I'm under the impression that GM really hasn't the faintest idea of what they are doing these days. Especially after such a long time of big news that really turned out to be nothing and now a period of relative quiet or "bad" news.
I'm under the impression that we're back to "factions" at GM again, which is not good. Granted, much of the positive nature of GM came out of the looming Lutz faction of the early 2000's, he and his buddies have lost a lot of power, much of which has gone back to Wagoner and to some extent the European bosses. I believe you're still going to see a very strong Lutz group that is going to push for higher performance and higher quality vehicles, but with the prospects of running out of cash looming in the boardroom, I think we may go back to a top-down operation...
Most of the confusion these days mainly comes over what the hell they're going to do with the platforms, thats really it. Most of the people at GM are in agreement that technology wise, they're essentially on-par with the overwhelming majority of the competition, and consequently we won't have to see these petty wars over the "High-Feature" versus "High-Value" V6 ranges, what was once a battle over the future of ECOTEC, and hell, even what transmissions are worth keeping and which are not.
What it all comes down to in the end is that GM has to do what we've all argued about here before; They need to decide on solid brand directions, product plans, or cut things altogether. Pontiac can continue to exist as a performance brand without Zeta or Kappa, Epsilon will happily carry AWD and there are rumors of a RWD version as well, and as we've seen with the French, it is very easily to build high-performance FWD cars as well.
Chevrolet Getting the Zeta
Don't count it out just yet. Like I mentioned above, "factions" at GM are going to lead you to believe distinctly different things. It pretty much goes without question that the W-Bodied Impala is on life-support, and given the size difference between it and the Malibu, a bump-up in size would be necessary. Some are saying that they may import the Lumina from the Middle-East with an addition of quad tail-lights and the "brand face" split front grille, others are saying that the next Impala will be a supersized version of Epsilon II with AWD or RWD. However, I'm not sure which faction I believe.
IMO?
Pontiac should keep the Kappa car as long as possible, continuously updating the chassis in much the same way they did with the W-Body from '88-present. The Zeta program has been troubled from the start, so let it run its course, and then move on; Likely to Alpha or use whatever the Camaro's replacement chassis will be. Otherwise, let Pontiac take over the true performance alternatives to Chevrolet/Saturn, some with AWD standard (G6 anyone?) and others that are straight-up Banzai crazy (A high-performance G3 stripped of anything deemed 'unnecessary' and fitted with a Hi-Po ECOTEC).
