GM: Mid-sized pickup will cut the owner's operating costs
Photo credit: GM
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LOS ANGELES -- Chevrolet's upcoming mid-sized pickup will give owners nearly the same capability as a full-sized light-duty pickup but with lower operating expenses.
"You may have 85, 90 percent of what a big pickup will do" in terms of capability, said Mark Reuss, General Motors North America president, during an interview at the Los Angeles auto show. Many truck owners do not need a full-sized pickup's capability, Reuss said.
Last month GM announced that a redesigned Colorado pickup would be offered in the United States. The mid-sized model will replace the current Colorado pickup, a compact, and it will be assembled in Wentzville, Mo. The truck is based on GM's new global, body-on-frame, rear-wheel-drive, mid-sized platform. It is slightly longer and wider than the Colorado, but the company has not disclosed dimensions.
The truck is a response to new federal regulations that require vehicles to have better fuel economy and lower emissions.
Speaking of the mid-sized pickup, Reuss said that "rather than putting full-blown four-mode hybrids or two-mode hybrids into large pickup trucks and trying to get efficiency out of it, which is extremely expensive, we can do things with lower displacement, hybridization, alternate fuels."
Reuss described the new Colorado as a "very, very nice mid-sized pickup that is really cheap to run."
Reuss would not say whether GMC will market a similar model. But if GM did replace the GMC Canyon, the pickup would have separate sheet metal, different price points and models.
"If we did that it would be a different approach than a Chevrolet," he said.
Compact and mid-sized pickups accounted for 16.5 percent of the total U.S. pickup market in 2010, according to the Automotive News Data Center.
