100 years of Chevy: An improbable journey to American icon

ByABC News
October 30, 2011, 8:54 PM

— -- DETROIT — Chevrolet. Later just Chevy. Even, sometimes, Shivalay or Shivvy. By any name, it's a brand with a remarkable history. Begun in 1911, based on a car by French race driver Louis Chevrolet, Chevy now is so insinuated into American culture that ads comparing it to hot dogs and apple pie go unchallenged.

As Chevy and parent General Motors celebrate its 100th anniversary — the documents establishing Chevrolet were completed Nov. 3, 1911 — it's sometimes easy to overlook how truly remarkable it is that Chevy survived this long, given its early uphill battles with richer Ford, and a century of other trials.

It's much harder to squint ahead for hints whether the old, traditional car brand that makes seven of every 10 GM vehicles sold in the U.S. will be nimble and innovative enough to survive another 100 years.

And it's enlightening to remember why that matters. "Having a popularly priced, made-in-America vehicle is important for the country. Some element of national pride is involved," says Jack Nerad, executive editorial director and market analyst for Kelley Blue Book's kbb.com.

In fact, there'd be no Chevrolet without Ford. Chevy was started 100 years ago as a rival to the Model T, the original "popularly priced, made-in-America vehicle" that Henry Ford had rolled out in 1908.

Now Chevy, Ford and Toyota perennially battle to be the best-selling vehicle brand in the U.S. Chevy last was tops in 2005. The three, plus Nissan, are the four truly full-line brands sold in the U.S., offering the widest ranges of vehicle types, sizes, models and sizes.

Chevy is a full-line brand that sells everything from very small cars (Sonic, Spark) through specialty models (Corvette) to big trucks (Suburban SUV, Silverado pickup).

With high sales volumes and diverse lineups, the full-line brands make it practical for their parent companies to maintain products in many segments, any of which might explode into popularity — as SUVs did in the 1990s when buyers suddenly tired of minivans. Jeep and Ford were SUV pioneers, but late-arriving GM got traction because its Chevrolet brand was able to create credible competing models quickly.

Always innovating

GM CEO Dan Akerson says the latter-day GM "failed because we failed to innovate" and wound up in a government-scripted bankruptcy reorganization in 2009. He sees Chevrolet as GM's innovation platform. Some examples:

•Chevy Volt is a unique, extended-range electric car, earning GM goodwill among the alternative-fuel crowd, though it has been built and sold in small numbers since arriving late last year.

•Chevy's redesigned Malibu midsize sedan will be launched early next year with an efficient gasoline-electric mild hybrid system, called eAssist, as the only drivetrain initially. A new-design gasoline four-cylinder will be added later.

•GM continues to explore hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, and is testing the concept in, no surprise, a Chevrolet — a modified Equinox SUV.

•Chevy Cruze compact sedan, already a runaway sales hit and with a gasoline Eco model rated up to 42 miles per gallon on the highway, will get an even higher mileage diesel version in 2013. That would be the first Detroit passenger-vehicle diesel since the 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD sport-utility, and the first diesel car from Detroit since the 1980s.

Formidable rivals Honda and Nissan both had promised diesel sedans by now but failed to deliver, backing off because of costs.