Photo: Newspress USA
Revealed at the 2012 Paris Motor Show, the Chevrolet Trax used to be joined at the hip with the Opel Mokka. Although Groupe PSA has redesigned the latter from the ground up, General Motors still builds the Chevrolet Trax and technically similar Buick Encore on an old platform.
Gamma II is how the platform in question is called. Mostly developed by GM South Korea, these underpinnings premiered in 2010 with the Chevrolet Spark, Sail, and the Holden Barina Spark for the Aussie market.
Let’s pretend age is just a number, although it most certainly isn’t. Had General Motors designed a good car, the Trax and Encore would still be relevant today. But given their poor build quality and woeful reliability, it’s hardly surprising that sales took a nosedive. Given these circumstances, a question must be posed. Is the Trax going to receive a second generation?
In a nutshell, yes. "Chevrolet can confirm that production of the current Trax will end in late 2022," a spokesperson told Roadshow by CNET. The GM official later added that “an all-new Trax [is coming] later this year."
Buick is currently keeping its lips tightly shut, but silence is an excellent confirmation as well. If the Trax receives a ground-up redesign, why shouldn’t the Encore follow suit? In any case, production has been confirmed to start in the first half of 2023, likely for the 2023 model year.
We still don’t know how General Motors will differentiate the Trax from the subcompact-sized Trailblazer. Another mystery concerns the platform, which is probably going to be the VSS used by the Trailblazer and Encore GX. If that’s the case, then customers will have to prepare themselves for 1.2- and 1.3-liter turbo three-pot mills connected to a front-drive continuously variable transmission or an all-wheel-drive automatic tranny.
Once popular but now seriously dated and outmatched by segment rivals, the Trax is available starting from $21,400 sans destination charge in the United States. Over at Buick, the premium brand charges $24,600 for the Encore.
Let’s pretend age is just a number, although it most certainly isn’t. Had General Motors designed a good car, the Trax and Encore would still be relevant today. But given their poor build quality and woeful reliability, it’s hardly surprising that sales took a nosedive. Given these circumstances, a question must be posed. Is the Trax going to receive a second generation?
In a nutshell, yes. "Chevrolet can confirm that production of the current Trax will end in late 2022," a spokesperson told Roadshow by CNET. The GM official later added that “an all-new Trax [is coming] later this year."
Buick is currently keeping its lips tightly shut, but silence is an excellent confirmation as well. If the Trax receives a ground-up redesign, why shouldn’t the Encore follow suit? In any case, production has been confirmed to start in the first half of 2023, likely for the 2023 model year.
We still don’t know how General Motors will differentiate the Trax from the subcompact-sized Trailblazer. Another mystery concerns the platform, which is probably going to be the VSS used by the Trailblazer and Encore GX. If that’s the case, then customers will have to prepare themselves for 1.2- and 1.3-liter turbo three-pot mills connected to a front-drive continuously variable transmission or an all-wheel-drive automatic tranny.
Once popular but now seriously dated and outmatched by segment rivals, the Trax is available starting from $21,400 sans destination charge in the United States. Over at Buick, the premium brand charges $24,600 for the Encore.
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