When I first got into broadcasting back in the '80's, my beloved, cranky yet extremely supportive mentor would repeatedly tell me in his cranky, crusty New Yorker kind of way, "You're a dime a dozen, Connolly. Don't believe your own press." Coming from a background where even the slightest hint of hubris would get my ass ground to pulp, it wasn't hard for me to take his sage advice to heart. No one apparently was as candid with General Motors when they rolled out a "hot rod pickup truck" for the car show circuit back in the year 2000.
In an Autoweek article from 2003, Tom Wallace, a vehicle line executive for the Chevrolet SSR claimed there were three reasons that they [General Motors] decided to build it. "First", he said, "it's pretty cool, a halo vehicle for Chevrolet. Second, journalists all said we should build it. Third, Rick [GM chairman Rick Wagoner] said we should built it. Now, no one ever said that the automobile industry was for the modest or faint of heart, but clearly Mr. Wallace, Mr. Wagoner and the rest of the gang from General Motors would have been well to heed the advice given to me years ago when the press accolades starting pouring in about their SSR concept. Also, and hindsight being 20/20 of course, I find it hard to believe that no one at GM saw where the SSR would eventually end up. That being in a metaphorical if not literal ditch.
Pundits claim that much of what doomed the SSR was poor execution. Based on General Motors quite capable mid sized truck chassis at the time, the SSR was deemed to be under powered, had a shaky structure, [well, what do you think was going to happen when you chopped the top off a pickup?] and suffered from poorly designed eronomics [interior design]. By the time Chevrolet updated the SSR for model year 2005 with the power train from the Corvette and myriad suspension modifications and chassis reinforcements, the dye had been cast; SSR was a loser.
Interesting. Did anyone think to ask people who didn't go to car shows or write for auto industry friendly rags what they thought of a 5,000 pound, two passenger, retro styled, convertible pickup truck? Didn't think so.
In broadcasting, if you're on the air whether it be radio or television, no matter what, someone is going to love you; everyone has fans. However, if you only listen to what you want to hear you're not going to go very far in life. While it is important to have people who react positively to whatever in life it is you're doing, it's the unspoken masses, the silent majority so to speak, that have the final and most important say. The silent, polite masses were the ones who ultimately decided the fate of the SSR; determined it pretty quickly too. It total, Chevrolet sold just over 21,000 SSR's in four model years and just over 9,000 its first model year, 2003. To put that into proper context, SSR would have been deemed successful had they sold 21,000 a year. So, if the car show circuit and the the automobile journalists not to mention GM's Big Cheese said it should be built thus being a ringing endorsement of it's sales potential, then what happened?
Well, they were wrong; that's what happened. The SSR didn't fail because it didn't have enough power, shook like a hulu girl and handled like a bathtub full of water. No, it failed because it was ugly, weird, impractical. and expensive. Was it cool? Yes, but only to a certain degree. No work-a-day pickup truck driver would ever use this as a tool box. Its concept was so far over the top that no one could take it seriously either; you drive this thing and you might as well be wearing a red tuxedo or a clown suit to work. Would people react in what could be construed a positive manner if you wore a red tuxedo to work? People, in general, are polite...to your face. What you really want to know is what they're whispering to themselves and saying to others behind your back. When it came to the SSR they politely said no by not opening up their checkbooks for it.
What was the SSR attempting to be in the first place? A hot rodded 1947-55 Chevrolet pickup, of course! He says putting his palm against his forehead. Even "car guy" here can appreciate that, sort of, but to have the fanfare this thing got, that it could be, in essence a player, that would run in the same circles as Corvette was more than a tad perplexing, it was down right troubling. Especially in light of the fact that GM had just canceled Camaro and Firebird after 2002 and they were just about to launch a Holden Monaro as a Pontiac GTO. He puts his palm to his forehead again and says, "guys, who slipped what into your Kool-Aid"?
What I find the most perplexing of all, in retrospect which is amusing since we're discussing a "retro" themed vehicle, is that Chevrolet made their at the time mainstream vehicles as stylistically bland as possible. By mainstream in 2003 mind you, years before the explosion in popularity of "cross over" SUV's, we're talking about the 2000 Impala and the oh-my-god-awful 1997 Chevrolet Malibu. If Chevrolet did do anything correctly with the SSR, it showcased that GM still had considerable design chops in their midst. Too bad they didn't use those design chops where it mattered. Judging by the look of things with their present day Impala and Malibu, they're still not. Someone in the press better start getting as frank and candid with them as possible and tell them what to do since they're the only people they listen to. Oh, wait...that's right, you wouldn't be telling them everything they'd want to hear.
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