My prediction is the new Dart will not be around very long and count my vote as those 80s era Pontiac LeMans as being some of the worst tin cans ever inflicted upon the driving public.
I’ve had the dubious honor of repairing a few of those things and my personal opinion is they wouldn’t even make a good artificial reef as they would probably dissolve within a few days. 
Yeah, the late 80s LeMans were right up there with the Yugo in terms of styling, comfort, performance, and reliability. I think they were made by Daewoo?
I really think the thing that will make or break the new Dart is the marketing of it, much as I hate to admit it.
true. look what marketing did for the Charger
The Aveo was a big improvement over the last incarnation of the LeMans. Does it get any worse than that?
There’s a good reason Daewoo went bankrupt. GM’s purchase of the assets allowed them to injects some quiality improvements, but the Aveo was still mostly the old Daewoo.
The engineers likely had never really learned Japanese style high quality engineering. Now that they have an opportuninty to do that I hope that future Korean designed cars from GM are worth buying.
The Chevy Sonic is designed in the Korean GM studio and the tests I’ve read say that it is worth considering against any car in its class. Apparently they’ve learned some lessons in the last 10 years.
Regardless of how much we may rightfully diss the Aveo, it bore the Chevy name. IMHO, you put your name plate on it, you own it and all of it’s foibles. GM was willing to sacrifice reputation for profit. If they want customers to come running back to buy their competent Malibu, don’t expect previous Aveo buyers to be first in line. It’s about corporate character and integrity…if it ever existed in the first place. The illusion is necessary for reputation. Honda and Toyota have spent years cultivating it…GM can’t keep slapping their names on Aveo type products and expect buyers to forgive their past and buy the next hyped product to come along.
It’s not difficult to understand engineering practices that result in quality cars at competitive prices. It just requires investment and some short term profit sacrifice to realize long term benefits. So in my opinion, ignorance is no excuse, for any car company.
I agree with dagosa that GM was willing to scrifice reputation for profit. Remember GM’s Cadillac Cimarron? Nothing more than a rebadged Chevy Cavalier with power windows, power locks, and a few other goodies not available on it’s sibling which was priced several thousand dollars more. Then there was their haphazard approach with diesel powered Caddy’s…oy vey…
GM was willing to sacrifice reputation for profit
That would require GM to look beyond next quarter. As long as GM is only looking to see how much profit they can get THIS quarter then they are doomed to fail.
Remember that some auto companies (most, probably) don’t have the same priorities as you do. Calling them names is pretty silly. You may disagree with their priorities, but they were not stupid. That was back when GM was uber-rational. The Pontiac Aztek did not come from car guys, but from people that wanted to design an automotive appliance; all function and form was the last consideration. I didn’t agree with that way of thinking, and did not buy the cars that were slow, ugly, and handled like a hippo on a wet river bank. GM learned their lesson, got rid of the uber-rational managers, and they are now more in line with what I think are decent cars. They might change their minds again, as many companies do, and then I’ll look elsewhere.