General Motors sells pickups hand over proverbial
fist. It didn’t sell as many of any particular model in the US last year as
Ford did of its F-Series, but the combined sales of the Chevy Silverado, GMC
Sierra, Chevy Colorado, and GMC Canyon make GM the largest
provider of pickups in America – never mind the rest of the world. And this is
its latest.
It’s called the Rong Guang, and as you might have
guessed, it’s not a Chevy or a GMC. In fact it’s not even going to be sold in America.
It’s a Wuling, built by joint venture with SAIC in Shanghai for sale in China.
Joining the Rong Guang van, the “mini pickup” is
rolling out in the so-called People’s Republic in either single-cab or crew-cab
forms. At its longest, it measures 3,150 mm, which is shorter than
just the wheelbase of the Colorado/Canyon. And in shorter form, you could
(theoretically) fit the entire thing inside the longer bed available on the
Silverado HD. It’s that tiny.
Power is provided by a choice of 1.5- or 1.8-liter
engines of unspecified parameters. But as best we can tell, the larger of the
two produces all of 127 hp and 170 Nm of torque – less than
half of what even the base (4.3-liter EcoTec V6) engine on the Silverado offers.
But then it doesn’t cost anywhere near as much as a Silverado, Colorado, or
even a Spark for that matter. Pricing starts at just 45,800 Chinese Yuan, which
works out to less than US$ 7,000 at today’s exchange rates. So in short, it’s as
cheap as it is small. Just don’t go looking for one at your local Chevy or GMC
dealer.
