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Old 04-17-2013, 12:57 AM   #1
GDB FAN
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Default New midsize pickup in the works for GM

http://news.yahoo.com/gm-roll-line-s...--finance.html

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DETROIT (AP) — General Motors plans to roll out a line of completely revamped midsize pickup trucks, with gas mileage and features designed to take sales from Toyota's market-leading Tacoma.

The trucks will replace the aging Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon. Mark Reuss, GM's North American president, said Tuesday that the trucks will be able to do 95 percent of the work that a big truck can do.

Sales of midsize and small pickups slumped after the recession as businesses curtailed spending. Ford Motor Co. stopped selling its Ranger small pickup in the U.S. in December of 2011 to focus on sales of its full-size F-150.

Now truck sales are recovering as parts of the U.S. economy, particularly the housing sector, recover.

The new GM trucks are aimed at different audiences. The Canyon will go after more functional work buyers, while the Colorado will target younger "lifestyle" buyers who use trucks to haul recreation equipment and play outdoors, Reuss said. Both will have a list of options so people can customize them to their activities, he said.

The Colorado will "attack the West Coast with a lifestyle truck that's really beautiful and fun," Reuss said, without giving many details. "We're targeting a new generation of buyer with a new truck," he said.

The trucks, due out sometime next year, will be slightly larger than a Tacoma with engines and transmissions that get better mileage than GM's full-size trucks, he told reporters after a speech in Detroit. A V-8 version of GM's new big pickups gets 23 miles per gallon on the highway. Mileage for the six-cylinder engines in the big pickups hasn't been released yet.

Reuss said GM is evaluating whether to keep the Colorado and Canyon names.

The new trucks will be dramatically different from GM's newer midsize pickups already on sale in Asia, he said. They will be built at GM's factory in Wentzville, Mo., which now builds full-size vans. Adding the pickups will create 1,260 new jobs.

So far this year GM has sold only 2,200 Colorados and just over 600 Canyons. Sales of each are down nearly 80 percent as the aging trucks are phased out. Tacoma sales, however, are up almost 23 percent to just over 39,000 from January through March, according to Autodata Corp.

Overall pickup truck sales are up 11 percent so far this year to almost 499,000.
I honestly think it's going to take a new engine or something raptor like to bring buyers.
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Old 04-17-2013, 09:12 AM   #2
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I honestly think offroad prowess (or at least an offroad image) is the key to the midsize truck market.
A small diesel sure wouldn't hurt either.

I'd love to see the new one come in smaller than the Tacoma with around 10" of ground clearance and an option for 33" tires to 1up the competition (the best anyone offers right now are 32").
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Old 04-17-2013, 09:18 AM   #3
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So it's going to be larger than a Tacoma?

The Tacoma is already huge. Sounds like it will be a 9/10 scale Silverado. Go 'merka.

A smaller, efficient truck seems like the way to go, but this is GM we're talking about.
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Old 04-17-2013, 10:35 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by Integra96 View Post
A smaller, efficient truck seems like the way to go, but this is GM we're talking about.
Blame CAFE footprint rules. It pays to make bigger vehicles.
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Old 04-17-2013, 10:42 AM   #5
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Originally Posted by shikataganai View Post
Blame CAFE footprint rules. It pays to make bigger vehicles.
Yeah, very unfortunite. With the Ranger and Colaraldo gone it seems like there is hole in the market.
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Old 04-17-2013, 10:59 AM   #6
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They call is an Isuzu D Max Diesel in Asia. Good reputation too. Isuzu and GM now working on new small diesel for USA. BTW Asia knows CNG/LNG propane better and cheaper than hybrid/electric. All cabs run on it and many trucks too!






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Old 04-17-2013, 11:08 AM   #7
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Originally Posted by Integra96 View Post
So it's going to be larger than a Tacoma?

The Tacoma is already huge. Sounds like it will be a 9/10 scale Silverado. Go 'merka.

A smaller, efficient truck seems like the way to go, but this is GM we're talking about.

This plus eleventy billion. The majority of GM cars are so unappealing these day, they just get it sooooo wrong. I don't understand their business tactics (Cadi is an exception, a huge exception.) Their cars will always sell to 'Muricans, but the rest of us Americans aren't buying it, literally. Ford, in a matter of years, went from on-par with GM to light years ahead of GM.

The Colorado and Canyon are great sized cars, but they are uber crappy. My dad had one as a rental for a week and it felt like a 1996 Kia.

Toyota should bring out a small pickup, the Tacoma is an awesome truck, but is nolonger a small pickup. I didn't really realize how much it grew until I saw it next to a first gen Tundra. Or just ditch the slow selling Tundra, call the next gen Tacoma the Tundra, and shrink the Tacoma back down.
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Old 04-17-2013, 06:48 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by shikataganai View Post
Blame CAFE footprint rules. It pays to make bigger vehicles.
That really isn't fair to say.

It is just as accurate to say it doesn't penalize larger vehicles.

Buyers are the ones who generally want things bigger. The point of the new CAFE rules was to try and improve efficiency for all vehicle classes and not try and force buyers into certain vehicle classes.
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Old 04-17-2013, 08:49 PM   #9
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That was perhaps the intent. The reality is that manufacturers are better off building larger footprint vehicles with less stringent CAFE-fantasy-MPG targets.
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Old 04-18-2013, 07:20 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by shikataganai View Post
That was perhaps the intent. The reality is that manufacturers are better off building larger footprint vehicles with less stringent CAFE-fantasy-MPG targets.
Not really. They are only better with a larger footprint if they keep the efficiency the same or the vehicle is cheaper to produce. The new CAFE standards are way better than the old ones. The inclusion of vehicle size is a good decision. The inclusion of trading credits is a good decision. It is orders of magnitude better than the prior CAFE standards. It allows manufacturers to build the kind of vehicles that their customers want. It allows specialization by manufacturers. It is funny that only now the US companies finally get decent small cars when they could have avoided them now, but previously had to build them
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Old 04-18-2013, 07:31 AM   #11
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Not really. They are only better with a larger footprint if they keep the efficiency the same or the vehicle is cheaper to produce.
http://i.imgur.com/nwqqHjH.png

MPG vs. GPM and all that, but still pretty close in the grand scheme.
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Old 04-18-2013, 08:44 AM   #12
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The new CAFE standards are way better than the old ones. The inclusion of vehicle size is a good decision. The inclusion of trading credits is a good decision.
It's forcing more manufactures to make their vehicles meet the criteria for light trucks. CAFE isn't based on vehicle size, its based on the area formed by wheelbase x track. This screws manufacturers with non-standard drivetrains like Subaru and Porsche that have smaller wheelbases due to overhanging engines.

Subaru dropped the Legacy wagon because of the new CAFE laws, the Crosstrek has the same utility as the Impreza Sport, but Subaru is going to sell more of them, despite the worse fuel mileage, because it classifies as a light truck. The CAFE standards are actually making Subaru's fleet average worse than it could be because Subaru has to work the loopholes.
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Old 04-18-2013, 01:34 PM   #13
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Before this set of rules Subaru still classified things as light trucks to get around the old CAFE regulations and have worse fuel economy. The new rules are better for precisely that reason. The fact that full size pickups from Dodge, GM, and Ford have all gotten significantly better mileage ratings now is a good thing. If you want to do something about this then go shout to the masses that they should want to buy econoboxes. Good luck convincing them.
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Old 04-18-2013, 01:46 PM   #14
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The correct answer to the "if you want to do something about this" question is "raise the gas tax". Everything else would fall naturally from this one action.
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Old 04-18-2013, 01:53 PM   #15
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I do not like social engineering through taxes. Where does it stop.

There is no correct answer. So being how there is no right way to do things, I say elevate the oil used per car. Mandate cars get really crappy mileage. Use up all the petroleum in the world in record time. Then we will all be force to drive the crappy little **** boxes humming around with batteries. The earth will repair it self in 10years and life can get all Kum-By-Ya for every one.

LOL
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Old 04-18-2013, 02:21 PM   #16
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Originally Posted by shikataganai View Post
The correct answer to the "if you want to do something about this" question is "raise the gas tax". Everything else would fall naturally from this one action.
You would think, but the tripling of the price of gas didn't change things much over the last few years.
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Old 04-18-2013, 02:26 PM   #17
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You would think, but the tripling of the price of gas didn't change things much over the last few years.
It's an open question. Here's one take on it: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14450

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Exploiting a rich data set of passenger vehicle registrations in twenty U.S. metropolitan statistical areas from 1997 to 2005, we examine the effects of gasoline prices on the automotive fleet's composition. We find that high gasoline prices affect fleet fuel economy through two channels: (1) shifting new auto purchases towards more fuel-efficient vehicles, and (2) speeding the scrappage of older, less fuel-efficient used vehicles. Policy simulations based on our econometric estimates suggest that a 10% increase in gasoline prices from 2005 levels will generate a 0.22% increase in fleet fuel economy in the short run and a 2.04% increase in the long run.
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Old 04-19-2013, 07:11 AM   #18
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Economists are often full of it And good ones will admit it.

The general consensus is that consumers operate with a dead band in response to gas prices. If gas prices are no higher than a certain number then they really ignore them. It gas prices exceed that then they will react. I actually don't fully agree. If you do something simple like plot the GPM of new vehicles sold vs. gas price you can see a reaction, but you have to plot the GPM-CAFE required GPM to see an effect. You can actually see something. But the often the economists that try and tally the effect of gas prices on consumers ignore simple things like that. However that correlation as you know does not work for causation. It could well be argued that higher gas prices mean a new more stringent CAFE rule set will be mandated which means automakers might produce more efficient vehicles before the rules go into place so they will be compliant at that time. It is hard to say exactly what is happening.

I still stand by liking these new CAFE rules way better. The trading of credits and inclusion of more vehicle characteristics is a plus to me.

I agree with you Shika that a gas tax is the most efficient way to do this from a standard economics perspective, but it is not politically possible and it is pie in the sky thinking to wait for it to happen. We can't even raise the tax enough to pay for infrastructure, which it should be at a minimum.
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Old 04-20-2013, 05:27 PM   #19
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Originally Posted by Integra96 View Post
So it's going to be larger than a Tacoma?

The Tacoma is already huge. Sounds like it will be a 9/10 scale Silverado. Go 'merka.

A smaller, efficient truck seems like the way to go, but this is GM we're talking about.
Not just GM, Ford may be doing the same thing should they decide to bring back the "F100". Guess nobody wants small trucks anymore.
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