It's been well more than a decade since General Motors' (NYSE:GM) Chevrolet division introduced its classic tagline: "Like a Rock." But with the 2004 Summer Olympics just around the corner and GM having bought up half of the nearly 400 commercials that General Electric's (NYSE:GE) NBC will be running, GM has decided now is the perfect time to shift fully over to its new slogan: "Chevrolet: An American Revolution."
Call me a reactionary Fool, but I don't like it. Not one bit. When I think "Chevy," I think "trucks." Big honkin' trucks with long, straight lines. Steel trucks with bright chrome bumpers. But when I think "revolution," I think futuristic spaceship-mobiles such as the Honda (NYSE:HMC) Insight, plastic Toyotas (NYSE:TM), and Nissans (NASDAQ:NSANY) with no real bumpers to speak of -- just plastic humps fore and aft that crack like an eggshell at the least provocation and cost $1,500 to replace. I think of Ford's (NYSE:F) ill-considered decision to turn its classic F-150 pickup into some touchy-feely curvaceous contraption back in 1997.
I know, I know, "you can't stop the revolution." Change is everywhere, and Chevy has decided that its old tagline has worn out its usefulness and needs to give way to the new one (which had its first trial balloon late last year). It fits better in the era of automobiles outfitted like NATO command tanks, loaded with every gadget from DVD players to GPS to OnStar. Still, in a sea of shifting automobiles, it used to be you could rely on Chevy as the constant, the proverbial rock -- why, Chevy said so itself. Its trucks were dependable, reasonably affordable, and profitable to their maker to boot.
But this Friday, Chevy's rocklike identity gets dropped in the river, and for that, this Fool will grieve. Chevy will become a whiz-bang revolutionary, symbolized most illustratively in its Chevrolet SSR -- a beautiful machine, admittedly, but one that seems caught in a post-revolutionary crisis of identity, unsure whether it is a convertible, an SUV, or a pickup -- selling in the low $40,000s.
You want to give us a revolution, Chevy? How about stripping out the fanny-hugging leather bucket seats, the 5-CD changer, the XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:XMSR), and giving us a basic workhorse pickup that gets better than 20 miles to the gallon and costs under $10,000? That's a revolution this Fool could support.
Fool contributor Rich Smith owns no shares in any company mentioned in this article. He drives a 1998 Chevy S-10 stick shift with chrome bumpers and still mourns the passage of his '69 GMC Custom full-size.
