Wearing the Aveo badge, Chevrolet's new small car makes its debut at the Paris Motor Show.
Chevrolet has to hope the market will go hyper-sonic when it launches its next-generation small car, next year. Make that Sonic, the name the General Motors brand has chosen to replace the outgoing Chevy Aveo.
Company officials, all the way up to GM President Mark Reuss, have made it clear they weren’t happy with the Aveo name itself, something that even corporate officials had a hard time correctly pronouncing.
“It’s pretty bad when everybody in your own company pronounces the name of the car a different way,” said Reuss.
Now, add the fact that Chevrolet wants buyers to view its new, 2012 model in a completely different light – as a stylish, fun-to-drive alternative, rather than a basic econo-box – and there’s good reason to switch.
But while the automaker has officially remained mum on the replacement, the GM Inside News blog let word leak that Chevrolet Sonic will be the nameplate that begins to roll off the maker’s assembly line in Orion Township, Michigan, starting next August.
A five-door version of the next-generation Aveo, er Sonic, will go on sale sooner than that in Europe, where it was previewed at the Paris Motor Show, last September.
Switching a name isn’t always easy – and usually isn’t cheap. For a mainstream nameplate, like the Chevrolet Cruze, which replaced the old Cobalt this year, a maker might expect to invest anywhere up to $100 million simply building awareness for the alternative.
Aveo has the dubious advantage of being relatively unknown, so GM doesn’t need to spend as much getting people to switch thinking to the new Chevrolet Sonic. But it will be a costly, launch, nonetheless, analysts say, to alert buyers who generally don’t think of Chevy for anything but basic transportation in the mini-car segments.
The new Chevrolet Sonic is part of a broad assault the brand is making on the small car market. The new offering will be slotted between Cruze and the all-new Chevy Spark microcar.
For decades, Detroit makers produced such offerings only reluctantly, and usually at a loss. But union workers have agreed to make significant concessions to help build a viable business plan for the new Sonic, 60% of the workers at the Orion Township plant working for half the normal $28-an-hour wages.
GM plans to formally reveal the U.S. version of its new small car – and officially announce the Chevrolet Spark name – at next month’s Detroit Auto Show.