I see this Isuzu on a regular basis around town. At first I thought nothing of it because it just looked like a plain old Chevy TrailBlazer But when I caught a glimpse of the front grille it looked very different and as I got closer I realized it was the TrailBlazer's badge-engineered cousin the Ascender. The term badge-engineered comes from Murilee Martin over at The Truth About Cars and it is applied to cars that are shared between makes with only minor cosmetic differences to make them different. The Ascender is exactly that a rebaged Chevy TrailBlazer that was sold by Isuzu. Isuzu had been partially owned by GM for a period of time in the early 2000s. In 2008 The Ascender was equipped with a 4.2L Vortec Inline 6 cylinder engine bolted to a 4-speed automatic transmission. The Ascender was available in a 5 passenger configuration. Isuzu offered some big incentives for purchase including a 7-year 75,000 mile power train warranty. However the incredibly small network of Isuzu dealerships meant that if you happened to move during that time you would not be able to get your Isuzu serviced under warranty coverage unless you were willing to pay to have it towed a long way. A lesson my family learned the hard way with the 1998 Isuzu Rodeo we owned for a long time. It suffered from electrical gremlins for about a year while a former Isuzu tech working at a nearby Toyota dealer attempted to fix it (attempted being the key word) After several costly trips to the dealer my Father managed to fix it by mistake with 9-year old me holding pieces of the dashboard out of his way. Isuzu was very successful at selling commercial trucks but their passenger vehicle sales never took off in the US and they discontinued sales in the US market.
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