Here's Why the Chevy SS Was a Total Failure

this is a new 2017

chevy

ss this car is rear wheel drive it has a six speed manual transmission and a 415 horsepower v8 this car is basically everything enthusiasts say they want and yet it was a flop ,

chevy

canceled it after only four years and only about 12,000 sales today I'm going to take a look at this SS and show you why you should have bought one even though you didn't and I'm going to try to understand why this car was a huge

failure

even though it looked so promising on paper. I'll start with the basics. The Chevy SS is manufactured in Australia, w

here

it is sold as the Holden Commodore.

The SS came out for the 2014 model year and was only offered back then. With an automatic, a six-speed manual became available the following year, prices have always started in the 45-50k range and sales were lackluster. Chevy sold only about 3,000 of these per year for four years, and in fact, they barely pulled the plug. As I film this t

here

are still a few new ss stragglers for sale on autotrader today. I'm going to show you this ss that I borrowed from a viewer in New Jersey and show you all the quirks and features and basically what you missed by not buying one of these, then I'll take it out on the road and find out how it drives and then I'll give you my theory on why the ss never really took off and then of course I'll give it an excellent rating and for more of my thoughts on the ss experience click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer now I'll start on the outside of the ss.

The ss has noticeably understated and subtle styling for a rear-drive V8 performance sedan, but with just a quick glance you can see that this isn't just your regular Chevy sedan in some ways - for example, it has these big 19 wheels. inches that It looks aggressive and bold and has Brembo brakes under the wheels with big red calipers and also has many vents like a sports car. One thing about the vents worth noting, although they are all fake, the vents on the hood are fake. The vents on the fenders are fake, they go nowhere, they go nowhere, but they make the car look great and then we move on to the wipers, you'll notice there are no wiper jets on the hood. and they are also not integrated into the wipers, but are hidden down here, presumably so as not to spoil the styling of the ss's bonnet before it gets in, it's worth emphasizing that the ss is built in australia, it's very strange. have a vehicle built in australia and imported to the states, in fact i can only think of a few cars in my life where that is true, the pontiac gto and the g8, the mitsubishi diamond, the mercury capri, basically no It happens, it's 30 years of cars and I can only think of four, which leads to an interesting quirk with the VIN number.

Now a lot of people don't know this, but the VIN is coded to where the car is built. Japanese cars start with j. American cars start with a German one. start with w. Australian made cars start with six, so this car's vin number starts with six. Very few cars can claim a six vin. Because this car is made in Australia, and because it's built there by GM's Australian subsidiary, Holden, there are a couple of interesting quirks about this car that you wouldn't find on a standard Chevrolet, for example, under the hood, the plastic cover The engine doesn't say Chevrolet, it just says V8, that's because the plastic engine cover probably normally says Holden, so they just decided.

They didn't stamp that on the Chevys and they just stuck this here. I really have to wonder about this decision, how much did they really save by not making a different part with the chevy logo on it, something like 30 cents per car, but that's the decision they made? and that sort of thing is noticeable in several other places in the car, for example look at the door sill at the bottom of the screen. Now on all other cars, the door sill indicates the name of the Chevrolet car manufacturer or at least the ss model. but on this car, well it's blank, that's probably because the door sill on this car originally said Holden and they just decided to replace it with a blank one again.

They probably saved like 90 cents per car by not just putting a Chevy logo on there, but that's the decision they made and then we moved to the passenger side of the dash. Now when I first got into this car one of the first things I noticed is that it's embroidered on the passenger side of the dash, it's very fancy and I've never done it before. I had seen it embroidered on any other car like that before, but when I thought about it, I realized that if you take that embroidery off, I bet there is a Holden logo underneath, of course, I don't know for sure, but I guess so .

We didn't print the ss logo directly on the dash, instead they covered it with a piece of embroidery to cover the Holden logo which is probably underneath just a guess but beyond the Holden stuff on this car there is a Couple of other interesting quirks. one of which is in the gauge cluster information display. Now you can move this screen by pressing the menu button and a little up and down on the turn indicator which is a strange location to control this screen and when you do this you will find that Apparently Chevy felt they had to put a little picture on each menu screen, so he went with some pretty cool clipart that makes it look like a Microsoft Word document from the 90s, for example, the average speed is a tire with some speed lines. behind it, as if a child were drawing, navigation is a compass, the trip odometer is a road, but my favorite is the units, which use a square to show that it measures things.

The next interesting atom is in the middle, here on the center console. a small dial that says mode selection. You can choose between three different modes, tour sport and performance, by turning the dial and when you do, you can audibly hear the exhaust change as you go from tour, which is the luxury mode, to sport and performance. It's worth noting that the mode selection dial also changes the character of the suspension. This car has GM's Magnetic Ride Control suspension system and it is the best suspension in the automobile business. I love it. It can be a luxury car when you want it and a sports car when you want it.

I want something better than any other suspension system. Now I mentioned that that little dial can take you from tour mode to sport mode to performance mode and those are the three modes of the ss, but that's not the end of the story. There is also a secret mode if you press the little traction control off button twice, it takes you to a little secret mode, it shows up in the gauge cluster information screen, it's called competitive mode, it turns off the traction control and the Stability control. I find it interesting that all you have to do is tap that button. twice to get into secret mode on an amg car you have to hold down the brake pedal and press the turn signal twice and then hold down traction control and then say the secret password and this thing just tap it twice and ready.

In competitive mode, we next move on to the infotainment system. This is Chevy's My Link system and it's pretty standard, similar to the My Link system and all other GM vehicles. There are a couple of interesting elements worth highlighting, one of them in the navigation system settings. On the menu there is a little feature called breadcrumbs. Now what does it do? back you can see where you've been, it's a useful feature and I like the fact that they call it breadcrumbs, like you're dropping breadcrumbs in a forest and want to retrace your steps later, another interesting element in the setup of the infotainment system if you go to vehicle settings and go to climate and air quality.

Wondering what air quality elements can I change? Well, the answer is none of them. You can simply change the speed of the auto fan. I don't know why they call it climate and air quality, but still, if you thought it could improve air quality, you were wrong. Next we move on to the center console of this car, which is very average, boring, looks quite small, not particularly interesting, although it is actually a surprisingly versatile center console, for example, on the lid of the center console there is a small place where you can put a pen. There is also a small place where you can stick business cards.

Now move on to the area just below the center console lid and you'll find more. versatility, for example there are two small slots where you can put coins, presumably their size is for Australian coins. It's also worth noting that the center console has two small channels that you can use to run cables from the USB port inside the center console to the outside. the cabin while the center console lid is down to make things a little tidier in case you want to have access to your phone or music player while driving or sitting in the passenger seat, perhaps the most interesting thing about that center console There is a little place where you can put your key.

It has a little cryptic diagram and you're supposed to place the key right there. If you're driving you can put the key in there to get it out of your pocket since this is a push button start car now I looked in the owner's manual exactly what it's used for it's really just a little home for your key and it turns out it's supposed to which you should also use that if you're trying to program a new key it's like the transmitter programming location, so if you have an ss and you're wondering what that key location on the center console is for, there's your answer, now Speaking of the owner's manual, it's a bit of an interesting document.

One thing is that there are no fancy photographs of the car. There is no leather-bound book. It's basically a very simple basic owner's manual. I like the fact that on the outside it says ss sedan as if there is any question as to which ss. this belonged to there is no truck or cooper convertible there is only the ss sedan which continues to move on to the rear seats of the ss they are reasonably spacious as would be expected from a sedan of this size a couple of interesting quirks in the rear seats one of which is fixed, they don't fold, there is no way to fold the seats to put extra long items inside the trunk and get into the cabin, however there is a small step, push this and this thing folds so you can get very narrow and extra long items now , speaking of that step, the strangest thing about the step is that there is a little armrest here, you can take it out and then put your arm on it and you're a little bit It's a little bit more comfortable when you sit in the back, if you step down from the trunk, you'll notice that it actually works as a larger armrest because it has cupholders, so if you want a rear cupholder in this car, you can do that in the larger secondary armrest, except you're hanging out with whatever you have rolling around in the Trunk And speaking of the trunk, one interesting thing about the trunk and the SS is that there is no exterior latch or release mechanism that you can use to open the trunk. a release mechanism on the door next to the driver's seat and a release mechanism on the remote, but if you walk to the car your hands are full and you can't get the remote out of your pocket, too bad there's no way to get in . you have to use the remote control and then you can open the trunk by the way, another interesting element worth pointing out, something that I have always hated in motor vehicles in general, not only this one, all when you are close to the car when you have gone to unlock the doors or when you are about to close the doors and leave the car for some reason, the reverse lights come on, which is infuriating.

You're driving through a parking lot and see that a Tahoe is about to back up. and leave the space for you to sit there waiting and actually the person closed the doors three minutes ago he is already inside doing his shopping and you are waiting for someone to come out of the space and there is no one in the car why GM vehicles? Turn on the reversing lights when you unlock the doors, they should only come on when you are reversing. Change these general motors, but don't let the lack of external opening of the trunk make you think that this car is poorly equipped, on the contrary.

SS is incredibly loaded, every SS comes standard with an automatic parking system, push a little button, line it up correctly and this car will park itself. It also has a nice little head-up display that projects onto the windshield. It's configurable and you can change it to show several different screens including one with the tachometer which I think is cool, this car has heated seats and it also has ventilated seats although unfortunately you can'tuse them at the same time, as you can see, this car has a full leather upholstered interior including small red stitching and the seats themselves look very, very nice.

This car has blind spot monitoring. It has forward collision warning. It has lane departure warning. And the best part is that all of that is standard. This car only has three options. It has the orange paint color it has a power sunroof and it has a full size spare tire everything else I just mentioned comes standard these cars were incredibly well equipped they may be a chevy but they are loaded like a luxury car like a cadillac or a bmw and then there is another quirk that needs to be mentioned before we continue and that is the exhaust note which is pleasantly unsubtle, the opposite of the rest of this car, listen, those are the quirks and mini features of the chevy ss that It's surprisingly full of stuff, especially if you also consider the fact that it's a real all-wheel drive that has 415 horsepower and they had to ship it here from Australia, so with that in mind, in the drive, well driving the ss, the clutch like on all these GM vehicles, the clutch just isn't as smooth as it should be, um, it's How strange to me Mike Mike the cts-v is like that they all are like that the zl1 there's a little kink in the clutch uh which is a little annoying with that said the trends the feel of the shifter is just perfect it just goes straight into gear there's no play there's no mine third there's nothing like that it just feels so good to go into gear it's like the most satisfying thing right now I'm in touring mode and yet it already sounds surprisingly good in the At the end of the day, it's a naturally aspirated V8.

I was talking to the owner and we were thinking, you know, there aren't many naturally aspirated V8s with rear-wheel shifters. This could be the end of the line in terms of sedans. I love it. sound I can't believe I'm only in tour mode right now I'm going to do sports when I'm going to do sports it doesn't sound like the exhaust note changes dramatically between sounds what it is is that the engine is deeper in the The exhaust note exhaust, especially because the revs are almost the same, but it's like it deepens a little bit, especially at low revs, you can hear more of a growl, which is funny because this car, you know, I look at this car and it doesn't look like the kind of car that would growl but that's exactly how it feels.

Oh, great sound. Really great sound. It only reached 4000 rpm. Sounds good. It does not sound. You know, like a Hellcat or anything like that in terms of crazy. It just sounds good, it's not over the top and that's what I think is the overall theme of this car, it's good but not over the top. I can't believe GM is still doing the jump change, so generally motor vehicles from the 80's when you would do it. goes into first, uh, first gear, you're trying to shift into second, if you were going at a low enough speed it knew you weren't trying to do anything fast or fun, so it would skip second third and force you into in fourth.

It was called jump shifting and it was the most annoying and my viper did this too. It's very common on American cars at the time and everyone else abandoned this, but GM still does it, so when you shift first, you go. into second at lower speeds it skips the shift and sends you into fourth and even tells you in the gauge cluster that gears were skipped to save fuel and this is a pretty rough road and I'm in performance mode. here and it's much more comfortable than my truck, God this car is much more comfortable in my station, it's okay, put it in as expected, the sound is great when climbing and in rabbit it sounds good and it's fast, especially in the middle of the road . range midrange feels really great has power it's incredibly precise the steering not necessarily the handling but just a touch of the wheel and you're moving I'm impressed with that considering the science of this car this car to me has always seemed more right to me a muscle car type car, but that's something I associate more with smaller, modern high performance cars and then you look down.

I am so impressed with how well equipped this car is. I look at my head. On the screen, it lets me know I'm in my lane so the lane departure warning doesn't activate if I get too close to the car in front of me. The forward collision alert will activate and inform me that the blind. Spot monitors tell me when someone is in my blind spot Navigation system Automatic headlights blah blah blah, I mean, it's an endless amount of equipment, this car is fully loaded at this speed, you know, highway speed 65 miles an hour, um not going fast because there's a charger up there, I'm a little nervous, uh, but it feels great and I have it in performance mode, but the suspension is so good it feels great, it's very smooth, The ride is good, the seat is just so comfortable, I mean I could go long distances in this car.

I bet a lot of these were sold to people who wanted a camaro but needed more practicality, so they showed up at the dealership like, oh no, and then they did this like you know. have this and that's the chevy ss now, you may be wondering and in fact you should be wondering, this car is fun to drive, it's rear wheel drive, six speed manual, 400 more horsepower, it's loaded with stuff per a quite reasonable price as a motorcycle trend. He pointed out that it's basically a reliable and modern BMW M5 E39, so why wasn't it sold?

I have three theories: This car was a great value, but I think it was too expensive. Car enthusiasts interested in a rear-drive, manual-shift V8 don't. It doesn't need automated parallel parking and many other things that this car had. The subaru wrx doesn't come standard with basically any of the features of this car and the subaru wrx is more popular than bragging that you have an android phone and apple won't seduce you, they should have taken some of the things out of this car and sold a basic version for only thirty-five thousand dollars, although I suspect that if they had done that the profit margins would not have been high enough for them to justify shipping from Australia.

I guarantee there are car enthusiasts watching this video. People who have money. People who buy new cars. Oh yeah, Chevy never marketed this car, they never did any advertising for it and you basically had to find out by word of mouth which frankly is a terrible way to sell a product, the name didn't really help the things that Chevy have used. the ss name as a high performance trim level on dozens of cars over the last 50 years and it's almost like they didn't want to bother finding an actual name for this car so they just decided to use some leftover ss badges and leave it alone. well, it was just too generic and when you said ss people often responded ss what ss camaro ss malibu didn't make sense.

I love ss' style, I really do, but let's be honest, we now live in a world where people don't. You want subtle cars that you don't know are fast until one of them beats you on the race track. The camaro is bold and aggressive. The charger is angry and the challenger looks like he just ate a couple of cute little forest creatures. grazing in the woods, the ss appeals to those of us who like sleeper cars, cars that are fast but don't really look that way, but it's a dying breed and, with those things in mind, the chevy ss It was a flop, but frankly it's probably the best automotive flop in the last few decades anyway, it's time to give it an excellent score, starting with the weekend categories and the design of the ss is an attractive car, but for To me this category is not just about looks but also how the styling benefits the purpose of the car and clearly the ss falls short which is why it gets a 6 out of 10.

Next up the acceleration of the ss does 0-60 in 4 .6 seconds, so it gets a 6 out of 10. However, when it comes to handling, the ss is very sharp. Its large size takes away from the handling of a sports car, which is to be expected and it gets a 6 out of 10. The good thing is that decent car enthusiasts know what it is, but the general public has no idea what it is. kind of interesting, which, to be honest, for me. It's kind of cool in itself, but it's not a Lamborghini or even a Porsche and it gets a 6 out of 10.

Ultimately, it means that this is an important car in the sense that it's a fun, sports enthusiast luxury car, but It's not particularly important to Chevy's history. or the history of GM or even the history of the ss trim level in general and it gets only a 5 out of 10, bringing the

total

score for the weekend to 29 out of 50, but that's pretty good, just a few cars from four doors have scored higher than the The following are the daily categories starting with features. This car has automatic parallel parking. Blind spot monitoring. Braking due to frontal collision. Ventilated seats.

A large touch screen with navigation. It has more features than most people really want, gets an 8 out of 10, and falls short of a perfect score because it has no standalone or truly revolutionary features. Next up is comfort and the excellent magnetic ride control gives this car a 7 out of 10. Its combined score of 13 and comfort and handling are unusual for a car at this price. As for quality, I expect the ss to be reliable, but it feels a little cheap inside with the usual GM plastics and ugly General Motors fonts everywhere. six out of 10. for practicality the ss has 16.4 cubic feet of cargo space and gets a 5 out of 10. it finally has value and i've never done it before but i'm going to do it here the ss gets a 10 out of 10 I wish there had been a cheaper ss, but if you like some tech features, some luxury equipment, and some performance, this version is an amazing luxury car and sports car and daily driver, especially considering Chevy has offered them. twice with a 20. off promotion again at that point you can hardly afford not to buy it.

I also suspect it will hold its value quite well as did its spiritual predecessor, the pontiac g8 gxp,

total

and daily total score is 36 out of 50. placing it near the top of the charts, add it all up and doug's score is 65 out of 100, which puts it in good company behind the Lexus LFA, but that's what this car has going for it: it's really good at performance and practicality and basically everything but selling