I usually don’t gamble and I’m not really good at it either (“Gantz will eat Netanyahu”, “Corona? Hardly hits the wing”), but please write on the ice that in 2021 it is recommended to keep an eye on what is happening in Chevrolet’s showrooms. Not sure, it may be a rookie’s mistake, but there is also no denying that there is a trend. This year, when the entire market has had to deal with acute declines and corona crises, their sales have grown by 11% compared to 2019, and if I look at the products that are on the doorstep – there are a few bullies here that are worth lingering over.
Yes, until recently the Chevrolet Spark was the crown jewel. From all of General Motors’ insane American history, we have been left with a dwarf made in South Korea who relies especially on students whose parents decided to pamper them upon reaching a general BA position. So that’s it, the wait for the shelling has paid off. The brand halls will soon be packed with models from the Spark, which is still considered a serious anchor, but opposite you will find the Blazer, the Camaro and next year probably also the mythical Corvette, which rumors are coming overseas, speculators in the US are selling queues on the way to buy it. Yes, that much.
It’s just that with the whole rich menu, the importer at UMI is now putting quite a few eggs in the basket of the trailblazer, a compact crossover that is thrown straight into the lions’ den, from the boiling segments, and there they are convinced it is going to be a hit. That’s why I also go into the betting exchange, smelling an option to put the chips on it.
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Anyone familiar with the trailblazer in its previous incarnation, it is better to erase the disk and reformat it. It used to be a traditional American SUV. A 4,200 cc engine, almost five meters long, a heavy smoker and a serial polluter. To enter the city with it, you needed a police motorcycle to clear the road and a tank driver in training.
So Chevrolet realized that these sizes were no longer really relevant, probably for the crowded cities. It started with the wonderful blazer, which also arrived recently, and it continues with the trailblazer, which despite the obligatory name is smaller in length than the blazer (440 cm vs. 486 cm) and looks like its little brother.
The Trailblazer is not going to have an easy walk in the park on its way to the client’s heart. He got into fierce battles with vehicles like the Nissan Qashqai, Mazda CX – 30 and certainly with the Kia Sportage. Established vehicles, laden with fans, and yet, already in the exterior appearance there is something captivating about it.
True, quite tired of telling about another beautiful SUV shows that its recommenders claim to be equivalent to Mr. World, but when it comes, fun. It’s a tough Jeep, with striking resemblances to Chevrolet’s wonderful Camaro and narrow front light strips. It can certainly be distinguished from the center of the herd. The inside is also definitely interesting. Although the dashboard and the multimedia screen – we saw impressive of them, but they are easy and simple to control and operate, an important matter for technophobes like me.
Admittedly, we found in the driver’s environment a bit of grayish and hard plastic, but a notable advantage lies in the fact that the designers took care to put soft and pleasant materials to the touch in places where the hands usually wander. Also in terms of space, at first there was apprehension when we read the dry figure – 264 cm wheelbase. We have seen impressive of it, but when you step inside, you understand how proper organization of space can make life easier. For example, in the space behind the trailblazer surpasses one of its direct competitors by 11 centimeters, which is a lot.
At the rear we are sometimes accustomed to three passengers being able to enter, but the middle will not only be forced to be crushed between two jams, it will also suffer from the canal located in the center. Trailblazer comes with a choice of two propulsion configurations – front and dual, which we will touch on later. The one with the front-wheel drive, which is also supposed to be the best-selling, comes without a ditch, which will allow the entry of three in Sasson. More than that, according to the data that Chevrolet markets, the trunk can hold 716 liters, which is a lot on any scale.
Just need to put an asterisk next to the impressive figure. Chevrolet people tend to measure by American standard – and in the case of the trunk – up to ceiling height, while Europeans stop at shelf height. It is still a spacious trunk, with a comfortable and useful cargo door. In the United States the car quickly became a hit. One of the sites checked and found that from March to June the Trailblazer managed to be in the auction hall, on average, for 19 days until he found himself a new parking space.
It’s a little surprising that the Americans were so enthusiastic about the Compacton, because it’s so different from the vehicle they’ve known in the past. If it used to be a huge SUV with a high-fat engine, now it’s off the production line with two small turbocharged petrol engines. 1,200 cc and 1,350 cc, with Israel now only available in the older version.
Like we said, it will come in both front-wheel drive and dual-drive version. Although I drove both at the launch event, I will focus more on the front-wheel drive version that is supposed to be popular. Even when talking about dual propulsion, do not imagine an SUV that will deal with boulders and natural forces, but more a trail-eating vehicle, while its front-wheel drive brother, the unpretentious one, still enjoys a 19-inch wheelbase.
Chevrolet Trail Blazer (Photo: Tomer Feder)We did not know at first how to eat the lean engine with the three cylinders. Will it be able to withstand the load? It worked smoothly, pleasantly, with the help of a continuous gearbox. It has an impressive power of 155 hp and a torque of 24.2 kg that can be encountered already at 1,600 rpm. The result is an agile vehicle that accelerates from 0 to 100 in 8.5 seconds. And nervous, but when it has to slip into a detour, it has no problem of power, and in turns it instills confidence with a stable road grip. When we looked at the fuel consumption, it stood at 13.5 km per liter.
A right point that will probably stand in favor of a trailblazer is in the safety department. At all four trim levels it is equipped from head to toe, autonomous braking in an emergency, through lane departure correction and ten airbags. In this section did not spare. The UMI importer kept saying that they trust this model. It has the right size, look, instrumentation, safety measures and even the name Trailblazer is considered a brand. If you look and examine the compact Jeep, you will find that it does not embarrass its ancestors at all.
Spare wheels
Renault, the pioneer of urban SUVs with the Capture, is bringing it back from a new and up-to-date look (pictured below). The Jeep has been lengthened by 11 centimeters, and is now 423 centimeters long. The wheelbase has also lengthened, but only by two inches and it marks a full 263 inches. The vehicle comes with a 1,300 cc engine and a choice between the two suppliers – 131 hp and 154 hp. In the higher versions, the Capture is equipped with a spectacular multimedia system with a 9.3-inch screen. Autonomous braking and adaptive cruise control.In the crash tests of the Euro-n-Cape the Capture won five stars.The price of the car, at the time of launch, will start at NIS 125,000.
Renault Capture (Photo: PR)And we will end with two electrifying news items. Union Group, an importer of Toyota, continues to strengthen its grip in the field of electric vehicles. The importer will market in Israel, starting in 2022, the vehicles of GELI (GEELY), the giant manufacturer from China, which last year alone sold about one and a half million vehicles from the group’s brands. Gili will join GAC, another manufacturer from China that Union imports to Israel. The move is part of the group’s strategy to provide a range of mobile solutions for every need.
Talkar, an importer of Kia and Ssangyong, has announced that in the first months of the coming year it will start marketing the E3 Jeep of the Chinese electric brand Seres. This is a vehicle that is supposed to compete with electric, popular models, which are already circulating here. In the second half of 2021, the SF5, a premium electric crossover from the same manufacturer, which is destined by an importer to compete directly with Tesla’s elite power, is expected to land in Israel. We wrote before us.