@HFV_Junkyardin said in Why GM killed Pontiac, Saab, Saturn & Hummer - Lutz:
I agree there is no reason for GMC to exist. Like Hummer or doesn’t need to be be its own brand. Just make GMC a luxury trim of Chevy trucks and SUVs
As a part of its reason to exist, as someone pointed out in a similar discussion at the picnic, in many places it is sold at Buick dealerships. Besides dealership preferences,
my betters in these matters say that nameplate loyalty is a big deal with pickup buyers, so even if a high trim of the equivalent Chevy is pretty much the same truck, they might go wandering off to the dreaded cross-shop if they can't get a GMC.
An upscale (and usually better looking) version of Chevy trucks and SUVs is just what it is, and that seems to work well. Their aggregate sales have been on the uptick ever since the Great Recession context of the Lutz interview, and their all-models US total is consistently over half a million a year. Dunno how many of those are the high Denali trim, but I see a lot of those.
As a maker of big trucks, of course, GMC had a storied history, but it was just that—history. In that same Great Recession timeframe, their medium-duty lines (already dwindling, and best known as the underpinnings of Blue Bird school buses) were being phased out after a planned sale to Navistar lost its way, and they'd already been out of the heavy-duty business for 20 years.