GMC HAD ANOTHER RECORD SALES YEAR!

By Edward Lapham Automotive News / January 17, 2005

Sorry, but you can't catch them all the first time. In the flurry of year-end sales data, most of which were used by analysts to paint a dark picture about the Big 3, at least one fact was generally overlooked.

Yes, 2004 was a record year for the GMC brand, which Gary Cowger pointed out to me last week. And as the president of General Motors North America noted with a great deal of pride, GMC did it without any new products.

Not that I doubt Cowger, especially when he goes out of his way to make a point, but I did get independent confirmation from my colleague Mary Raetz of the Automotive News Data Center. Dealers sold 581,684 GMC trucks in the United States last year, the most ever.

How is that possible if things are so gloomy for the Big 3? And if SUVs have lost some of their luster to sport wagons?

Actually, it makes a lot of sense. The GMC brand is the one GM brand where there is no murkiness or confusion, once the "professional" theme was identified and implemented. The brand is in a clear niche between truck products from Chevy and Caddy. There are no GMC passenger cars to clutter up the image or the message.

Last year, when Lynn Myers retired, she handed off a thoroughly nurtured, well-maintained brand and a strong dealer group to CJ Fraleigh, who replaced her as general manager of Pontiac-GMC.

Now that Fraleigh is gone and John Larson is the honcho for Pontiac-GMC and Buick, the brand is at an intersection.

Product planners are deciding whether to eliminate the one silly GMC vehicle, the Envoy XUV, which has the removable roof section in case you ever need to transport a grandfather clock or a tall potted plant.

GMC doesn't need any gimmicky products in the lineup, especially since at most dealerships it is sold alongside Pontiacs and/or Buicks. The one change that might turbocharge GMC sales would be to kill the Buick Rainier and all the other Envoy/Trailblazer clones.

Meanwhile, there is another conversation about whether to sell GMC trucks in Europe, instead of Chevys. GMC is a strong American brand and the professional theme might translate. Europeans might even go for all those Envoy XUVs.

Right.