The platform cost $7 billion to develop, with engineering executed by the Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada (CPC) group; also known as the small car division. The original program was intended to replace all midsize cars produced by
Chevrolet,
Pontiac,
Oldsmobile, and
Buick on the
G and
A platforms. This ultimately did not happen; while the A-platform
Chevrolet Celebrity and
Pontiac 6000 were quickly discontinued, the A-body
Buick Century and
Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera remained in production until 1996. The plan was for seven GM plants that would each assemble 250,000 of the cars, or 21% of the total U.S. car market. It was badly executed from the start, but GM's 1984 reorganization, combined with changing market dynamics, wrought havoc with the program and it never recovered. In 2008, prominent
shareholder activist Robert A. G. Monks noted that GM had lost $2000 on every car it produced in 1989, the year before the last of the original GM10's were launched. rear suspension The next iteration of the platform was known as the
MS2000 or simply the
W2 platform. Early versions used a transversely installed, fiberglass mono-leaf spring combined with struts in the rear. The "generation 1.5" W-body models had updated rear suspensions that used coil springs instead of the transverse leaf spring design inspired by the
Chevrolet Corvette. For the 1997 model year the second generation W-body was released with a MacPherson strut coil spring design. A revised and updated
W3 platform was introduced in 2004, rather than a stretched
Epsilon platform, as had been planned.
Parma Metal Fabricating Division of Parma, Ohio was responsible for metal fabrication and final assembly took place at GM's
Oshawa Car Assembly. The
transverse use of GM's
LS small-block engine in the W-bodies was a major addition for 2005. The GM W Platform was phased out with the production of the new long-wheelbase
Epsilon II platform. The last car produced on the W platform was the ninth generation of the
Chevrolet Impala, which was replaced by the Epsilon-based tenth-generation Impala, beginning in model year 2014. GM continued to produce the W-body Impala to fleet customers only under the name Impala Limited until production ended in May 2016. ==Applications==