Is this the new 2024 Chevy Equinox? Our spy photographer recently caught this small crossover exiting the GM Milford Proving Grounds. Let’s take a look and see what clues we can find by examining this prototype.

Our spy photographer reports:

We got our first look at a new midsize crossover prototype, catching it as it jettisoned from the GM Proving Grounds to test on public roads. The sharply-styled crossover appears to be our first look at the next-generation Chevrolet Equinox.

The new prototype has definite Chevrolet overtones, with a grille treatment a two-tiered lighting arrangement similar to Chevy’s Blazer and Trailblazer. An obscured badge sits top-center on the front-fascia, and it looks like the Chevy bow tie hiding behind vinyl camouflage and tape. The prototype’s wheel design looks like only a slight alteration of a wheel design that’s available on the Trailblazer RS. With all this—and its silhouette and side-window-profile design—this new prototype checks all the boxes of what we would expect from the next-generation Chevy Equinox.

The next-gen Equinox is reported to have switched from its current Delta architecture, to GM’s E2 platform—which currently underpins the Cadillac XT4 and the Buick Envision and Envision GX.

The Equinox got a recent 2022 model-year facelift, but the update was originally slated to launch last year—before COVID and the chip shortage wreaked havoc on industry product planning timelines. There were thoughts that this delay would further delay the next-gen Equinox into calendar-year 2024 as a 2025 model. More recent reports countered those thoughts. Now—with the appearance of this prototype—it appears that Chevy’s next Equinox will be ready sooner, perhaps debuting sometime in 2023 as a 2024 model.