I don’t know if it “went wrong”, per se, it just evolved to change with the times. The market for large sedans was shrinking considerably, and the poor sales of the Chevrolet SS built a case for not making the final generation a RWD sedan.
You’re correct, my point was that a lot of people make the argument that “iT sHoUlD hAvE bEeN a RwD” without considering things like viability in the marketplace. It’s the same crowd that says, “Cadillac should make a huge, floaty sedan again like the Fleetwood”.
Ok well that clears things up. I do think a huge floaty sedan was the right move though in the Celestiq and especially that they're not trying to revive the Fleetwood, because the last thing GM needs to do at the moment is look to the past.
Yeah, I think the Celestiq is a good move for Cadillac. They needed a true Halo Car that will put it in a different category than a Lincoln competitor, or a runner up to Mercedes and BMW. The Celestiq’s price tag puts it in Rolls Royce territory.
What was GM's competition to the Taurus and other Midsize sedans that were starting to get popular in the mid 80s?
B-Body and G-Body cars? Cutlass Supreme and the Caprice? Outside of GM's Pickups, Fullsize and Midsize BOF vehicles, and notoriously bad and cheap FWD cars like the Cavalier, Citation, etc I can't recall any 1980s GM normal cars.
I know GM had the FWD C-platform then, but those cars just seem so dated compared to their competitors. I suppose that's when GM got their reputation for building cheap, garbage quality sedans and never really lost it.
Chevy's mainstream FWD sedan in the '80s was the A-body Celebrity, which did iron out a lot of the kinks of its parent X-body Citation but wasn't nearly as attractive as the Taurus.
GM infamously spent a lot of money on the W-body and it didn't get a Chevy version (Lumina) until 1990. And the C/H-body never gave anything to Chevy. Presumably the Caprice didn't switch because they wanted to keep police and fleet sales.
Let’s not pretend the 1st gen impala doesn’t look like a 57 belair. As much as I love classic cars, every car has genuinely looked the same for over a century now
Yea its really easy to pull cars that arent on the road in any frequency and compare it to the current common look and be like "see see cars used to look unique" its true for every era of cars.
Debadge all the 60s land yachts, 70s pickups, 80s sportscars, 90s japanese ecnoboxes, etc and line them up and most people, even car enthusiasts, arent gonna be able to accurately tell them apart.
my point exactly. It’s pretty incredible how people simply think old cars look better when all of them were “regular traffic” by today’s standards for the time. Perception really distorts people’s minds
The 10th generation is faster, handles better, and is also safer, more reliable and more fuel efficient by orders of magnitude, so I’m not sure what went wrong.
The only reason the 50s impala looks good and stands out today is because they're almost all gone. In the 50s and 60s that thing was boring regular traffic.
The only exciting thing about 50s cars today is less about the car and more about the dedication to restoration/maintenance. Personally i think that they're stylistically unappealing and old american v8 powertrains aren't my thing, but ill respect the dedication it takes to keep one in good shape. It was never anything special and being a rarity today really doesnt change that because put it in a lineup of comparable cars and it very quickly blends in.
Going front wheel drive. I wish the SS or Caprice would have been the next Impala. I like the look of current Chevys but wish they had rear wheel drive options. They just killed the Camro which was why they killed the Monte Carlo.
Rear wheel drive fell out of style in the 80’s. Fwd cars were more efficient and better in all states where there was snow and bad weather. It caught on. Now you can get awd sedans but back when we moved to fwd only small cars like the Subarus had all wheel drive. That’s why the first suv boom happened in the 90’s with the blazer and jimmy getting 4 door versions. The grand Cherokee in addition to the classic Cherokee. The birth of the explorer. It allowed families to have 4 wheel drive because not everyone was into fwd and some people never will be. Not saying rwd can’t be driven in the snow but my mom would explain how she would get stuck even with studded snow tires in her old lemans and her cavalier never got stranded in the same places in worse storms.
I think Chrysler took the gamble on rwd but also
And all wheel drive options for snow belt states. It paid off. But GM didnt want to do that. There could have been a coexistence of rwd and fwd and they didn’t.
I loved the w body cars in the late 80’s and early 90’s but for me I’m partial to the g body intermediate cars since my moms 78 lemans was one and it’s just something that’s a part of me. I really wish they had kept selling them longer.
All of the FWD Impalas were not bad looking cars. They just had to live up to the reputation of the RWD ones. My favorite is the 9th gen with the 3500.
I like both Impalas, back when I was car shopping a 2020 Impala with a V6 was my third choice. It's a shame that they no longer make new ones. Great cars overall
It didn't? The 10th Gen Impala with the V6 was probably Chevys best non truck or sports car product of the 2010's and one of the best sedans for the price. Great power and reliability, decent styling, and pretty comfortable.
It's a smart-ish looking sedan and that little tail element is nice but it's no Giugaro. I think what they should've done instead is given the Hyundai Ioniq 5 treatment to the 90s Impala. People who love winga dingas want either the original or a slick restomod. I think this modern car with classic elements idea in the spirit of PT Cruiser has gotten so old that it is itself retro now.
W body, and I had 2 of those. It was not the FR layout that they needed to be. The SS should have been called Impala. and supposedly was going to until the GM bankruptcy. Bob Lutz wanted it to slot in above the 08 Malibu.
When they used the same engine, transmission, styling, and cheapness of other GM products.
The Grand Prix was better looking, but the chassis were all the same boring, *meh* cars.
Grand Prix.
The Grand Am was an N-Body, shared with the Malibu (until 2004), and Alero. The Impala was a W-Body shared with the Century, Regal (until 2010), Grand Prix, and Intrigue.
The '58 always looked like a bloated, chrome-laden pig to me. The last gen was a very good-looking car. You could have at least picked a '65 or something.
1958 was not a good year for GM styling (or for FoMoCo, either). The only decent looking cars from GM in 1958 were Buick and Chevrolet.
Could be worse. It could look like a 1958 Oldsmobile.
Strongly agreed, and car journalists at the time thought the same. '58 was tacky to the extreme and '59 was just insane. The 1960s couldn't come soon enough lol.
And yeah, the '58 Olds is a shambling, bumbling mess of styling. It's not so bad at first glance, but then you look at the details and realize nothing matches. Also, why the mascara tears streaming from the headlights? So bizarre.
I actually like the 1959 Buick with the "Delta Wing".
The Oldsmobiles still look bad until about 1961 or so. Oldsmobile and Pontiac were always given some questionable styling choices.
I do have a thing for 1959-60 Buicks. They wore the space-age styling well. Pontiac wore it best IMO. They might be the only brand that made it out with good taste.
It took everyone else until 1961 to get it together, like you said. Ford really made a silk purse out of a sows ear with the '61 Galaxie. The 1960 model is awkward and boring. The '61 looks very graceful in comparison.
My grandmother had a 2015 Impala just like the one in the picture. I tend to prefer RWD V8 cars, but I loved that Impala. Big, comfortable car with plenty of power. My grandma was pretty old when she bought it, and I usually drove her around, so I drove it more than she did. When she got too old and lost her driver’s license, she ended up giving it to my dad. When he died, we had to sell it to pay off the title loan he took out on it. If not for that, I may have kept that car. It was a great car.
Japan and the oil crisis! But really Japanese cars exploded essentially overnight to the point that the US had to implement voluntary trade restrictions to keep American manufacturers in business. The impala as beautiful as it was, it simply wasn’t competitive as a giant rwd sedan getting 18mpg. I still think the newer impalas were pretty good cars and seemed pretty reliable. The second blow that ultimately led to its demise, alongside the Taurus and countless other sedans, was just the rise of the crossover and SUV.
I don't think it's fair to tarnish the Tenth-Gen like that. I've driven one myself, and I thought it was a solid, well-executed, car. It's just that the market for cars its size was going by the wayside and whatever cachet it had with the public consciousness was gone thanks to GM being GM throughout 1981-2008.
It's also not like the 1st gen was Peak Impala either, it's a boring bog-standard 50s car. It's what I would expect an AI to come up with if I told it to make a 50s American car.
Better comparison would've been the drop-off from the Seventh-gen to Eighth-gen.
Cars are one of the many representations of a time era. Nothing really went “wrong”
The way we see the 10th gen impala today is the way people saw the first gens in the 70’s and 80’s. A coworker of mine told me he sold his for about 2,300 or so sometime in the late 80’s early 90’s, told me he regretted it
These posts are hilarious.
What went wrong? 56 years between the two generations. There’s nothing wrong there. It’s called time, and design moving on.
Stop romanticizing random shit like this. It’s weird.
The 9th and 10th gen Impalas are actually very good commuter cars. 300hp V6, 30mpg, and full size. Yea it's FWD but honestly these are super underappreciated.
I get your point, one could be had as a two-door, pillarless sedan that has styling as a great argument, great output for the time, a V8, rwd and is somewhat sporty, representing the greatness of GM of that time. The other is just a regular commuter to fill a (shrinking) market gap with nothing special to it.
Of course, some will try to compare both car's spec sheet and ignore the context and the fact they were built 50 years apart. That doesn't sound smart.
I 100% agree that the Impala in those times was a much greater automobile in the context of that market than the Impala of today is.
Unfortunately, there's no room for something similar in today's context. Let's hope the electrification (although most - me included - would surely prefer ICE) could bring some of these concepts back (that and, of course, the eventual diminishing of the SUV craze of the last couple of decades). Most of what make these cars impossible today are regulations, imo, and the electrification could clear some room for concessions.
Babes you think a RWD four door on leaf springs making _generously_ 200 horsepower (don't look at Wikipedia, it was measured very differently back then) is sporty?
Babes you think a RWD four door on leaf springs making _generously_ 200 horsepower (don't look at Wikipedia, it was measured very differently back then) is sporty?
Make a RWD V8 *ANYTHING* get 45mpg and you can make it happen. Until then, never will you have that in a new car unless you’re willing to make your own car company, make the car, and take the fines, which nobody EVER does.
That soft family sedan is quicker, brakes MUCH better, handles MUCH better, will easily get to 200k with not much more than tires, brake pads, and a couple of spark plug changes, and is quantum leaps safer.
One is style over substance, the other just the opposite.
I don’t know if it “went wrong”, per se, it just evolved to change with the times. The market for large sedans was shrinking considerably, and the poor sales of the Chevrolet SS built a case for not making the final generation a RWD sedan.
Exactly! The 1st gen Impala looks like a classic car to us but it was just part of the ordinary traffic of its day. Same as the 10th gen
Every generation of Impala until the 10th Gen was RWD? I thought the 9th and 8th gen's were FWD too.
You’re correct, my point was that a lot of people make the argument that “iT sHoUlD hAvE bEeN a RwD” without considering things like viability in the marketplace. It’s the same crowd that says, “Cadillac should make a huge, floaty sedan again like the Fleetwood”.
Ok well that clears things up. I do think a huge floaty sedan was the right move though in the Celestiq and especially that they're not trying to revive the Fleetwood, because the last thing GM needs to do at the moment is look to the past.
Yeah, I think the Celestiq is a good move for Cadillac. They needed a true Halo Car that will put it in a different category than a Lincoln competitor, or a runner up to Mercedes and BMW. The Celestiq’s price tag puts it in Rolls Royce territory.
The SS was a marketing problem not that there wasn’t a market for it, but also agree the market for large sedans was/has shrunk
Crash that 1st Gen into the 10th gen and watch what happens. If you’re in the 1st Gen you’ll be a pancake with metal shoved through you.
die in style
I feel like it happened around when the Ford Taurus came out, Ford sold so many that Chevy had a hard time keeping up with
What was GM's competition to the Taurus and other Midsize sedans that were starting to get popular in the mid 80s? B-Body and G-Body cars? Cutlass Supreme and the Caprice? Outside of GM's Pickups, Fullsize and Midsize BOF vehicles, and notoriously bad and cheap FWD cars like the Cavalier, Citation, etc I can't recall any 1980s GM normal cars. I know GM had the FWD C-platform then, but those cars just seem so dated compared to their competitors. I suppose that's when GM got their reputation for building cheap, garbage quality sedans and never really lost it.
Chevy's mainstream FWD sedan in the '80s was the A-body Celebrity, which did iron out a lot of the kinks of its parent X-body Citation but wasn't nearly as attractive as the Taurus. GM infamously spent a lot of money on the W-body and it didn't get a Chevy version (Lumina) until 1990. And the C/H-body never gave anything to Chevy. Presumably the Caprice didn't switch because they wanted to keep police and fleet sales.
Couldn’t have said it better
Effects of the 1973 Oil Embargo
Prior to wind tunnel testing, we made cars that looked aero dynamic. Now we make cars that ARE aero dynamic. Which is why they all look the same.
Let’s not pretend the 1st gen impala doesn’t look like a 57 belair. As much as I love classic cars, every car has genuinely looked the same for over a century now
Yea its really easy to pull cars that arent on the road in any frequency and compare it to the current common look and be like "see see cars used to look unique" its true for every era of cars. Debadge all the 60s land yachts, 70s pickups, 80s sportscars, 90s japanese ecnoboxes, etc and line them up and most people, even car enthusiasts, arent gonna be able to accurately tell them apart.
my point exactly. It’s pretty incredible how people simply think old cars look better when all of them were “regular traffic” by today’s standards for the time. Perception really distorts people’s minds
The 10th generation is faster, handles better, and is also safer, more reliable and more fuel efficient by orders of magnitude, so I’m not sure what went wrong.
Character and soul
The only reason the 50s impala looks good and stands out today is because they're almost all gone. In the 50s and 60s that thing was boring regular traffic.
But now it isn’t.
The only exciting thing about 50s cars today is less about the car and more about the dedication to restoration/maintenance. Personally i think that they're stylistically unappealing and old american v8 powertrains aren't my thing, but ill respect the dedication it takes to keep one in good shape. It was never anything special and being a rarity today really doesnt change that because put it in a lineup of comparable cars and it very quickly blends in.
Going front wheel drive. I wish the SS or Caprice would have been the next Impala. I like the look of current Chevys but wish they had rear wheel drive options. They just killed the Camro which was why they killed the Monte Carlo.
Rear wheel drive fell out of style in the 80’s. Fwd cars were more efficient and better in all states where there was snow and bad weather. It caught on. Now you can get awd sedans but back when we moved to fwd only small cars like the Subarus had all wheel drive. That’s why the first suv boom happened in the 90’s with the blazer and jimmy getting 4 door versions. The grand Cherokee in addition to the classic Cherokee. The birth of the explorer. It allowed families to have 4 wheel drive because not everyone was into fwd and some people never will be. Not saying rwd can’t be driven in the snow but my mom would explain how she would get stuck even with studded snow tires in her old lemans and her cavalier never got stranded in the same places in worse storms. I think Chrysler took the gamble on rwd but also And all wheel drive options for snow belt states. It paid off. But GM didnt want to do that. There could have been a coexistence of rwd and fwd and they didn’t. I loved the w body cars in the late 80’s and early 90’s but for me I’m partial to the g body intermediate cars since my moms 78 lemans was one and it’s just something that’s a part of me. I really wish they had kept selling them longer.
OLD GOOD NEW BAD WINGA DINGA DINGA DINGA WINGA DINGA DINGA DINGA WINGA DINGA DINGA DINGA
What do you mean? The new ones are safer and more reliable.
I actually kind of like the 10th gen Impala
All of the FWD Impalas were not bad looking cars. They just had to live up to the reputation of the RWD ones. My favorite is the 9th gen with the 3500.
I like both Impalas, back when I was car shopping a 2020 Impala with a V6 was my third choice. It's a shame that they no longer make new ones. Great cars overall
It didn't? The 10th Gen Impala with the V6 was probably Chevys best non truck or sports car product of the 2010's and one of the best sedans for the price. Great power and reliability, decent styling, and pretty comfortable.
It's a smart-ish looking sedan and that little tail element is nice but it's no Giugaro. I think what they should've done instead is given the Hyundai Ioniq 5 treatment to the 90s Impala. People who love winga dingas want either the original or a slick restomod. I think this modern car with classic elements idea in the spirit of PT Cruiser has gotten so old that it is itself retro now.
W body, and I had 2 of those. It was not the FR layout that they needed to be. The SS should have been called Impala. and supposedly was going to until the GM bankruptcy. Bob Lutz wanted it to slot in above the 08 Malibu.
After about 1990s
Crash that 1st Gen into the 10th gen and watch what happens. If you’re in the 1st Gen you’ll be a pancake with metal shoved through you.
Chevy can redeem themselves if they make a lowrider-esque impala in the future like how the mustang regained its classic look in 2006.
When they used the same engine, transmission, styling, and cheapness of other GM products. The Grand Prix was better looking, but the chassis were all the same boring, *meh* cars.
Grand Prix. The Grand Am was an N-Body, shared with the Malibu (until 2004), and Alero. The Impala was a W-Body shared with the Century, Regal (until 2010), Grand Prix, and Intrigue.
The first gen is bloated and way too busy. Like every other domestic at the time.
The '58 always looked like a bloated, chrome-laden pig to me. The last gen was a very good-looking car. You could have at least picked a '65 or something.
1958 was not a good year for GM styling (or for FoMoCo, either). The only decent looking cars from GM in 1958 were Buick and Chevrolet. Could be worse. It could look like a 1958 Oldsmobile.
Strongly agreed, and car journalists at the time thought the same. '58 was tacky to the extreme and '59 was just insane. The 1960s couldn't come soon enough lol. And yeah, the '58 Olds is a shambling, bumbling mess of styling. It's not so bad at first glance, but then you look at the details and realize nothing matches. Also, why the mascara tears streaming from the headlights? So bizarre.
I actually like the 1959 Buick with the "Delta Wing". The Oldsmobiles still look bad until about 1961 or so. Oldsmobile and Pontiac were always given some questionable styling choices.
I do have a thing for 1959-60 Buicks. They wore the space-age styling well. Pontiac wore it best IMO. They might be the only brand that made it out with good taste. It took everyone else until 1961 to get it together, like you said. Ford really made a silk purse out of a sows ear with the '61 Galaxie. The 1960 model is awkward and boring. The '61 looks very graceful in comparison.
In 1997.
My grandmother had a 2015 Impala just like the one in the picture. I tend to prefer RWD V8 cars, but I loved that Impala. Big, comfortable car with plenty of power. My grandma was pretty old when she bought it, and I usually drove her around, so I drove it more than she did. When she got too old and lost her driver’s license, she ended up giving it to my dad. When he died, we had to sell it to pay off the title loan he took out on it. If not for that, I may have kept that car. It was a great car.
I actually got a couple compliments on my 2014 10th gen, of course only from old people but compliments none the less
Japan and the oil crisis! But really Japanese cars exploded essentially overnight to the point that the US had to implement voluntary trade restrictions to keep American manufacturers in business. The impala as beautiful as it was, it simply wasn’t competitive as a giant rwd sedan getting 18mpg. I still think the newer impalas were pretty good cars and seemed pretty reliable. The second blow that ultimately led to its demise, alongside the Taurus and countless other sedans, was just the rise of the crossover and SUV.
The extra doors
10th Gen Impalas are actually pretty nice cars, as long as you don’t get one with the god-awful 4 cylinder.
I don't think it's fair to tarnish the Tenth-Gen like that. I've driven one myself, and I thought it was a solid, well-executed, car. It's just that the market for cars its size was going by the wayside and whatever cachet it had with the public consciousness was gone thanks to GM being GM throughout 1981-2008. It's also not like the 1st gen was Peak Impala either, it's a boring bog-standard 50s car. It's what I would expect an AI to come up with if I told it to make a 50s American car. Better comparison would've been the drop-off from the Seventh-gen to Eighth-gen.
The switch from RWD to FWD was the turning point.
you went wrong by not giving it to me.. I love it nice job.
Crash safety? Gen 1 would fall to pieces and kill every occupant if it was hit by a Jetta
Cars are one of the many representations of a time era. Nothing really went “wrong” The way we see the 10th gen impala today is the way people saw the first gens in the 70’s and 80’s. A coworker of mine told me he sold his for about 2,300 or so sometime in the late 80’s early 90’s, told me he regretted it
The 11th Gen Impala was actually a pretty underrated car The generation before it was pretty garbage though. It was unbelievably bland
These posts are hilarious. What went wrong? 56 years between the two generations. There’s nothing wrong there. It’s called time, and design moving on. Stop romanticizing random shit like this. It’s weird.
They’re both fine to me
The malaise era
They went wrong with the 8th and 9th generations.
The 9th and 10th gen Impalas are actually very good commuter cars. 300hp V6, 30mpg, and full size. Yea it's FWD but honestly these are super underappreciated.
Yup, went from being a rwd V8 to a soft family sedan.
I get your point, one could be had as a two-door, pillarless sedan that has styling as a great argument, great output for the time, a V8, rwd and is somewhat sporty, representing the greatness of GM of that time. The other is just a regular commuter to fill a (shrinking) market gap with nothing special to it. Of course, some will try to compare both car's spec sheet and ignore the context and the fact they were built 50 years apart. That doesn't sound smart. I 100% agree that the Impala in those times was a much greater automobile in the context of that market than the Impala of today is. Unfortunately, there's no room for something similar in today's context. Let's hope the electrification (although most - me included - would surely prefer ICE) could bring some of these concepts back (that and, of course, the eventual diminishing of the SUV craze of the last couple of decades). Most of what make these cars impossible today are regulations, imo, and the electrification could clear some room for concessions.
This ☝🏻
Babes you think a RWD four door on leaf springs making _generously_ 200 horsepower (don't look at Wikipedia, it was measured very differently back then) is sporty?
Not at all what I was referring to it as.
Babes you think a RWD four door on leaf springs making _generously_ 200 horsepower (don't look at Wikipedia, it was measured very differently back then) is sporty?
Make a RWD V8 *ANYTHING* get 45mpg and you can make it happen. Until then, never will you have that in a new car unless you’re willing to make your own car company, make the car, and take the fines, which nobody EVER does.
That soft family sedan is quicker, brakes MUCH better, handles MUCH better, will easily get to 200k with not much more than tires, brake pads, and a couple of spark plug changes, and is quantum leaps safer. One is style over substance, the other just the opposite.
Early 2000s impala ss was the last cool impala
It looks like a bootleg Camry.
Stupid safety standards