GMC

The brand known today as GMC, the mid-premium truck and SUV standard-bearer for General Motors, has a longer history — and even what could have been a different origin for its abbreviation — than some observers may think.

In 1900, brothers Max and Morris Grabowski of Detroit, Michigan, founded the Grabowski Motor Company. The name was later changed to Rapid Motor Vehicle Company before it was purchased by William C. Durant and made a subsidiary of the conglomerate automaker he founded, General Motors. In 1911, GM formed the General Motors Truck Company, which absorbed the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company and another commercial vehicle maker, Reliance Motor Company. Those names were dropped in 1912 in favour of the acronym GMC, which endures to this day.

GMC built military vehicles during both World Wars and built buses and taxis during a stint as a subsidiary of the Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company, which itself was a subsidiary of General Motors. The brand is associated with several high-profile cross-continent runs: a GMC truck went from Seattle to New York City in 70 days in 1916 and climbed Pike’s Peak on the way back, and 10 years later a two-ton GMC truck went from New York to San Francisco in five days and 30 minutes.

A bus manufacturing facility operated in London, Ontario, from 1962 until 1987. GM’s CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ont., produced GMC Terrain SUVs before production was moved to Mexico in 2017, and Oshawa Truck Assembly built GMC Sierra pickups until it was shuttered in 2009 and then Oshawa Assembly built Sierras until it was closed and retooled in 2019.

GMC’s positioning as a premium truck brand has allowed it to enjoy success with its higher-end trims. The AT4 line, which stands for all-terrain 4WD and was launched in 2019, is an off-road oriented series of grade. The Denali line is GMC’s top-of-the-line and most luxurious offering. On some products, Denali and AT4 trims can make up as much as 80 per cent of total sales.

Platform sharing has seen similar trucks produced for Chevrolet and GMC as far back as the 1920s, though for much of its history GMC has enjoyed exclusive lines of engines. Today, GMC’s line-up consists almost entirely of models that share platforms with Chevrolet products, including SUVs from the compact GMC Terrain (Chevrolet Equinox) to the full-size GMC Yukon (Chevrolet Tahoe) and long-wheelbase Yukon XL (Chevrolet Suburban), as well as trucks from the mid-size GMC Canyon (Chevrolet Colorado) to the half-ton GMC Sierra (Chevrolet Silverado) and the GMC Sierra HD (Chevrolet Silverado HD). Most recently, General Motors has positioned its new extreme electric SUV and truck, the Hummer EV, under the GMC brand.