Matthew Revell

A few months ago, General Motors ran full page ads in the national press, with a very strange offer. If you bought a car from their (relatively) recently acquired Daewoo brand, they’d swap it for another brand new one - this time with a Chevrolet badge - in six months time.

Whatever their reason for this bizarre offer, it signalled the move from the Daewoo brand, to Chevrolet. Interestingly enough, the cars remain unchanged and are not the same Chevrolets available in America.

Daewoo cars, during the twelve or thirteen years they’ve been in the UK, have more or less filled the gap left by Lada’s departure from EU markets and Skoda’s return to its roots as a quality car manufacturer. So, what sense does it make to move to the Chevrolet brand?

I’d bet the majority of Daewoo/Chevrolet UK’s target market have a very hazy idea of what Chevrolet is all about. I’m a car fan and a quick look at the US Chevrolet website shows that my perception of a Chevvy is something big, loud, not particularly pretty and with an enormous engine, isn’t fully representative of their range. So, the average Daewoo owner - i.e. someone who doesn’t really care about cars, they just want to move from place to place without using their legs too much - will almost certainly have no usable idea of what Chevrolet is all about.

Anyway, whatever their reason for the brand change, it appears that it’s now complete. Looking at the new Chevrolet UK website, the irony is that, whatever name you give them, the cars are the epitomy of anonymity.