Chevy, Buick squeeze in more compact crossovers as cars are dropped

General Motors will try to offset lost sales from its shrinking U.S. car lineup by adding small crossovers with familiar names for Buick and Chevrolet.

By early next year, GM will resurrect the Chevy Trailblazer and introduce a larger variant of the Buick Encore. Other than their names, though, dealers and consumers should not expect the vehicles to have much in common with their predecessors.

The compact crossovers will share a platform and be imported from South Korea. The vehicles, which GM confirmed last week, will slot between the brands' subcompact models and larger compact crossovers. Chevy and Buick are among a number of brands trying to increase market share by slicing the popular small-crossover segments even more narrowly.

Chevy and Buick are expected to lose at least two cars apiece by the 2020 model year. GM ended production of the Buick LaCrosse, Chevy Cruze and Chevy Volt sedans this year; and production of the Buick Cascada convertible is to end this summer, followed potentially by the demise of the Chevy Impala by January.

The 2021 Trailblazer takes heavy design cues from the Chevy Blazer, another familiar SUV nameplate GM revived last year as a midsize crossover. Like the 2019 Blazer, the Trailblazer will include an RS trim with standard two-tone roof.

"Trailblazer is a continuation of the design language for Chevy's crossover family and extends our momentum into one of the industry's fastest-growing segments," Steve Majoros, director of Chevrolet passenger car and crossover marketing, said in a statement.

GM last produced the Trailblazer for the U.S. for the 2009 model year. During the SUV craze of the early 2000s, the TrailBlazer was a successful midsize, body-on-frame SUV, offered in five- and seven-passenger versions.

It was discontinued when GM closed its SUV plant in Moraine, Ohio, and replaced in the Chevy lineup by the first-generation Traverse crossover.

U.S. sales of the TrailBlazer peaked at roughly 283,500 in 2004 — three years after it went on sale as a separate nameplate. (Originally, it was an upscale trim of the Blazer.) GM sold more than 1.5 million TrailBlazers in the U.S., according to the Automotive News Data Center.

The Encore GX will sit on a different platform from the U.S. Encore as well as from a redesigned version that Buick unveiled for China in April.

The vehicle will have nearly 5 cubic feet more cargo space than the subcompact Encore and about 3 cubic feet less than the compact Envision.

"As we look to the future of Buick, the Encore GX positions us strongly as a consideration for those who want to purchase small or compact SUVs," Duncan Aldred, vice president of Buick, said in a statement.

The GX will try to capitalize on the success of the Encore, which has been a hit since arriving in the U.S. in 2013.

Annual U.S. sales of the Encore have nearly tripled since then to more than 93,000 in 2018 — representing 45 percent of Buick's volume. First-quarter Encore sales were down 3.4 percent from a year earlier to 24,606.