Chevy Captiva Vs Saturn Vue

[Incommando]

So....did GM just run out of ideas or what?

 

Chevy

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Saturn

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You should see them parked near each other...

[HOrnbrod]

Can't waste those Saturn and Daewoo body parts...............

[gogmorgo]

The Saab 9-4X was also basically the same thing. With slightly more different sheet metal, you're also looking at the Chevy Equinox, the Pontiac Torrent, and eventually the GMC Terrain as the platform moved to the next generation. Also the Suzuki XL7. I didn't think the Captiva ever hit US/North American market. In Europe, in an attempt to generate better sales in the cheap asian cars class, GM rebranded all the Daewoos as Chevrolets. It didn't work.

 

Badge engineering. Take one product, change the name and logos, throw some leather and sparkly things at it, and it's suddenly another car. One of the issues that lead to GM's bankruptcy... too many brands selling the same thing. They were basically competing with themselves. They're working a little harder at differentiating the brands they've got, but it's still a thing. It's just a lot cheaper to design a car and put three different stickers on it than it is to design three different cars.

My parents were recently looking at what they called a Buick Rainier. I hadn't heard of it before, so I looked it up. Its a Chevy Trailblazer/ GMC Envoy that says Buick on it. It was obvious right away when I saw the first picture.

[Incommando]

The Olds Bravada is also a Trailblazer. The thing is that the Captiva is a "new" model for 2014 in the US.

 

Here is a strange one: the Buick Encore is built out of a Chevy Sonic

[Dadinator]

Captiva is the Saturn.  When they closed Saturn, they kept the model.

Just changed the name and the badging.  Kind of when Chrysler closed Plymouth and kept the Neon.  Just changed it to Dodge Neon instead of Plymouth Neon.

The PT Cruiser was supposed to be a Plymouth as well, but they closed it before the introduction.

[gogmorgo]

The Neon was always sold as both a Dodge and a Plymouth since it was first introduced.

 

Incidentally, looking into it further, the Captiva and Vue are rebadgings of the Opel Antara, which is largely based on a Daewoo. The two were coming off the assembly line the whole time it was operating, but the Captivas were for Central and South American markets where Saturn didn't exist. Production of the Captiva for those markets continued, and then the Captiva kinda sorta was introduced to the US market as a replacement for the HHR, but only for fleet buyers. Apparently it was going to be released as a Buick with a similar drivetrain to the Volt, around 2011, but they canned that plan when the Volt didn't sell as well as they were hoping.