Autoblog

click above to view more speculative renderings of GMC's unibody pickup

Bob Lutz may have been confused when he told GoAuto that GM would be unveiling a GMC unibody pickup concept based on the rear-wheel-drive Zeta platform at this year's New York Auto Show in late April. Sources close to Jalopnik claim that the vehicle will actually debut nearly a month and a half earlier at the 2008 Chicago Auto Show, press days for which begin on February 5th. The source also claims that the GMC unibody pickup will be entirely unibody, and not have a chassis grafted onto the back like the Holden Crewman, the vehicle to which this concept pickup has been most closely compared.

All that's fine and good, but ever since Lutz mentioned the car-based pickup, we've had a tough time imagining what it will look like. Lutz said it would have four doors, be low to the ground and feature very masculine GMC styling cues. The only other totally car-based pickup with which we're familiar is the Honda Ridgeline. Now we can't get the image of a lowered Ridgeline wearing GMC badges out of our head.

Fortunately, GM Inside News forum member MonaroSS has come to our rescue with these photochops of what the GMC's unibody pickup could look like. The images are based off of the Holden Sportwagon, but the roof has been raised, the rear end swapped out for a bed, bulging fenders added and the front profile has a definite GMC shape. We much prefer conjuring an image of this vehicle in our heads than the aforementioned mutant Ridgeline, at least until we meet the pickup in person at the Chicago Auto Show.

Check out more renderings of the GMC concept by MonaroSS in the gallery below.

[Source: GM Inside News, Jalopnik]

click above for more high-res pics of the 2003 Holden Crewman

Australian outlet GoAuto is reporting that GM Car Czar Bob Lutz has confirmed that a four-door ute concept based on Holden's rear-wheel-drive Zeta platform but wearing a GMC badge will debut at the New York Auto Show in late March. From Bob's description, the vehicle is much like the Holden Crewman, which was a version of the Holden Ute with its wheelbase stretched to accommodate a second row of seats and two more doors (all-wheel-drive was also eventually an option).

The concept debuting in Detroit will be wearing very masculine GMC styling cues, however, and sounds as if it will be billed as a unibody pickup. This gives the GMC four-door ute a good shot at production since GM knows that demand for trucks in the future has to be satisfied with vehicles that are more fuel efficient than body-on-frame trucks. A recent spate of unibody truck concepts like the Toyota A-BAT Concept and Ford Explorer America Concept show that automakers are very interested in switching to lighter unibody platforms for vehicles that have traditionally been truck-based.

Lutz also points out the obvious upside that if the GMC four-door ute is popular with the public, it can be sold in Australia as Holden's replacement for the Crewman, which wasn't updated along with the rest of the Ute lineup last year.

[Source: GoAuto via Winding Road]