While we may credit America with the idea of built-in obsolescence, especially in automobiles, a good name never goes out of style. Chevrolet knows this better than most. As of 2023, it has used the Camaro name for 50 years (after a 2002-2009 hiatus), Corvette for 70 years and, most impressively, the Suburban for 88 years, the latter being the longest ever continuous use of a car model name.
This won’t come as news to some readers, but it’s interesting that the longest-lived automobile is one which most people in Britain have never heard of. Unsurprisingly, the Suburban has never been officially sold in Britain, but even among present-day enthusiasts it remains something of an outlier. Apart from the fact that its girth makes narrow lanes, congested streets and finding a parking space difficult, the Suburban’s problem over here may be that to car people it’s a truck, and to truck
