Of course Ford made a 3/4 ton truck in 1998. Wouldn't Ford's hot truck in this generation be the raptor, or some other SVT truck? I have to say, GM's hot truck lineup has been severely lackluster for quite some time. They have an all black truck now? Ummm Ford did that in the early 90's didn't they? (Think "Nite" edition). About the only recent cool GM truck I can think of lately is the mid-00's SS 6.0/AWD truck, and IIRC, ther AWD system wasn't anything extra special, was it? The "steel" truck commercials make me laugh. I liken them to a commercial for "horse" around the time of the advent of the automobile. There was nothing to compete with the SVT Lightning truck or rumble bee or SRT8 or whatever it's called. There is nothing to compete with the Raptor. There is/was nothing to compete with the Power Wagon. Lame if you ask me. GM has to send trucks to aftermerket upfitters to have a lifted 4x4, and around here, that's 4wheelparts, who are some of the biggest bolt-parts-on monkeydicks I've ever seen.
My opinion, there is absolutely NO POINT in selling two of the SAME trucks with different badges. Save design/production/manufacturing $ by ditching either GMC or Chevy, and MAKE ONE TRUCK. Then, maybe GM Detroit (or Sri Lanka, or Kuala Lumpur, or wherever the hell they are) could take their heads out of their ***** and go back to making a SOLID, bad ass truck, that shames the offerings of FoMoCo and Mopar. I don't want to stretch this too far, but maybe they could make them in the US of MF A (fat chance).
Those trucks you mentioned were built back in the day when the manufacturers were run by the number-crunchers.
They stopped production of the Hemi, back in the day, because it cost $5.00 more to build them than the 440! Even if the Hemi was the superior choice, the $$$ profit was the be-all, end-all.
Sure, $5.00 over a production run of a 100,000 is a lot of money. But even still...$5.00???
Now, post-bail-out GM, as are most other auto manufacturers, are being run by engineers. Do you think that the LS engine series or the C7 of today would be around if the Corp. was still run by the bottom-liners? Those guys would of never let anything like that be unleashed into the consumer marketplace, let alone spend the R&D to develop such projects in the first place. That tech then trickles down to the rest of GM's offerings.
Ford & their aluminum bodies? The Insurance Institute said it took longer for a local Ford dealer to repair an aluminum truck than an older steel one, and the aluminum parts cost more.The institute says the repair costs were 26 percent higher for the aluminum-bodied truck. Plus the additional costs to the dealership for the equipment to do such.
After a front-loader full of landscaping stones dropped its load into the bed of each truck, the Chevy held up noticeably better than the Ford. Even a simple drop of a toolbox punctured the Ford’s bed.
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Even Honda veers away from using straight-up Alu.
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I do agree with the statement about having 2 duplicated trucks produced under different banners, though. I see that as competition among themselves. Why?
But then, GMC stands for 'Greater Made Chevy'! Lol!