Do you sometimes wonder how the car companies determine which vehicles go to which countries? We wonder why some that seem naturals for the US market don’t make it here. This is the Chevy Groove. It’s a compact crossover Chevy will be launching soon, but not in the US. It’s based on the Boajun 510 which is a Chinese compact SUV crossover. Will the US miss having yet another compact crossover? The market is getting so flooded with every variation of SUV that we’d have to say probably not. But the economy has tanked, millions are out of work, and Chevy thinks it can sell a gang of big SUVs and pickup trucks. So, this is the Chevy Groove and the US won’t be getting it. When the decision was made it was probably a good one. But not now.

With the times being what they are, see if you agree?

The Chevy Groove will be sold in 40 different countries. In and around Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East are just some of its destinations. It’s a joint venture between SAIC, Wuling, and GM that has borne other fruit like the Chevy Captiva. It’s based on the Boajun 530. 

You could say it looks far better than the current Chevy Trax and Buick Encore. We think that you might be right. So that gets us back to why companies pick some vehicles for here and some for yonder? The only way American auto companies can manufacture vehicles in China is through joint ventures. So that’s one reason why the Groove exists. 

But looking at Chevy’s line of compact crossovers it is a cornucopia of many varied and curious models. Let’s see; there is the Blazer, Equinox, Traverse, and Trax. Looks like there’s an ass for every seat? Sometimes it seems like manufacturers think they need to cover a myriad of bases. Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t. All of these small SUVs come in at under $30,000. In these times that’s definitely a good thing.

Who are we to suggest the Groove replace the Trax?

The Groove comes in at 166-inches long. That’s comparable to the Trax at 167-inches. There are other similarities between the Trax and Groove but who are we to suggest the Groove replace the Trax? 

But when a new crossover has been developed shouldn’t it replace an aging similar version? We suspect that having to share the rewards of a joint venture vehicle negates the thought. 

We get the Trax, developed early in the last decade debuting in 2015

The Groove will debut in South America soon. So it and other countries will have a stylish, new compact crossover which seems like the perfect US model for the times we live in. We get the Trax, a vehicle developed early in the last decade making its debut in 2015. 

Chevy knows its product cadence and we don’t. But looking at what we have available to us it just seems like the wheels of GM development almost need similar but different vehicles. Sort of like the Chevy Corsica and Chevy Beretta; two similar yet completely different cars sold at the same time in the late-1980s that failed to add much to Chevy’s bottom line.