “We looked at reasons for purchase, talked to customers, did our research, and it just wasn’t something that was a real differentiator.”
“Both of our AWD systems are great, so we’re trying to deliver what the customers want and what the customers are really asking for, and this just gives us more opportunity to give what more customers want and remove a little bit of complexity,” Franz added.
In a follow-up, we asked Franz if it was safe to say that 2021 Blazer Premier and 2021 Traverse Premier customers were simply not that interested in the dual-clutch AWD system as compared to those customers buying the sporty RS trim level.
“Sure, you could say that,” Franz responded.
As GM Authority covered previously, the Chevy Blazer RS has been a hit with customers, showing impressive sales strength, while also pulling in considerable conquest sales.
Blazer, Traverse Sales - Q3 2020
| MODEL | Q3 20 / Q3 19 | Q3 20 | Q3 19 | YTD 20 / YTD 19 | YTD 20 | YTD 19 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CHEVROLET BLAZER | +45.17% | 29,486 | 20,312 | +103.25% | 71,356 | 35,107 |
| CHEVROLET TRAVERSE | -23.14% | 31,603 | 41,116 | -25.97% | 84,012 | 113,491 |
| TOTAL | -0.55% | 61,089 | 61,428 | +4.56% | 155,368 | 148,598 |
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You sure he didn’t say “We were looking at ways to increase the cost /profit ratio and figured no one would notice or care, but we still offer it on the RS trim so we can still say we offer it in literature. Even though the crossover is now cheaper to make, we decided against lowering the price”.
Or was he just thinking it?
So in other words, they’re running a business effectively?
Absolutely,
Forty years of cost cutting has done wonders for GM!
If that’s your definition of effective, they’re the most effective business in the industry.
Bare Minimum Motors?
There’s a reason why it’s called General Motors. It’s because even in its names it’s average. They’re not going to go above expectations (except with the C8 and Escalade) but they’re also not going to go below expectations. It’s general. However general also means affecting or concerning all or most people which they did both. They helped our economy however they also ruined lots of people’s lives all over the world but especially in Flint, Michigan environmentally and financially.
Automakers are looking for a number of ways to hold down price increases.
Most people buying this model don’t even know what duel clutch even is.
If this was a off road vehicle or a true performance vehicle it would be needed. But the standard AWD system works fine in the snow and wet and that is all that matters to nearly all buyers here.
A duel clutch is when 2 clutches dress up in armor and fight to death in the arena
Or when you’re wearing two strings of pearls.
Taking things out nobody really notice so they can build them cheaper Ha.
If one WANTS complexity, one has several German brands to choose from.
O the marketing director told you that, Ha, Ha, HA !!
And he talked to the CUSTOMER did he ? Ha, Ha, HA !!
Ill help you all out here before others brain wash you to GM is ” Good Enough ” !
The CUSTOMER the MARKETER talked to is the DEALERSHIP !!!
It costs the DEALERSHIP more money to stock this vehicle !
Sure I AGREE that the customer probably does not notice the difference here, BUT the SAME person or people here that are ALWAYS saying GM needs to get more sold so manufacturing prices can go down, is NOW saying DONT PUSH the VERY thing !
This is in the XT6, I would love it that GM just said ” we no longer need to push those and bring the price down, because that was a flop making the XT6 FWD” And GM is making the XT6 RWD, but something tell me its just done altogether !
Money, Money, Money !!
Cheap, CHEAP, CHEAP !!!!
And there IS a difference, you need to sell it !
Still not a RWD/AWD, so you could not sell it to me, or the other millions of REAL luxury buyers !
enjoy
Cost cutting. Hopefully they added value elsewhere.
Real reason why the 2021 Chevrolet Blazer Premier no longer offers the dual clutch transmission is simple; GM is being GM and it’s simply cheaper to use a 9-speed automatic.
This article has nothing to do with the transmission.
How dare you interrupt peoples’ rage with facts!
Bottom line, they did it to save money for those damn electric vehicles! GM’s explanation is total BS!
You would think that the time to realize that this is not a feature that people would pay extra for is before you do the R&D to develop it.
YOU WILL NEVER get a job at GM!!!!!
I have no problem with discontenting if the price is dropped accordingly, make what is lost an option if need be, but that does not seem to be the case here.
Andrew,
Correct again !
It would have been nice not to have wasted all that money !
But again, I think all of this had to do with Cadillac !
Look at all the cash Cadillac burned and WE got NOTHING for it !
This FWD -RWD-AWD-RWD-LWD System,
Black wing V8,
entire omega platform
This was the GM chasing the foreign still yet again, never quite to succeed , and wasting more.
This very thing is why me for one, are NOT buying the so called EV leadership GM is boasting.
If GM had the true ability to lead on anything, why aren’t they , and why will it be 2 to 5 years to get anything close to what the competition has available today.
This is just one more GM ” we can do that ” waste the money trying, kill the whole thing, move on , and do THE SAME THING OVER AGAIN !!
It’s exactly that kind of weasel word answer that has cost GM pretty much 100% of their credibility with actual intelligent buyers. Hey Mr. Marketing -just because you can’t tell an equinox from an x5 doesn’t mean ALL your customers are that stupid. Kindly stop offending our sensibility and sense of smell with your blatant BS.
And, it’s this incredible short sighted whipsawing douchery that ensures they never attain any kind of status or reputation for product. Think of the time cycle here…. Chevy engineers introduce an awd system that finally shows a glimmer of competence. It takes the 1st model year for auto enthusiasts and “influencers” to notice. Casual conversations with non enthusiast buyers ensue and they begin to think they should consider giving it a look when their 2 year lease on the subaru expires. Another year passes. Product already dead and predictably replaced with cheaper less capable system. Potential buyer not impressed and heads away to begin a lifetime of casual conversations with others about what lame posers those gm guys are…
Another reason i refuse to advise friends to shop GM….they always end up making me look bad.
100 %
Fleetwood Mack
You are 100% correct !
Enthusiasts in a Traverse? Haha. Most (figure 95%) of the shoppers in CUV’s have no clue on which drive orientation their wheels are, including the Germans.
What do you think happens? It pulls up to the local car meet “Hey, there is a new minivan, oh no that is new Taverse, it has a twin disc dual clutch AWD system”. Get out of here, I am a big car guy and well versed in teh auto industry as I constantly keep up and I give zero F’s about which drive wheel a CUV has and how it operates. Give it one across the board that does a decent job and distributing power and saving MPG and make it reliable and call it a day. No need to over complicate it or drive up costs by having multiple choices in a vehicle like that.
WOW you pegged it…… To bad gM missmanagment cant listen….
GM decontents the Premier . What makes it different than a lower level Blazer . They.re cheating their customers again . Maybe the price of plastic is going up in Mexico so they needed to cut where the customer won,t see it . GM needs new management soon .
We purchased a 2021 Traverse Nov. 7 2020 it has been in and out of the service dept. 5 weeks! Now right back in for steering problems. What is going on with chevrolet workmanship?
GM missmanagment made the “It was a tough decision,” that GM customers really dont care if there cars run or not….
I bought a 2020 Traverse AWD around the same time, I just got it out of the service, it has 3k miles on it. The AWD blew up they had to put a new transferase in it. About 4 weeks ago i was giving it gas in AWD in 4inches of slush and the awd blew out. 2wd still worked… but that was sad… i think in 2018 they switched from an AAM tcase to something From Korea… i could be wrong… i know the new tcase at least has a Made In Korea actuator on it. I have the Traverse back now, and the AWD works. They also had to do an alignment to it at around 1100 miles as it was swaying all over the road, front tires were fighting each other. i dont even drive this thing off road.
from many years of buying cars, I’ve noticed that GM constantly tinkers with what features are included with various trim levels from year to year. Really requires you to check all the details to make sure a specific feature you like was moved from standard to option, or moved to the next trim level, or is just no longer available. The problem only gets worse when these cars get out on the used car market, where it’s more difficult to determine which options are on a car – can’t always go by just the trim level, and you can’t see the difference between two AWD systems. Unless you know all the option codes and look at the sticker that shows what is on that car. GM would score a lot of customer loyalty points if expectations for a specific model and trim would remain consistent or improve over time, not de-content the cars by removing features.
I thought the High Country was and still is the only way to get that rear end in a Traverse…
Why couldn’t they just make it standard across the board, from the start? It would’ve been a selling point to set it apart from most of its other competitors. Sure, a lot of people who buy AWD crossovers may not exactly be gear heads, but how hard would it have been to give the dealers a bit of basic, easy-to-understand instruction, and use it as an upsell? After all, if someone’s interested in AWD, it’s probably because they have at least some understanding of how it helps to add traction. It can’t be that hard to teach a car salesman to make a product look better by simply explaining to an interested guest, “The new AWD system for the 2018 Traverse can send the engine power to each of the back wheels separately, if you ever need it.” I can see several types of people being simply blown away by such an idea. And it was an all-new system for an all-new generation of a pretty successful vehicle.
But if they found it wasn’t a huge factor that drove people to High Country models, why not just go, “Screw it. Pop that thing in all of ’em. We’ve already spent the money on developing it, and it’ll shut up a few of our critics.” Geesh… 😒
Then Nissan uses traction control software to do the same thing, says that their AWD system can do it on all 4 wheels, cuts cost $500, gains an MPG from the reduced vehicle weight and reduced driveline losses, and won’t cost you $3000 in 10 years when the electro-hydraulic pump pack fails. A number of the diffs that came out the first year had to be replaced due to a manufacturing problem.
It’s not anything unique anyway, it’s the Eaton IntelliTrac eLSD used by multiple vendors. I have a suspicion that their deal with Eaton was up for renegotiation and they didn’t get as good of a deal this time around.
If Chevy want to use TC tech to accomplish the same thing, that’s fine. But in reality, they won’t. They’ll just continue to go “conventional.” It’ll just be AWD that kicks on the back wheels whenever some computer says you need ’em, same thing you can now get on a Camry, until the next big thing rolls around. Then they’ll add some kind of upgrade that’s one step behind the newest thing, and say they’re doing it to be “competitive,” while the competition steps up. It’s a vicious cycle.
And, too, in reality, very few things are unque among car brands, these days. There’s also not much that gets introduced to the automotive industry that doesn’t have manufacturer problems at the start. You’re probably right about the vendors, now you mention it, but this is such a frequent thing with GM. The Traverse is a good product, overall, but a lot of other three-row classmates at least go out of their way to advertise their non-unique features as if they actually WERE unique. “Twin clutch AWD” fits that bill just fine. And rather many customers know the ins and outs or not, it’s something that would benefit them to have, regardless.
OK class today’s lesson in how to interpret and understand GM… When they say “It was a tough decision,” you know a bad decision is being made and what ever they say can be ignored. What “It was a tough decision,” means is we have figured out another away to cheapen our product again, with no thought to the consequences….
Yup way to go GM, blame it on the customer. Real smart. Trail blazer or traverse its the same care, one without a third row. Easy to design one car and kinda make it two cars. Nothing innovative going on here. I am a Chevy owner, and suffered through two Traverses. Never made it to 100,000 miles without major engine repairs. Now they want to add a diesel engine to the Traverses line up, What!, I guess their looking at the European market.
Trailblazer and Traverse are very different. This is the Blazer, not the new style Trailblazer. The Balzer vs Traverse may be similar with the 3rd row difference. The Trailblazer however is their simpler 3-cylinder model that fits between Trax and Equinox.
Yup way to go GM, blame it on the customer. Real smart. Trail blazer or traverse its the same car, one without a third row. Easy to design one car and kinda make it two cars. Nothing innovative going on here. I am a Chevy owner, and suffered through two Traverses. Never made it to 100,000 miles without major engine repairs. Now they want to add a diesel engine to the Traverses line up, What!, I guess their looking at the European market.
Dual clutch AWD is not needed in a Chevy and people do not want to pay for it. But it’s nice it is offered in the RS trim contributing to its sportiness. I’d also like adaptive suspension but that’s for Buick and Cadillac.