Having achieved second place in sales to Chrysler, General Motors brought out an entirely new U platform series of minivans, theoretically based on the lessons learned from its previous mis-steps. Still stinging from the criticism of the "dustbuster" minivans, the new Silhouette would be completely conventional in all respects. The vehicle would be of steel unibody construction, and styling would be as conservative as possible. The previous generation was a little too large for comfortably navigating European streets, so this new range of models would be narrower and slightly smaller than was the norm for the United States in order to produce a single range of minivans that GM hoped would fill the needs of both the North American and European markets.