Will Chevrolet Continue to Make the Impala
Feb. 27, 2020, will go down as the end of an era. The last Chevrolet Impala sedan rolled off the line at GM's Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant—and with it a bunch of retiring workers. The plant will be retooled, at a cost of $2.2 billion, over the next year and a half to begin battery electric vehicle production.
"It's time to go," Joe Nickowski, 62, who has worked for GM for 43 years, told the Detroit Free Press. "It's time to pass the torch to these younger people to have the chance to build these great vehicles. Just like the Impala, I hate to see it go, but it's the sign of the times."
The plant is building the new electric GMC Hummer starting next next year, as well as the Cruise Origin EV (which is production-ready, says GM, but for now will be used on the company's campuses) and other future electrics.
But today we celebrate the Impala. For a Boomer, it might have been a parent's car they were allowed to drive at 16. For Gen X car enthusiasts like myself, it was first Dr. Dre and his cohorts rapping about a '64 on switches (hydraulics) and then my friend's dad's 1996 SS that he NEVER let us touch. For millennials and later, they probably don't know what it is.
The Impala was produced for more than 50 years in three spurts. The first was 1957 to 1985; it came back in 1994 until 1996; and its final run was 1999 to ... yesterday. The first and second generation were one- and two-year runs. The third-gen (1961-1964) is the sweet spot, at least for me, and the fourth-generation (1965-1970) Impala set an all-time sales record or more than 1 million units per year. As the fifth generation began in 1971, a 454 big block V8 was still available making 365 hp, but as the '70s went on, power languished. The marque was downsized for the sixth generation and went away in 1985.
The vehicle returned in February 1994 with a Corvette-sourced 5.7-liter V8 as the Impala SS with the Caprice 9C1 police package as its base. That package included upgraded shocks and springs, four-wheel disc brakes, dual exhaust and several other mechanical changes. It made 260 hp but 330 lb-ft of torque. The B-platform underpinning the Chevy Caprice, Impala SS and Buick Roadmaster was discontinued and, with it, the Impala.
It came back in 1999 (2000 model year) for an eighth generation as a normal-size four-door with two choices of V6. Police departments grabbed a handful of the more fuel-efficient vehicles as new squad cars, but the Ford Crown Victoria was still the cruiser of choice. The ninth gen was introduced at the LA Auto Show in 2005 and rolled onto the streets as a 2006 model with a couple V6 options. The SS came back with a small-block V8 making 303 hp.
Finally came the relatively handsome—compared to the '80s and '90s models—10th-generation sedan. It was the first North American sedan in 20 years to get a Consumer Reports top score, 95 out of 100. It was a little larger than the previous model, running on GM's Epsilon II platform borrowed from the Cadillac XTS. This Impala offered a four-cylinder engine for the first time, a 182-hp 2.4-liter and GM's 306-hp "High Feature" V6.
From 2010 on, sales slipped from 172,000 per year to less than 50K in 2019 as the sedan market crashed through the floor.
The death of the full-size Chevy Impala isn't large sedans' death knell, but it does continue a growing trend of automakers downsizing, switching to crossovers and exploring EVs and hybrids.
"I asked a couple of my managers if I can come back in a couple of years to see the production of the Hummer," Nickowski told the Free Press. "They said it wouldn't be a problem."
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Source: https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a31154807/the-final-chevy-impala-has-rolled-off-the-line-again/