I had a pretty strong reaction to the 2025 Chevrolet Blazer EV SS, but I’m not exactly sure it’s the one Chevy wanted me to have. It’s an impressive machine, no question: a 615 horsepower electric SUV with 303 miles of range. It’ll go from a dead stop to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds. It’s pretty roomy and comfortable and has all the modern electronic crap you’d expect – well, minus CarPlay or Android Auto, because GM is delusional – but I don’t really want to give it a review now, because I think there’s a bigger fundamental question that needs addressing here: in the context of a modern, powerful EV, what is “fun?”
I’m asking this question because this isn’t just any Blazer EV, it’s the SS version of the Blazer EV. And that doubled-S, despite its unfortunate sameness to another pair of S’s with a very sinister past, does mean something. It means performance, it means excitement, it means thrills, and, yes, it means fun.
Chevy knows this, too. Look, it’s the first thing they mention in their slide about what the SS designation means:
Fun! It’s supposed to be fun! And what do they mention specifically?
“…canyon roads, cruising the highway, or around town.”
The canyon roads thing came up multiple times when I asked Chevy’s PR folks about what they thought people could do with an electric SUV that was capable of hauling such prodigious amounts of ass. Almost all of them said “canyon carving!” eagerly in response to this question, and I’m sure that would be pretty fun.
Chevy let me take one of these on the track and whip it around a lot, and I have to say, for a tall, roughly 5,700-pound machine, it handled remarkably well, a bit under-steery but generally far better than looking at it would have you believe. You likely could take this out to the Angeles Crest parkway on Sunday morning with all the swarming Lotuses in their Skittles colors and keep up in a way that would definitely surprise everyone who was watching.
Would that be fun? Sure! More fun than a Lotus? No, not really, but a Lotus isn’t going to take six months’ worth of Costco smoked salmon and a bale of Kirkland-brand underpants back home with your partner and two kids in the car, is it? No, it isn’t.
But are normal Chevy Blazer EV owners going to actually take this thing out canyon carving? More than, like, twice? I’m not so sure. And the nice Chevy PR people also explained that, you know, it can make day-to-day driving more fun with all that horsepower, and merging onto on-ramps can be thrilling, and, yeah, okay, I don’t exactly doubt any of this, but the entry-model 300-horsepower Blazer EV LT, which starts at $44,600, can still get to 60 in a very respectable 5.7 seconds and costs about $17,500 less than the SS, probably can still be driven around town in a fun way and I’m sure merges onto highways just fine.
I drove the Blazer EV SS around on city streets and on the track, and yes it’s fast, and yes it’s impressive, but is it actually fun? And, maybe more importantly, if it has fun-potential within it, can that fun be accessed at speeds that you can actually hit without potentially facing jail time?
That’s the part I’m not so sure about, and I think that part of it has to do with the very nature of electric cars. I’m not anti-EV at all, and technically you could argue that they are superior to combustion cars in nearly every way. For example, the Blazer EV SS is the quickest accelerating SS-badged vehicle that Chevy has ever made, going all the way back to the original Impala SS of 1961.
But it’s precisely because of how good and smooth and efficient EV drivetrains are and how sloppy and inefficient and clumsy combustion engines are that dictates why one is fun and one, well, just isn’t. The Blazer EV SS does deliver on the performance and handling of what the SS badge means, but it completely ignores the most irrational, and therefore most important, part: the drama.
Most of the people who bought SS-badged Camaros or Chevelles weren’t tracking them on a regular basis – I mean, some did, and they were popular at dragstrips, of course – but they were having fun in their cars almost every time they drove them because these cars were loud, growly things that vibrated and shook like they had perpetual armored weasel fights going on under the hood. All those years of carmakers trying to reduce noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) were gleefully ignored, and engineers did all they could to maximize every one of those three letters. Because these were muscle cars, and muscle cars aren’t quiet and smooth.
You could put them in neutral at a stop light and rev their big V8s, making a lot of, to quote Macbeth, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
But I guess you were signifying something: power and potential and danger and madness, all while wasting gas and pumping a bunch of toxic chemicals into the air. Doing this kind of thing was toxic on literal and metaphorical levels, it was loud and stupid, it was juvenile, and, above all else, it was fun.
All of it was fun: the noise, the smells, the shaking, the shifting, the fighting with the steering, the raw mechanicalness of it all, all of the things that make it inefficient and uncomfortable and laborious, those are the things that give the car character.
There’s no drama to the Blazer EV SS; sure, Chevy tried to program some in, making you select the WOW (Wide Open Watts) mode to unlock an extra 100 hp and the car’s full potential, but it’s just like putting flame stickers on a beige office filing cabinet. The Blazer EV SS is just too damn good at what it does. Like all electric motors, the Blazer EV SS makes all its torque from 0 RPM, it delivers power smoothly and quietly, and at a stoplight the engine is completely dormant, wasting nothing, unable to be revved up like a horny teen is at the wheel because those words mean nothing in the context of an electrical motor.
When Chevy says the Blazer EV SS can be fun driving around town, what do they mean, exactly? That you can get to 40 mph in a neighborhood a little quicker? You can maybe squeal a tire making a fast turn into the Trader Joe’s lot? The thing has too much speed and power to actually really open up in day-to-day driving, and in normal driving it sounds and feels as quiet and smooth as any EV, so what’s the point?
You can’t really do anything with those 615 horses in 99% of your time behind the wheel, and those horses are so well-behaved you don’t even know they’re there until you stomp the pedal. So, does it even matter that they’re there at all?
An honestly fun daily driver is something that delivers drama and fun at speeds between 35-55. You don’t have to actually be going fast, but you need to feel like you are. There’s a reason why so many people love driving 115 hp Maza Miatas, and it’s because you can wring them out at speeds that would, by right, place you in the slow lane, and that’s exactly how it should be.
The Blazer EV SS is a very impressive and capable machine; it’s competent and comfortable, and very likely a reasonable choice for anyone looking for a good EV for the family. And, sure, you’ll have a blast driving it hard through the canyons precisely three times in the entire time you own the car, but without all of the callow and insipid and wonderful drama of a combustion car, where’s the fun, exactly?
So, this is my problem with the Blazer EV SS: it’s too good to be actually fun. It’s too efficient and refined and rational, and those aren’t really recipes for fun, at least not as we understand them. And if you want to argue that power and speed is fun enough unto itself, even then the Blazer EV SS makes no sense, because just where the hell is an average Blazer owner going to go to use these abilities? How many Blazer owners take their cars to the track?
If it’s not fun, what’s the point? Driving the Blazer just made me realize that for an everyday car to be truly fun, you have to be able to access that fun at normal street speeds, and, ideally, it should feel fun, in some good, dumb, fun ways. If EVs are going to reach that goal, we need to do something other than just adding power and speed.
Sorry, Chevy. It’s still impressive, though!
I routinely (3 to 4 times a month) carve through Boulder Canyon in my 2023 Polestar 2, which isn’t quite as fast as the Blazer SS, but man, it is FUN! And that’s just going from Boulder to Nederland. I also drive the Peak-to-Peak highway fairly often in the Spring and Fall as well as other mountain roads here in Colorado. I can confidently take “35 mph” curves at close to 60, but even if I’m not speeding, the feel of that heavy, low car with gobs of torque whenever I want it equals fun in my book. Previously, the most fun car I ever owned was a Volvo C30 with some suspension upgrades and I really enjoyed it. But honestly, the Polestar is at least as much fun. YMMV, but I love my EV and I never plan on going back to a gasser.
That’s a great drive up to Nederland. It’s actually what got me excited about EV’s a few years ago. Flew into Denver and I rented a Mercedes EQE. Then spent the weekend around Boulder and went up to Rocky Mountain NP. I was so impressed with the on demand and smooth power delivery. It absolutely gobbled up those mountain roads with easy. The regen braking on the way down is also magical.
Well this is a tough question to answer with all modern cars I’m afraid. My Volt accelerates 0-60 faster than anything I’ve ever owned, the low center of gravity means it’s pretty well glued to the pavement, so I can take corners FAR faster than in my fleet of old 4×4’s and my Grand Pa-rquis. However, it is FAR more fun to jam my stupid little Chevy Tracker down a few gears, and wobble that goofy thing through the corners. Imperfections are fun. The further you are removed, the less you feel I suppose.
Still not over the WHOOSH that an EV provides when jamming on the go pedal though.
While there’s certainly much to be said for the sound and drama of an ICE, ICE cars suffer from much of the same problem in terms of enjoyment. I think the big problems are the weight, the size, noise suppression (not just engine), artificiality in feedback or engine noise, isolated mechanicals, removal of connection, and frustrating and unnecessary electronic BS, babysitters, and harassers. I’d take another ’84 Subaru 5 speed with an aftermarket wheel for fun over pretty much anything new, shit safety, floppy chassis, headlights with outputs measured in firefly power, and all.
Love the Shakespeare – be well.
Yeah, I don’t really see the appeal of high power. My Geo Tracker may only have 95 hp, but that’s what 2nd/3rd gear near redline is for! I think high RPM is a big part of what makes acceleration fun, and I think my 1.6L at 5000 RPM is going to be a lot more exciting than a 6.4L V8 at 1250 RPM, even though they’re both displacing the same amount per minute. Sure that 6.4L at 5000 RPM will be fun, but you sure can’t keep it up very long and stay legal!
Also, Jason, you should know that Spongebob has the answer to your question “what is Fun?”
F is for friends who do stuff together
U is for you and me
N is for anywhere and anytime at all
Down here in the deep blue sea…
F is for FIRE that burns down the whole town.
U is for uranium… Bomb.
N is for No Survivors!
-Angry looking GM Crossover (probably)
Jason trending market conditions say very few buyers want fun. Sure us aficionados like fun but what we are 5% of the market? You want a profitable car it is bland but with whores make up.
Trending market conditions also say very few drivers want anything other than some shade of white/gray/black. Not sure if that’s “what people want” so much as “what’s easiest to sell”.
The current EV horsepower wars also seems like more of a “more cowbell” situation to me, too. I mean, do we really need that much horsepower?
“Whores makeup” is a bit harsh, but yeah, I do get your point.
This is why I keep piling miles on the Evo. Even though it has way more capability than what is prudent for the street, it has no deficit of drama and stupid fun. The steering is still lively. It’s loud. It’s uncouth. It makes very mechanical noises (some that need addressing- looking at you input shaft bearing).
I very much want some company to make something similarly uncouth. And not Ioniq 5 N style, where I appreciate the shenanigans, but they’re applying a combustion engine overlay to the EV-ness of it.
Can an EV be like this? I don’t really know, but I’d like to see an attempt.
Well, no, not with that defeatist attitude it isn’t.
It will if you eat the underwear and wear the bacon.
This is why my Prelude has an Invidia catback and absolutely no horsepower mods
It’s loud and burbly and I can use all five gears I paid for without catching a felony
Read this as an NVidea cat back and the synthetic engine noises of EVs took on new meaning.
I’m sure I have more fun driving my 135 hp and 165hp manual Subaru wagons around than I would an electric appliance. I only need 1/3 throttle to keep up with traffic. At full throttle it accelerates faster than how 85% of traffic actually moves (at least where I live), while the NA flat-4 comes to life and I’m entertained by running it to redline (while not caring at all if another car decides to zip away like I’m not moving). I really have no desire to accelerate faster on public roads. My dad’s LL Bean Outback with the flat-6 and auto trans is a lot faster, but floor it and you’re doing 80 in a 45 in no time while being less fun than double clutch downshifting and going flat to redline to the speed limit in a slow manual.
I don’t care about 0–60 at all in a road car, especially from zero. The idea of a stoplight drag race turns me off/is a negative. I guess I am not addicted to an actual shove in the back. I prefer watching rally or road races than drag races, so corners are where it’s fun for me. Coordinating the shifting, controlling the fore aft balance and understeer/oversteer with trail braking and throttle, all done smoothly to take back roads or even roundabouts quickly is both fun and legal. For a softer sprung car with more body roll, even more skill is needed to transition left right smoothly, and doing that well is a fun challenge.
Chevy Blazer EV SS doesn’t sound like a fun car, it sounds like the air leaking out of the fun balloon.
This is how I’ve felt with the fast crossovers I’ve driven here and there. Ok, it’s fast. Fast can be fun! But after stomping on it a few times, you discover that there’s nothing about the crossover that puts you in the mood for fun. Instead the mood is just… off. Like you went to have fun, but instead of walking into a concert you accidentally walked into an H&R Block. I mean sure, there might be music there, but it just doesn’t hit the same under the fluorescent lights.
I read this piece in the tone of a rather decaffeinated John Phillips. Well done!
Two major things:
First, this is why I’ll stand by the fact that my MR2 Spyder is more fun than my boss’ M5 Comp. The redline shifts, bumper scrapes and wind in your hair just turns up the experience to such a great degree.
Second, if you live somewhere that the canyon carving or fun route is an actual option to get from point A to point B, that really improves the fun of any car. When I lived in Minneapolis it didn’t really matter what I drove. Now that I live in the Monterey Bay Area I can take back roads to work, or take a break in my day to go drive a seriously twisty strip of tarmac and be back in 30 minutes.
The reality is, I have a baby and I can’t drive the MR2 most of the time. I still want a ridiculously fast EV as my daily, and you won’t change my mind.
It also doesn’t help that the Ultium cars are so mind bogglingly heavy. There is just no way around nearly 6,000 pounds of car. You can give it all the power and electronic goodies in the world, but it’s just never going to feel nimble. I think this is one of the single biggest challenges with making “fun” EVs right now.
Blistering acceleration is cool and sends all the blood away from your brain and directly to your peen but in an of itself it gets old. It’s a fun party trick and not much else. There really isn’t anything that can replicate the feeling of being able to throw a car around with abandon. It’s why people love Miatas, GTIs, Toyobarus, etc.
Until we figure out the weight problem this is going to keep holding fun EVs back. I also think the lack of aural stimulation is a minus as well and that there really is no replacement for the musicality of a big honkin V8…but I feel like if performance EVs made up for that in other ways people could come to terms with it.
Manufacturers are learning quickly with electrification that you can only engineer your way out of so much when it comes to dynamics. I do think it’ll get much better as the technology advances, but some of these very here and now performance cars like the current M5, the Blazer SS, etc. just seem uniquely undesirable to me.
Not exactly on-topic, but: I recently borrowed my dad’s Lucid Air to pick up my wife from someplace, I took the long way home to get on a city boulevard where you can go fast, and I punched it, and she immediately asked me to stop doing that, because the acceleration of EVs makes her queasy. I had forgotten this, but she had the same complaint when we rented an MG5 in Germany last year.
Mind, she doesn’t complain when I accelerate aggressively in our car, or even in my dad’s Boxster (the old man likes his cars). It’s the instant torque thing of EVs that feels like a carnival ride, but in a bad way. Maybe ICE supercars can do that, but even very fast ones don’t.
Fast EVs feel like riding a roller coaster, except there’s no track to keep you safe.
Fun is relative, fun is dynamic, and fun cannot be put into the same box for everyone!
An old classic 1975 square body Chevy going 30 miles an hour through town on a Friday night is fun.
A Tesla model S, with all the quiet, but brutal speed, and the internet on the center screen, making the horn make fart sounds, etc. is fun!
A Miata buzzing up and down a twisty backroad on a sunny day is fun!
Crawling through the woods in a jeep with no top, no doors, no windshield, is fun!
Beating a $1000 dollar auction special 5 speed shitbox to within an inch of its life every day on your commute is fun!
I got to sample a LOT of cars and trucks back in my dealership days, and maybe I’m just easy to please, but there are so many different ideas of fun, and it doesn’t have to be a rigid engagement of mind and soul through a lithe chassis, a manual switchgear and a communicative wheel. Those things are nice, but they’re not everything.
What about conditional/situational fun? I’ve had some of the most fun in my life in my 2019 Caravan, with me, my wife, and 4 of our friends just joking and laughing our asses off on a trip to Pittsburgh for a night on the town. Maybe fun itself is all about the context of the experience.
In that way, maybe a blazer ev isn’t the most riveting thing out there other than hilarious acceleration, but If I could borrow one for a few hours, and put my pap and grandma in the backseat, I’m sure we would all have the time of our lives!
I agree with this mostly. I argue that my van is a fun car because its uniquely equipped to provide an environment for funtimes. I think you can have fun with most any car, especially as an environment to have fun with others.
I think the difference here is that this SS is marketed as being MORE fun. All the extra hardware and performance for a whole lot of extra money is supposed to make the driving experience more fun in a way that say, my van could not provide. But if the vehicle can’t prod you into using that performance or doesn’t really provide much over the run of the mill Blazer, is it really a fun car? Or is it just like any other car, where you can certainly have fun assuming you’re not upset about spending an extra 17k?
I agree with your take, but it seems JT is making two different points here:
I think the first point can be defended more objectively than the second – I doubt that most people will feel the difference in performance that the SS offers.
However, not everybody loves “drama” – I’ve never driven a classic muscle car but, from my experience with more recent examples, I certainly prefer, say, an I6 BMW (like an E90 3 series) to a V8 Mustang, even if the first may be slower. A 4-cylinder GTi is another good example of a very fun car that doesn’t have the “drama” that muscle cars usually do.
As such, I’m confident it’s possible to have EV versions of, say, a Miata or a Boxster, which will be a lot of fun in their own ways. Maybe even the new “Neue Klasse” BMWs will be fun to drive, but I confess I lost a bit of trust on the brand caring for that.
The problem with the Equinox is that GM is debasing the SS badge on a family SUV/crossover, and taking advantage of the fact that it’s cheap to increase electric power to play the numbers game and equate “huge horsepower” = “more fun”. But since Ford also has applied the Mustang name to a crossover, it seems that’s the way it is nowadays …
I love my ID4 as an around town / short road trip vehicle. It’s quiet, more than quick enough to get around that full cement truck before the two lanes merge to one and being able to charge at my house is wonderful. It’s also not bad on some of the twisty mountain roads we have around here.
What it isn’t is memorable. It has no character at all, it’s simply an appliance that gets my family where we need to go in a quiet and efficient manner. But, as I get older, I’m finding that that’s just fine for me. I had some fun cars when I was younger that were loud as hell and impractical (but not as fast as the ID4).
If I want ICE drama these days it’s all going to be on my KX450.
I do agree, however this whole rant (on mobile at least) had several scrolling ads for Depends throughout it, which kinda also fits.
Side note, what is the subscription tier needed to get rid of the scrolling ads?
Unfortunately the subscriptions do not remove ads. I’m really hoping that changes soon.
The lack of drama that most high performance EVs offer (ignoring the discomfort many people experience when being shot out of a cannon) is the single biggest reason most “car guys” want nothing to do with EVs. It’s something I’ve pondered quite a bit but I have no solution – Dodge tried to do something with that Charger EV but that was not well received (to put it mildly). I spent a lot of time last year looking at EVs to replace my V8 Grand Cherokee, but I ultimately replaced it with a new Mustang GT because I wanted one more chance to own a car with a manual transmission, and that drama machine under the hood.
I think about this too, and I think it’ll have to be turning the performance EV experience into something Tron-like.
Interior lighting changes, futuristic noises, and a general sense of conveying the high energy involved to the driver. But as long as they try to replicate ICE vehicles, it’ll always feel wrong.
Uncanny valley for cars
I’m reminded of the article on here suggesting lightning effects etc for the new charger. I really think they can make EVs fun and exhilarating but aping ICE vehicles just isn’t the way.
A term I’ve heard that nicely (for me anyway) sums up this elusive quality is “immediacy.”
As in between the driver and their machine. And stuff like this just doesn’t have it, no matter what the stats are.
But…perhaps it’s b/c many people now live so much of their lives online that they’re willing to accept what basically seems to amount to a virtual vehicle experience as well?
I recently rented a bottom spec Vauxhaull Corsa (1.2l 3cyl) while on holiday and it had undoubtedly the worst clutch I’ve ever experienced, silly gear ratios probably because of 74hp and a vague shifter. And it was still much more interesting zipping around the countryside than my very comfortable and capable Bolt EUV. Probably just because I could connect what I did and what the car did in a way that an electric car won’t ever. Truthfully, as a yank I’d have preferred a Bolt–I had enough excitement as it was on what they call roads. But I definitely felt what you’re talking about here.
In any case– fun is modifying a lighter to have a giant flame, finding* a bunch of non-dairy creamer packets, and making giant fireballs with the combo.
*nothing was stolen, things were found.
It’s “fun” like a necktie with a little duck on it.
Can we please email this to every Model 3/Y Performance owner who says their car is “fun”, because every word of it applies to those as well.
Seeing them talk about an SS model and handling as a key component is some revisionist history. I’d say most SS trims were drag strip cars more than anything. The Z/28 was the Camaro designed to go around corners, at least at first. Chevelles, Impalas, etc were never known for that.
True, though in fairness, Chevy’s been inconsistent with the SS-Z28 distinction. The SS trim disappeared for what, a few decades, leaving only Z28 as the all-around HiPo trim line then?
Yes, but only on the Camaro, Z28 never hit other lines. Though they did start advertising/elevating other Z RPO’s on other lines- Z24 Cavalier, Z34 Monte Carlo, etc.
By the time SS came back on the Camaro it vs Z28 didn’t mean much anymore.
Though the recent return of Z28 marked the designation of the handling model once again, which was cool – timed to mesh with the Mustang’s bringing the Boss 302 variant back to compliment its version of SS, the Shelby models.
Yup. They got it back on track (pun intended)