In the last 30 years, it seems like there haven’t been a lot of mid-sized trucks being sold after the mid-80s. Numbers dropped from 1.4 million in 1986 to 250,000 in 2013. The only mid-sized trucks that still sell a decent number are the Toyota Tacoma and Nissan Frontier. When General
The 2015 Colorado.
Motors saw how empty the market for this was, they saw an opportunity, and have released two new models: the 2015 Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon. These are smaller and more maneuverable than their more full-sized trucks, which GM thinks consumers will like. You’ll be able to fit these new cars into a garage or parking space without worrying about crashing into anything, all while getting decent gas mileage.
Both the Colorado and Canyon are based on the Gobal mid-size truck platform currently being sold in Thailand and other markets. However, this is more than just a rebranding of this model, as both of these new cars have technology not featured in the Global, such as hydraulic engine mounts, extensive use of aluminum, electric power steering, electric shutters in front of the radiators and behind the grille that help with aerodynamics and engine warmup and various noise and acoustic countermeasures that the Global doesn’t have. It looks like these new midsize trucks are ready for American consumers.
According to people who have done test drives of these new cars over varied terrain, noise and ride isolation in these new machines are a lot better than in either older models or the current competition. These new trucks come with disc brakes all around with the same Duralife rotor technology that was introduced on the full-sized Chevy and GMC trucks from earlier. According to GM, there are a lot of would-be mid-size truck buyers who are hesitant to buy mid-size trucks since they haven’t found anything they like in that niche, or anything that’s a manageable size. GM is hoping that these cars will be the answer to this.