Last Friday I am airing up the tires on my wifes Envoy after a few hours on the beach fishing with the family when what do I see but a fairly new Ford Escape pull of the road and head down the trail to the beach. My turns to me and says did you see that, how come GM does not make a lower priced 4x4 like that? That is why you don't sell alot of Terrains. Even she gets it.

 

Sadly, most on the forum see this problem, but the high paid geniuses at GM do not.

If I sold off the Blazer right now and decided to get something new, I would be forced to go a different route than GM. Everything is TOO big and TOO expensive. Even the Escape is too large for my taste, even though it's only slightly larger than a Blazer.

I believe there is still a market for the small-size SUV, but they've been forced to use other alternatives. Seems you can either get a hatchback car (too small, poor winter driving) or a large SUV like a Terrain or Escape (too large for my taste, not visually pleasing).

I also agree that if GM is trying to compete with the Escape, their price point on the Terrain is far too high. And if they aren't trying to compete, then they're just stupid.

 

At the dealership I work for we have had many a discussion about this amongs ourselves and with some GM trainers. All we get is we will pass along our thoughts but never hear anything back from GM or when we ask the trainers they are like " I have not heared anything yet". We tell them that we are losing customers to the entry level, lower priced suv 4x4 market and they just don't care I guess. We had a training class on the the rear locking diff. selling points one day and the class started off with a film clip of a person surf cast fishing. I said there you go that is the customer we are loosing unless they can afford to pay $40,000 plus for a full size you cant get there with a Terrain or an Acadia. I then told him that I lost a sale to Jeep because the guy was a surf cast fisherman and to make matters worse he was retired from GMAC and would get the Terrain dirt cheap. SMH

 

Well they had the geo/chevy tracker but at the time most everybody went with the larger blazer/jimmy for just about the same price.

 

If we complain too much they might make an HHR 4x4.

 

Looks like you're not the only one that thought of it!







Perhaps I can add it to my list of renders I want to do!

 

Well the Terrain is basically just a re-badged Saturn Vue (my fiance has an 07 Vue). On the bright side at least the Terrain Looks to have ditched the Honda J engine! But yeah its totally a CAR that just happens to be kinda shaped like a SUV.

 

If you go by sales figures it's obvious that traditional SUVs, especially small 4x4s, is a dwindling market and has been for some time. The makers read their numbers and decided that off-roaders wanted trucks as their weapon of choice. In business it's all about P&L figures unless a very viable market resurges such as the muscle car genre, and who knows how long that will last.

 

while a little off topic...we had an HHR it was terrible...thank god it was only a lease.
cowl leaked into car on 3 occasions!! electrically the car was shot needless to say. seat broke on driverside. the fix we had at the dealership for leak was to take what looked like a handful of resin and pack it on...looked like crap that was frozen and stuck on the car.
either i just got a lemon or something. never again for an HHR.
and to top it off the car got full of mold!!! i had to basically have a tantrum in service area for them to re-carpet the car....and that was with the GM rep that finally showed up.

and to top it off he said....."i dont see what the big deal is we keep fixing the car?" thats when i lost it.
whoooaaaa....ok sorry for the rant...i hated that car.

 

I had one for a test drive and I ruined that thing for sure.