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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.

Meet Alex Archer, the engineer behind GM's power-sliding center console

In 2009, a GM manager complained to a 59-year-old GM technician about the hassle of retrieving items from a pickup truck bed after driving shifted the cargo. In two days, the tech had come up with the ideas that, ten years later, would debut as the MultiPro tailgate. The engineering teams kept the tailgate secret in part by hiding mock-ups in a locked storage closet in GM's Vehicle Engineering Center in Warren Michigan for two years. A piece in the Detroit Free Press reveals that another storage closet in Warren would play the same role in a different cloak-and-dagger operation, this time for the power-sliding center console in GM's new full-sized SUVs. During a meeting in early 2017, bosses gave the job of the console's creation to 24-year-old design release engineer Alex Archer, just two years out of Stanford University with a degree in engineering and product design.  This time, the catalyst for the feature was an internal GM think tank called co:lab, where employees suggest ideas. Execs gave Archer the task because "They needed someone willing to ask a lot of questions," her 36-month mandate to produce a six-way console that could be a standard cubby or a gaping maw able to swallow four gallon jugs or hide a secret compartment. Clearly, she succeeded. It took Archer and the team nine months to devise a prototype, another six months to get the green light for production. As with the tailgate, the team working on the console grew to include designers, production engineers, and suppliers. Archer, now 26, shepherded the process, and her name is on the patent. "It took a ton of people, I'm just somebody who stuck with it the whole time," she said. GM like her work well enough to produce the "Day in the Life" segment above, five months before the world would hear about the console. Archer's path to engineering was as unlikely as getting the job for the console. She had entered Stanford with plans to be a doctor. But an innovation class during her freshman year, and a sophomore summer spent helping her grandfather rebuild a 1937 MG engine recharted her course. Her grandfather told her, "You know, you could be an engineer for a car company." Consumer reaction to Archer's work won't be far off, the SUVs slated to hit dealerships soon. Meanwhile, she's busy on something that could be just as intense as the console: Restoring a 1955 Packard Clipper in her garage. Head to Freep to check out the story of Archer and the console. Related Video:

GM will stop reporting monthly U.S. vehicle sales

DETROIT — General Motors said on Tuesday it will stop reporting monthly U.S. vehicle sales, saying the 30-day snapshot does not accurately reflect the market, and will instead issue quarterly sales. GM will also no longer report monthly sales in China, its largest market, and Brazil. GM will provide monthly data to the U.S. Federal Reserve, industry associations and government agencies across the globe, but that data is not made public. Analysts and investors rely on monthly U.S. vehicle sales not just to track the performance of individual automakers, but as a barometer of the health of the world's second-largest auto market and as an indicator of consumer confidence in the U.S. economy overall. GM and its Detroit rivals Ford and Fiat Chrysler have relied heavily on sales of high-margin pickup truck and SUV sales to boost profits. GM's total U.S. sales, its second-largest market, are down 3.2 percent for the first two months of 2018, reflecting a 6.8 percent drop in retail sales to individual customers, the company reported last month. GM executives have expressed frustration that comparisons of monthly U.S. sales results among rival automakers are distorted by short-term discount programs, and by differences in strategy for selling vehicles in bulk to rental car fleets. "Thirty days is not enough time to separate real sales trends from short-term fluctuations in a very dynamic, highly competitive market," Kurt McNeil, U.S. vice president for sales operations said in a statement. GM's actions could prompt other automakers to also switch to quarterly U.S. sales reports. Major automakers will report March U.S. new vehicle sales on Tuesday. Until the early 1990s, most U.S. automakers released sales results every 10 days. The former Chrysler Corp. stopped reporting sales on a 10-day basis in 1990, and rivals followed suit over the next three years. GM executives are betting that investors will quickly adapt to receiving U.S. sales data every three months, as investors in other retail sectors already have. Retailers such as Walmart report sales on a quarterly basis. Reporting by Joe WhiteRelated Video: Image Credit: Reuters Earnings/Financials Green Buick Cadillac Chevrolet GM GMC US