Partly because I am an Australian Australian and partly because I have an appreciation of the sheer insanity of putting a single country on such an unwieldy and daft continent, I have long come to the conclusion that things developed specifically for Australia by Australians are generally better than overseas counterparts. Aircraft refitted and engineered for our military need to fly further than most other air forces because we are so isolated, our voting system which was built of deep mistrust of political parties and political manipulation is the best in the world, and even out humble sandwich toasters are the zenith of small appliances (Breville is Brilliant). When Australians are allowed to engineer and build stuff, it is invariably the best in the world because Australia is such a harsh place that things that are inferior show up pretty quickly and fall apart.
This was also true for the motor industry. Australian built cars might not have been the most luxurious but they were generally the best engineered in the world. When you combine the design requirements of roads that are worse than France, distances that are further than the United States, and temperatures that are hotter than most of Africa, then that describes the abuse that Australian cars need to stand up to.
Commodore, Falcon, 380, Cruze, Corolla, Laser... probably without exception since about 1968, whenever there was an Australian built version of a car, or there is a pretty good overseas analogue to a car built in Australia, then then Australian built version would be better and very very obviously so.
There is an admission by American motoring enthusiasts that the United States went through a period of producing awful machinery. The American motoring industry in its quest to produce ever more power, never really bothered to pursue the line of enquiry of making cars with better technology and when the 1970s Oil Crises hit, the American industry fell headlong into a ditch and the immediate period of the late 1970s and 1980s is known as the "Malaise Era".
The cars which followed the Malaise Era were kind of the turnaround of the American motoring industry but they never really learned how to make small cars at all and the sedans/wagons/hatchbacks that America did make, were only ever okay at best. Even now, although the American motoring industry produces an insane amount of SUVs, they aren't exactly the pinnacle of world engineering. The thing that America does still excel at, is making a small amount of cars with crazy-go-nuts amoutn of power without slapping hypercar price tags on them. Admittedly, those cars are still out of the range of most people but that's probably for the best.
This leads me to the curious case of Chevrolet in the United States. I think that Chevrolet in particular tried to hang on to producing its own bad cars for far too long. Ford basically admitted that its domestic cars were rubbish and thus Ford in America sold the Fiesta, Focus, Mondeo (as a Fusion) and its only deviation was the Taurus which was always worse than the Falcon, and the Mustang which was also always worse than the Falcon.
Chevrolet on the other hand tried to make cars for the American domestic market, despite the rest of the GM family always making better stuff than anyone in America. In some cases the other GM brands such as Saturn, Geo, Pontiac, and Buick, would capture overseas stuff and sell it but it never lasted all that long because better engineering comes with a slightly bigger price tag and the one consistent thing that the American car market wants, is cars at the absolute cheapest price; regardless of how terrible the quality is.
Aveo/Sonic
Some of this story relates to GM North America not having any kind of small car at all, since the end of the T-car which became the world's most badge engineered vehicle in the history of ever. I have found 27 different combinations of the T-car, which was sold in Australia as the Holden Gemini and in the United States as the Chevrolet Chevette.
The Aveo/Spark was a GM Daewoo product which was built in Korea and then built at a cheaper price point for the United States. Intrinsically it is not a bad car but when GM still owned Vauxhall/Opel, it had access to a better vehicle in the Corsa.
The ironic thing is that the Corsa was sold in Mexico as the Chevrolet C2, after Europe had changed to a new model and the older tooling shops and IP got exported. Even after that, a Mexican C2 was always still a better proposition than an American Aveo.
Spark
As for the Spark, it is a brilliant little machine which could have been replaced with the Opel Adam which was marginally better in every single department.
Cavalier/Cobalt
This is a tale of sadness.
The Cavalier was North America's attempt at trying to reproduce the Astra G coupe but with worse parts. The replacement Cobalt was a second attempt to reproduce the Astra G sedan but not hatch; also with worse parts. Neither the Cavalier or the Cobalt would have been up to par in Europe and they certainly weren't up to par in Australia where Holden opted to take the Corolla under the Button Plan and then took the Astra F, G but missed out on H except when Opel imported the whole car themselves.
The Cruze which replaced the Astra for Holden and the Cobalt for Chevrolet, was a joint Australia/Korea developed car; where the final engineering was completed by Holden. Holden also built the Cruze hatch.
The Cruze J300 proves my opening assertion that things developed specifically for Australia by Australians are generally better than overseas counterparts because even if you admit that the Astra has always been a neat machine, the Cruze J300 is quite frankly excellent. America got the Cruze as a Chevrolet; wherein they immediately set about reducing the quality of the parts in an effort to make them cheaper.
Malibu
The Malibu name plate has been applied to a number of vehicles, which are mostly uninspired dross. Malibu 5 was a Chevrolet native thing which was awful and should have been replaced with the Opel Vectra B.
Malibu 6 was a reengineered Vectra C but like the Cobalt, Chevrolet decided to make it with cheaper parts than the Vectra. About the best thing about the Malibu 6 was the Family II engine which was built at the engine shop at Port Melbourne among other places.
The next two generations of Malibu could have been replaced by the Opel Insignia A. For a time, both the Insignia A and the Malibu 8 were sold concurrently in Australia. The Malibu 8 was so shocking that it sold in the tens. The Insignia although an excellent car, was sold as a Buick Regal in the United States because they knew that the price point demanded by Buick customers could cope with better built and engineered cars.
Malibu 9 is supposedly related to Insignia B but again, its been reengineered so that it's built on the cheap. I expect that Malibu 9 will never be replaced by Malibu 10 because it like so many other Chevrolet products, is so poorly built that the public aren't fooled.
Impala
The Holden Commodore from VN onwards, would have coped excellently at being the Chevrolet Lumina and then from VT onwards the Commodore was almost exactly equivalent to the Impala 7, 8, and 9. At no point whatsoever was the Impala better than the Commodore. In fact, in most cases the V6 engines in the Impala and the Commodore were the same engines, except that the Commodore oriented it north-south and drove the rear wheels as opposed to it being east-west and it driving the front wheels.
Commodore also had the wagon (which was never sold in the United States), the ute (which was also never sold in the United States but which would have sold a packet). The Holden Monaro which was pun out of the VT Commodore, was sold in the United States but was unloved as it was sold under the Pontiac GTO label but had it been sold as a Chevrolet Monaro which was a name which didn't mean anything to America, I think that it would have fared better.
Commodore also had the SS which was just a trim level in Australia which had the V8 (either 5.0L, 5.7L, 6.0L or 6.2L depending on the model) in addition to the 3.0L V6 and the 3.8L and then 3.6L V6.
In the United States though, SS was just sold as its own orphaned model with no context. Although Chevrolet used it as the thing that they were trying to market in NASCAR, this weird orphaned sedan which was mistakenly sold as a 'sports sedan' instead of the family hack that it was, didn't do particularly well. Any why? Because the Impala existed.
Once upon a time there was such a thing as a Monte Carlo SS and then an Impala SS; both of which were front wheel drive V8s that weren't exactly that well engineered. As Holden always had to pound its cars over dirt roads and over tracks that may as well have been a suggestion of road, Commodore and the Commodore SS was always a competent car.
Camaro
I don't understand what the mentality behind developing the Camaro is. Camaro 5 was built atop the Zeta platform which was developed for the Commodore. That means that underneath the surface, that Camaro 5 was what the Monaro VE would have been had it existed. VE/VF Commodore to be honest, are still the best sedans ever produced by any manufacturer.
Camaro 6 had its own platform developed for it and although it is stiffer, it seems a bit redundant to reinvent something which was perfectly useful. The Camaro 6 platform is a make operation, despite and perhaps in spite of the Zeta platform being excellent.
Corvette
This is where Chevrolet produces one car which is a superstar. The Corvette is a raw brawler in a world of refinement, or at least it used to be. The current Corvette by all accounts is a worthy supercar.
...
The problem with this strange tale of Chevrolet is that from 1995 until 2019, apart from Corvette, they actually didn't need to make any cars of their own and on every occasion when they did, they were all worse than what the rest of the world had to offer. A full and proper lineup would have been:
Corsa, Astra, Vectra, Commodore, Monaro, Corvette.
Instead, Chevrolet sold:
Aveo, Cobalt, Malibu, Impala, Camaro, Corvette.
Almost consistently from 1995, Chevrolet chose worse options and then wondered why the market slowly crept away from it in disgust. Of course the SUVification of everything happened and General Motors in their wisdom decided to blow apart every single connection that they had with the rest of the world; so now the cars that they now sell which aren't SUVs are the Spark, Malibu, Camaro and Corvette. The Spark is a fun little machine but it is unloved in America. The Malibu probably okay. The Camaro is as good as its going to be and yet still isn't as good as it could have been. The Corvette is a shining star of brilliance.
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