One of the last of the truck-based body on frame midsize suvs, the Chevrolet Trailblazer, in its heyday, was ranked among the most popular midsize SUVs in America. Sharing its platform with the Buick Rainier, GMC Envoy, and Oldsmobile Bravada, the Trailblazer was introduced in 2002, and was produced through 2009.
Unfortunately, consumer tastes changed considerably over the course of the Trailblazer’s lifetime. Where before, it was enough just to be an SUV, eventually people wanted the wildly popular vehicles to behave more like cars. In this regard, the Trailblazer was ill-suited to make the leap. Ultimately, General Motors replaced the Trailblazer with the Traverse, incorporating a unibody design with more carlike attributes.
Still, the Trailblazer had a lot going for it—its unique hydroformed frame rails gave it exceptional rigidity for a body on frame design. Further, then state of the art features such as navigation and a rear seat DVD-based video entertainment system were available. Sadly though, all these modern conveniences were packed into an inferior interior design—one that left quite a bit to be desired on both the quality and the aesthetic front.
For these, and a number of other reasons, the Chevrolet Trailblazer was discontinued in 2009. Thus, only one generation of the midsize Chevrolet suv was ever built. BTW, the Trailblazer name was originally employed in 1999, as an upscale trim line of Chevrolet’s Blazer SUV. The Blazer ran until 2005.