Was Buick's Avista Concept So Good That Chevrolet Had Production Hopes Killed?

I don't believe in the premise that "the product concept was 'so good,' that we decided not to put in in production." Alternative ways of wording that are "we are committed to mediocrity" or "we don't believe we're good enough to make that."

I speculate that much more mundane causes would have put on the brakes, such as marketing folks proclaiming their research says it won't sell well in targeted markets, or perhaps even financial considerations (e.g., we'd have to sell it for $80K to make a profit, and we don't believe we could secure enough buyers to break even).

BTW, it's a shame this won't get built because this is an attractive looking car.

If this is true, which I doubt, then GM deserves to die, again, and for good.

The article said it would compete for the same customers. In terms of income perhaps, but not in type of customer. This could very easily been pitched as a stylish alternative to the German coupes with a price advantage. A Camaro buyer couldn't care less about an A5 or a 6 Series.

Ironically, if protecting Camaro sales was the goal, it seems the Camaro is stalling in the market place largely because the new one is so indistinguishable from the one it replaces.

The Avista and Avenir's real threat is to Cadillac and we just cannot have Buicks looking sexier than Cadillac.

Buick has a long history of producing styling exercises - ie - concept cars - that 1 - were stylistically top notch - and 2 - were never meant for production.
The one time they actually produced one of the designs for market -the 1995 Riviera - which was as swoopy as Buicks were not - the design was stunning but the car did not sell well.

I believe that the Avista and Avenir were simply styling exercises and were never seriously considered for production - period. I believe this speculation that they were more than that is still another product of Automotive media types with nothing better to do but create a "conflict" in GM that never was there to begin with.

You know what also looked cool as a show car? The Solstice.

Amazingly, there is more to building a successful car than just making it look neat for an auto show.

Are you forgetting that the chassis the Avista was on is a highly praised, world-class chassis or are you just being contrary for the sake of being contrary?

Got it. It's a great chassis, and suddenly people buying Audis and BMWs will push past the old ladies at the Buick dealership so they can snap one of these up.

The obvious answer is that Buick will never build anything like this because they would sell no more than 14 of them. Well, maybe 15 if you step up to the plate.

Buick will never sell anything like this because the Avista and Avenir stylistically outclassed everything from Cadillac and were on the same platforms that underpin Cadillacs. Producing them would have killed Cadillac.

I think I'm in the target market for one of these, I own a bunch of cars, and yet I'd never, ever set foot in a Buick dealership let alone drive one of these.

Unless they plan to sell these in China and Taiwan where Buick has a different connotation, they'd be better off to market this under Brand X, or do that Oldsmobile Aurora thing where you simply forget to put the name of the company on it.