The Future of Chevrolet is the Future of GM

Chevrolet Cruze" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="350" height="272" align="left" />Chevrolet has been the prime mover for General Motors for a while now. Even back when the General was running eight brands full-time, Chevy was putting up well more than half of the company's overall sales. It was these kinds of results that made GM execs feel comfortable that Chevy could pick up most of the slack once the company shed half of its divisions.

Specifically, GM's post-bankruptcy goal was for Chevrolet to be responsible for 70 percent of the company's sales worldwide. And it's been so far, so good, at least in the U.S. Chevy's 100,023 November sales represented about 71.6 percent of GM's total core brand sales here and approximately 66 percent of the General's overall U.S. sales. Looking solely at individual brands, Chevrolet was the third-best seller in the U.S. market in November, trailing only Ford and Toyota but seeing a higher year-over-year sales bump than the other two.

Let's not forget, too, that two upcoming Chevrolet products — the Chevy Volt (pictured below) and Chevy Cruze (pictured above) — are being counted on to make GM profitable, bring electric vehicles to the masses, get U.S. customers into U.S. small cars and help find a cure for cancer.

Well, maybe not that last bit, but it's patently obvious that if GM is going to really turn itself around, it needs a successful Chevrolet. A very successful Chevrolet.

Which is why people are so nervous about the fact that Brent Dewar, until very recently the vice president of the Chevrolet global brand, is "retiring" after only a few months on the job. And that doesn't even tell the whole story: Before moving on to other executive positions at GM, Dewar was the general manager of the division from 2003 to 2005, a time when Chevy sales were up above 2.6 million units annually and its market share reached 16.4 percent.

I know things were a tad different in the industry way back then, but the point is that Dewar sure looked like he knew what he was doing with the division, and I can't quite say the same about Ed Whitacre, who took control of GM a few days ago and replaced Dewar with the head of the General's fleet and commercial business, Jim Campbell.

I mean, this isn't meant to be a knock against Campbell, but my gut instinct tells me this shake up had more to do with corporate politics than anything else.

The good news is that Campbell will inherit a strong if somewhat bloated lineup of vehicles that should get even stronger when Chevy's new small cars take the field in the coming years. Although the Chevrolet Aveo was somewhat of a rush job, the Chevrolet Cobalt and especially the Chevrolet Malibu truly raised ye olde bar in terms of GM small-car quality. There really is every reason to believe their successors will continue this progress. The full-size Chevrolet Impala remains a force to be reckoned with, still handily outselling the new Ford Taurus and leading the full-size sedan segment.

In fact, the Cobalt, Malibu and Impala were all among the top 20 best-selling vehicles in the U.S. through November.

In the crossover segments, the Chevrolet Traverse and Chevrolet Equinox are among the best in the business, while sales of the Chevrolet HHR were up by 38 percent in November and should approach 70,000 units on the year. Chevrolet's "real" trucks and SUVs are also doing well, led by the Chevrolet Silverado pickup, which remained the third-best-selling vehicle in the U.S. through last month.

And the news that GM will keep building these vehicles with body-on-frame designs will ensure Chevy keeps a big chunk of this shrinking but still significant segment.

But while Chevrolet looks to be pretty well set on product for the coming years, it won't be operating in a vacuum. Nissan is aggressively pushing its Leaf EV as a low-cost alternative to the Volt. The Blue Oval will have the impressive new Ford Focus to counter the Cruze, along with the Ford Fiesta to take on the Aveo replacement. A new crossover-style Ford Explorer is on the way, which could have a big impact on the Traverse and even the Equinox. The Malibu, even with a coming refresh/redesign, will be up against the Ford Fusion and a redesigned Hyundai Sonata. A sudden upswing in gas prices could steer people away from big Chevy trucks — etc., etc.

In other words, running Chevrolet will be no easy task. Actually, a case could be made that the head of Chevy should be the most important exec at GM, since the burden of the company's success rests nearly entirely on the division's success. Which, based on how things have gone so far, means we can expect Ed Whitacre to take over for Jim Campbell just about any day now.