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2024 GMC Canyon AT4X AEV Edition First Drive Review: The business-class Bison

McALLISTER, Mont. – Not far from MontanaÂ’s Ramshorn Peak is a beautiful body of water known as South Meadow Creek Lake. It sits just a hair below 9,000 feet and offers beautiful views of the surrounding highlands and — if youÂ’re lucky and the lighting is just right — a clear line of sight to Big Sky Country. To hear the locals tell it, you canÂ’t get there in a pickup truck. Apparently, to a GMC engineer, that comes across as an open challenge. And so I found myself in the two-horse town of McAlllister (not far from Bozeman), chilly in the fog of an early October morning, inspecting a line of GMCÂ’s midsize trucks in their hardest of hardcore variations. One half of the fleet was made up of the standard 2023 Canyon AT4X finished in a beautiful scarlet red; the other half, 2024 Canyon AT4 AEV Editions in a menacing gray that matched the dreary morning sky. Yep, that AEV. The Canyon AT4X is an already-capable little trail monster with all the off-road bells and whistles you could possibly ask for. ItÂ’s a virtual mechanical twin to the new Chevrolet Colorado ZR2, in fact, down to the 2.7-liter four-cylinder that produces 310 horsepower and a whopping 430 lb-ft of torque. Naturally, American Expedition Vehicles managed to turn that dial up to 11. More on that later. Canyon AT4X 3 View 32 Photos To the locals' point above, off-road trucks have existed for quite some time (just ask Marty McFly), but it has only been since their rise in popularity as mainstream commuters that the dedicated four-wheelinÂ’ pickup has really come into its own. The “you canÂ’t get there from here” Maine attitude at Bozeman latitudes betrays somewhat old-school notions about four-wheeling — and the fact that just about everybody in town owns some sort of ATV or side-by-side. The formula used to be pretty simple: You take the shortest SUV frame youÂ’ve got, add big stick axles to the front and rear, and then jack the thing up as high as you can without it falling over at the first sign of an incline. TodayÂ’s torque-monster engines have turned that on its ear. More torque means you can turn bigger tires, and what do bigger tires do? Well, among other things, they lift your truck off the ground. Shove enough tire under a truck and no matter where youÂ’re talking about, you can indeed get there from here. At its core, AT4X isnÂ’t groundbreaking.

GM profits threatened by glut of pickups

Automotive News reports that General Motors may slash production or ramp up discounts in order to deal with an oversupply of pickup trucks. GM currently has more than double the standard supply of pickups, and the vehicles are threatening to dampen the automaker's profits for 2013. Typically, automakers try to sustain a 60- to 75-day supply of vehicles, but GM is currently loaded with a 139-day supply, as of last month. At the end of November, the automaker was sitting on 245,853 units.
The manufacturer says that it will adjust production accordingly before laying any incentives on the profitable pickups. Even so, there's some concern that the inventory swell could hurt the roll-out of the next-generation Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. GM actually began slowly stepping back production in August, but it's clear the company will take further action as it heads toward the end of the year and into the next. Analysts predict the automaker could reduce pickup manufacturing by nearly half in the first quarter of 2013.
That still may not be enough to keep GM from laying extra cash on the Silverado and GMC Sierra. While the company's incentive spending was down in November compared to the same month in 2011, both the Ram 1500 and Ford F-150 saw double-digit percentage increases in sales last month while the Silverado and Sierra numbers slid compared to a year prior. Incentive spending could help move more trucks and add some balance to the GM inventory surge.

GMC's electric Hummer could someday serve alongside the Humvee in the U.S. Army

Every civilian Hummer model traces its roots to AM General's Humvee, which made its combat debut when the United States invaded Panama in 1989. Fast forward to the 2020s, and the tables have turned. The born-again Hummer that will arrive with an electric powertrain and a GMC emblem could spawn a military-spec truck. "[The upcoming Hummer] is a full-size truck with 400 miles of range and 1,000 pound-feet of torque, it's a very highly capable vehicle. That could provide a great base platform for an electric vehicle to be used in the military context," said David Albritton, the president of General Motors Defense, in an interview with GM Authority. Although he didn't sketch out the Hummer's role in a battalion, its range, torque, and dimensions would theoretically make it well-suited to carrying soldiers, weapons, and/or gear like radio equipment. It wouldn't necessarily look like the production model (shown above in a preview image). General Motors Defense might use its basic platform and its powertrain technology to build a purpose-designed off-roader, like it did with the Colorado Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) it will soon begin manufacturing for the Army. The ISV shares 90% of its parts with the regular-production Chevrolet Colorado, but the two vehicles look nothing alike. Securing a contract with the American military is easier said than done, and Army officials haven't publicly expressed an interest in sending the upcoming Hummer into a war zone. We'll learn more about what a battle-ready electric truck could look like after the showroom-bound model makes its debut. In the meantime, Humvee production continues, and AM General introduced a comprehensively updated model named NXT 360 in 2018. Related Video:     Green GMC Hummer Truck Electric Military