(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Following in the tracks of other American-made car manufacturers that have gone woke recently—including Jeep and Dodge—another company once known for its rugged, rock-like durability has rebranded itself for the snowflake generation.
Chevy is now the corporate partner of LGBTQ Nation, a news site and all-around forum that promises to “shine a light on vital LGBTQ issues through intimate conversations, in-depth profiles, and firsthand stories from within our community,” according to its website.
As a sponsor of the “Authentic Voices of Pride” campaign, Chevy has donated $25,000 to nine radical organizations dealing with gay and trans activism.
Among the beneficiaries are the lawfare outfit Lambda Legal; a group called Athlete Ally that is committed to forcing athletic leagues to permit transgender competitors; and the groomer group GLSEN, which advocates for LGBT issues in K-12 education.
Chevy’s strategic decision to go gay is evocative of the marketing choice made by Subaru in the early 1990s, when research showed the Japanese automaker that lesbians were one of five niche demographics most likely to value its all-terrain features in an urban-friendly sedan or coupe.
“When we did the research, we found pockets of the country like Northampton, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon, where the head of the household would be a single person—and often a woman,” said Tim Bennett, the company’s director of advertising at the time in a 2016 retrospective by the Atlantic.
It is unclear, however, whether marketing research led Chevy to conclude that the LGBT community also fed a strong demand for its iconic brands, including the Silverado pickup truck and the classic Corvette sports car.
The company does, of course, offer other lesser-known models, such as its electric-hybrid hatchback, the Bolt, as well as its Malibu sedan.
Yet most of its American line comprises gas-guzzlers like the Tahoe, Suburban and Trailblazer sport-utility vehicles, which may be a bad look for liberal eco-warriors hoping to practice what they preach.
Chevy’s path follows a disturbing pattern—not only among automakers, but entire swaths of the consumer and service industries that have been cowed by the ESG movement inflicted upon society via globalist investment firms like BlackRock.
Jeep, once the official vehicle of the U.S. military, notoriously ran a tone-deaf Super Bowl commercial with outspoken left-wing performer Bruce Springsteen in 2021, urging drivers to pivot toward the center in the weeks immediately following the Jan. 6 uprising and President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
It quickly pulled the campaign after backlash, while claiming it did so because of a Springsteen drunken-driving arrest that happened two months before the spot aired, and not due to the threat of a conservative boycott.
Nevertheless, it was back to its insufferable virtue-signaling that March, announcing the plan to rename its Cherokee line in deference to the demand of cancel-culture activists who said it was offensive to Native Americans.
Not all automakers have caved for marketing reasons. Dodge announced in August that it would turn two of its beloved muscle cars, the Charger and the Challenger, into electric vehicles.
That likey came under pressure from the Biden adminitration’s regulatory arm, which is imposing strict emissions requirements that would have been impossible to meet, as well as blue states like California, which plans to ban the sale of all gas-powered vehicles by 2035.
The announcement prompted criticism from actor and car aficionado John Schneider, who famously rode around in a Dodge Charger called the “General Lee” while portraying Bo Duke on TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard.
“It’s a sign of the lunacy of the Left,” Schneider said in an exclusive interview with Headline USA. “I believe it’s also a sign of the total disconnect between the manufacturer and the consumer. … Apparently, they forgot about the great, sexy cars of the ’70s.”
Chevy has yet to say whether its Camaro and higher-end Corvette will go electric. But perhaps it’s hoping that its $225,000 in indulgences to the LGBT Mafia will purchase enough goodwill to grant it an exemption from any Green-New-Deal demands in the legislative pipeline.
For consumers, the choice may be something of an unwelcome dilemma: give up drag-racing in their Camaros altogether, or keep the fuel-burning engines and embrace a different type of drag in their new Camarx.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at truthsocial.com/@bensellers.
