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General Motors fights back at Detroit Auto Show with Chevy Spark and Orlando, Cadillac Converj, too

Bloodied but unbowed. It might be a clichéd, hackneyed and trite, but General Motors at the North American International Auto Show vowed that it wouldn’t go down without a fight. In fact, said Rick Wagoner, it wasn’t going down at all. Forget, said Wagoner, all the crepe-hanging financial news and look at what he said really matters, product. That is, to wit, cars.

 

Perhaps preaching to the choir and whistling past the graveyard, to use a couple more old saws, but loading the floor with cheer-for-your-jobs employees and hiring a Detroit sportscaster (who if you don’t live in the Detroit area you don’t know and it really doesn’t matter anyway) for frenetic narration was Wagoner’s way holding a rolling slideshow of GM’s high points, starting with the Chevy Volt, followed by Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm (not GM product), the Chevrolet Aveo5, Saturn Vue Hybrid, Saturn Aura, Opel Insignia, Cadillac CTS, Chevrolet Malibu, Chevrolet Cruze, Chevrolet Camaro (sportscaster say it “gives yard,” to use a baseball term…huh?), Solstice Coupe and Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon, plus the 2010 Cadillac SRX, Chevrolet Equinox and Buick LaCrosse. Cheers for each one. Like their jobs depended on it.

 

Troy Clarke, group vice president and president of GM North America, announced that the Cadillac SRX should be available this summer, that the Chevrolet Orlando crossover concept shown at the Paris show has been confirmed for production, to go sale in 2011. 

 

Clarke continued that the Chevy Beat concept, shown at the New York show two years ago and winner of an online vote off with two other small car concepts, would be going into production as well. The Beat, smaller than the Chevy Aveo subcompact, will be known as the Chevrolet Spark.

 

GM then rolled out Bob Lutz, GM vice chairman and head of global product development for a world debut of a concept that goes a step further than the Chevy Volt but using the same technology—which GM now calls “Voltec”—the Cadillac Converj. Obviously a Cadillac from its vertical headlight stack and crosshatch grille up front and tall narrow LED taillights out back, the knife-edge coupe was designed, said Lutz, to be a beautiful and exciting car first…and then have the advantage of being environmentally friendly second.

 

Like the Volt, said Lutz, the Converj will go forty miles on a full plug-in charge and with the on-board range-extending gasoline engine, eliminate “range anxiety” because one “can’t go out and get a five-gallon can of electricity.” The Converj, said Lutz, said that it’s always been known that “luxury can be ‘electric’, but now electric can be luxury.”

It was perhaps a great grab bag of product but at a time when some companies—you know who you are—are circling their wagons (another ancient adage) and pulling in their horns (another…), GM is (we’re sorry) going big or going home, swinging for the fences, and well, it’s your turn to come up with something.

 

There are some great cars coming from GM and if the corporation is going down, it’s going to be a grand and glorious ride. Our bet? We go with the cheer-for-your-jobs crowd. GM has some great cars and great ideas. Here’s one for the home team and never bet against the Yanks.

 

If only they can get past those pesky financial details…