Gmc News

2025 was certainly the year of the new car brand coming to Australia.

Jeep out, Ram SUV in at Stellantis?

Back in 1995, the most popular SUV in Australia was the then-new and pioneering Toyota RAV4, way down at number 43. How things have changed, with SUVs sat at seven of the top-10 spots, and then (mostly diesel-powered) ladder-frame-chassis utes making up the difference. Here are 10 reasons why Australia’s (and the world’s) SUV obsession have made motoring worse than in past decades for people who love cars.

Whoever said ‘you can never have too much choice’ clearly never saw the Australian new car market in 2025. The country is being inundated with not only new models, but seemingly new brands every month.In 2025 alone we’ve had the introduction of Cadillac, Deepal, Geely, GMC, Jaecoo, Leapmotor, Omoda and Xpeng to our roads. These join other relatively new arrivals which include (but aren’t limited to) BYD, Chery, Chevrolet, Cupra, JAC and Zeekr, with more reportedly on the way.While competition is great, and certainly there are many very likeable cars from most of these brands, I’m starting to feel like we’ve reached breaking point in Australia. We buy just over one million new cars each year, and that number won’t rise sharply anytime soon, so each new brand only splits the market into even smaller pieces.When you factor in Toyota accounts for around 20 per cent of the market each year, and that too doesn’t look like changing anytime soon, then you have nearly 70 brands fighting over 80 per cent of what’s left. While there’s certainly some major positives to this booming industry, namely the increased competition, especially the brands from China, have slowed down the dramatic price rises we’ve seen post-pandemic. The market was already headed that way before 2020, with many brands working out it makes better financial sense to sell fewer cars but at a higher profit than it does to sell lots of cars for less margin. Without question, a major factor in the growth of Chinese cars in Australia is thanks to the highly competitive pricing strategy brands like MG, GWM, BYD and others have engaged in.These new brands do give choice, but the downside of so much choice is it makes it harder for you, the new car customer, to know what to buy. Obviously we do our best here at CarsGuide to keep you informed, but frankly there are so many new brands - both those with history and reputation and those without - that buying is simply getting more and more complicated.One of the biggest challenges with new brands, as in brands with no history in developed car markets, is that a new model that seems solid and good value now may age terribly and give you no-end of problems. Or, alternatively, it could be great and problem-free - but it’s an expensive gamble to find out.But the cold, hard fact remains, the new car market is only so big and unless all brands not named Toyota prepare for a smaller market share, then not all will survive in all likelihood. In recent years Holden has gone, so too has Chrysler and Citroen, and there are seemingly several more hanging on with shrinking sales numbers. That will almost certainly leave customers facing an uncertain future for parts, servicing, etc, not to mention it will likely tank resale value. So, yes, choice is great, but too much choice can ultimately make life harder for everyone involved. Because at what point do we stop - 80 brands? 100? It may sound silly but at the rate some of these newer brands are multiplying with spin-offs and sister-brands, there appears to be no end in sight - and that’s not necessarily good news…

The GMC Yukon Denali is the latest arrival in a continuing US vehicular invasion of Australia. Imported here as left-hand drive and then converted to a right-hander, the Denali is a big 4WD wagon with eight seats, a petrol V8 engine and a standard features list as long as LeBron James’s arm.Brought to our shores by General Motors Specialty Vehicles (GMSV), the Denali is a premium-style vehicle; massive, comfortable and, as an eight-seat 4WD wagon, it has few rivals in the Aussie market. But it lacks a competitive warranty, its price-tag puts it way out of reach of a lot of 4WD buyers, and for a few distinct reasons it is a sterling example why US wagons and utes don’t belong in Australia.It’s too big.It’s big. Even the signature Denali grille – with LED headlights and chrome accents – is the size of a tiny house. The 2025 Denali is 5337mm long (with a 3071mm wheelbase), 2378mm wide, 1943mm high, and it has a kerb weight of 2813kg.The interior is great because it is big, roomy and occupant friendly, but the Denali’s gargantuan exterior dimensions simply mean it’s a beast of burden in busy city or suburban streets, and even on bush tracks, which can be quite narrow.The Denali demands to be driven with supreme consideration – and even more patience, more skill, and more experience than smaller four-wheel drives require – in order to avoid city- or bush-related damage, incidental or otherwise.Also, worth remembering is that fact that no matter how good a driver you are, there’s always a shopping trolley, key-wielding person who hates big vehicles, or someone who only parks their car by ‘touching’ the vehicle nearest to them out there, waiting to ding/scratch/dent your US behemoth. You’ve been warned.It’s not built for Australian conditions.The Denali is imported to Australia as a left-hand drive vehicle and then Walkinshaw's subsidiary company Premoso remanufactures the US 4WD wagons to right-hand drive at their facility in Clayton, Victoria. But the problems aren’t with Premoso’s work – they’ve done an impressive job – the flaws are in the vehicle’s original design and build.For one, as mentioned, it’s big. If you aren't used to steering a tank-sized 4WD around town then driving the Denali is going to be a very steep – and possibly very expensive – learning curve.Two, it’s built for open-road cruising on US freeways; it’s not engineered to cope with our punishing dirt-road corrugations of Australia, or our extreme heat, or our poorly maintained backroads and bush tracks.Thirdly, the Denali lacks the prestige fit and finish and build quality usually showcased in something at this price-point. Instead, there is hard plastic throughout, storage receptacles with flimsy lids, and lacklustre fit and finish.Also, this Denali is on 24-inch rims and paper-thin Bridgestone all-season tyres (285/40R24), which is not a wheel-and-tyre package suited to anything other than driving on the blacktop. These tyres don’t offer the grip of a decent all-terrain tyre and you can’t drop air pressures because there isn’t enough tyre there.The Denali has a naturally-aspirated 6.2-litre V8 petrol engine – producing 313kW and 624Nm – and that’s matched to a 10-speed automatic transmission.This is a great vehicle to drive on-road for general day-to-day driving duties – settled and composed – and it’s close to flawless on the open road, smooth and refined, but that big V8 – as great as it sounds – has the potential to drink … a lot.The Denali’s air suspension – which aims to level out even major imperfections in the road or track surface – and its special dampers aren’t as effective or as seamless a system as the Patrol/Patrol Warrior’s Hydraulic Body Motion Control, which acts as a sway bar and sway bar disconnect equivalent and is very impressive. Official fuel consumption is listed as 12.8L/100km (on a combined cycle), but on my most recent test of it, I recorded 16.2L/100km. Not too bad, all things considered, but you have to remember that I didn’t have much weight onboard and I wasn’t towing anything.The Denali has a 91L fuel tank so, going by my on-test fuel-consumption figure, you could reasonably expect a driving range of about 560km from a full tank. Once loaded up with real-world burdens (e.g kids, dogs, camping gear etc) then you’ll soon see the Denali’s fuel use climb.It’s expensive.The Denali has a price tag of $174,990 (excluding on-road costs), making it a lot more expensive than most vehicles that could be considered rivals in the Aussie market.Until now, if you’d been looking for an eight-seat 4WD wagon with a petrol V8 engine, you'd be limited to considering something like a Nissan Patrol or a Land Rover Defender 130, but at least the Patrol is almost half the price of a Denali.Another thing, as mentioned earlier, the Denali does not have the high quality of fit and finish and build quality usually associated with vehicles that cost this much – that’s disappointing.And maximum braked towing capacity in the Denali is listed as 3628kg (when it has a 70mm ball and weight-distribution hitch) – which isn’t that much more than other large 4WD wagons or utes in Australia offer (3500kg maximum braked towing capacity).US utes and wagons are big, bloated, overpriced and underdone – and they should go back from whence they came.Cue the hate mail...

Hot on the heels of the Ford Ranger Super Duty, is a Super Duty version of the Everest in the pipeline?With the upcoming GMC Yukon Denali the new SUV towing champion in Australia at 3628kg – pipping out the Toyota LandCruiser, Isuzu MU-X, Ineos Grenadier, Toyota Prado and regular Everest amongst others by just 128kg – a new high watermark has been set.In contrast, the newly-announced Ranger Super Duty breaks new ground among medium-sized utes by offering a 4500kg braked towing capacity, suggesting that an Everest Super Duty may have the might to approach that, given its kinship to the Ranger.When asked if a more rugged, go-anywhere workhorse version of the Everest was under consideration, Ford Australia President and CEO Andrew Birkic did not dismiss the notion.“I don't think we've done that yet,” he told the media at Ford Australia’s Centennial anniversary in Melbourne earlier this month.“But you never say never.”Other Ford engineers were less forthcoming, but suggested that the Everest’s transformation from ride/handling/refinement-focused family SUV to a Super Duty-style 4x4 workhorse would be an “extremely challenging” task.While both the Ranger and Everest share the same T6.2 ladder-frame platform, they differ in the mid and rear chassis sections, chiefly to accommodate the latter’s second and third row occupant structures, as well as its coil-sprung rear suspension set-up.With beefier springs and dampers, as well as a solid-axle leaf-sprung rear suspension design out back, the Ranger was already better suited for its transformation to Super Duty compared to the Everest.It’s also worth keeping in mind that a large portion of the Ranger Super Duty’s expected consumer base will be from the emergency services, forestry, mining and agricultural sectors, necessitating the ute’s cab-chassis flexibility.Still, Ford is in the business of making money in Australia, and so if there is demand for an Everest Super Duty, it will investigate that from a business case perspective.Obviously, being the first ex-factory mid-sized ute of its type anywhere in the world to offer a 4500kg braked towing capacity, even the Blue Oval bosses have no real idea how the market will react to it.Finally, at the same Ford Centenary event, Ford Motor Company Chief Executive, William Clay Ford Jr., did extol the Australian-based T6.2 team’s unique capabilities and talents, so who knows what may come next?“We have so much opportunity in front of us, and you know, we've made Australia a Centre of Excellence for Ford,” the brand’s global number one exec said.“They've done a great job. Just look at the sales results of Ranger and Everest… and Ranger is now (sold in) 180 different countries, which is incredible.“So, yeah, this is a great team here, and they will have opportunity in the future.“This is a unique market, as you know, better than I do, in terms of the requirements, and that's why it's interesting. On Super Duty, there was a real hesitance in Dearborn to put the Super Duty name on something other than the F-Series (full-sized truck).“But (Ford Australia) convinced the management team, us, to extend the Super Duty, because they knew the engineering team here, but as importantly, the kind of duty cycles you have here really warranted the Super Duty name.”

Why this big American V8 is copping a last-second price-rise.

Think buying the biggest, baddest ute or SUV will keep you safe in a crash? Think again.New research from the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), which performs a similar role to the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) in Australia, shows a bigger car does not necessarily translate to it being the safest.The research was conducted in the US, which is a country that knows a thing or two about super-sized vehicles. The IIHS examined crashes involving two vehicles that involved either SUVs or pick-up trucks over a roughly 10 year period to examine fatality rates. The vehicles also had to be between one and four years old at the time of the accident to present a proper like-for-like crash comparison.It found if your car was lighter than the fleet average there was an increased risk of a fatal accident, but no matter how much heavier than the average your vehicle was than the average it posed very little benefit, according to the data.The average weight for a  vehicle in the US is about 2270kg, which is about the same as thef the average dual-cab ute such as the Toyota HiLux or Ford Ranger.The research found the heavier vehicle the more danger it posed to others in a crash. For every roughly 225kg above the fleet average the rate of fatalities dropped by only one per million registered vehicles, while increasing the fatality rate of the other vehicle by seven.“For American drivers, the conventional wisdom is that if bigger is safer, even bigger must be safer still,” IIHS President David Harkey said. “These results show that isn’t true today. Not for people in other cars. And — this is important — not for the occupants of the large vehicles themselves.”Australian vehicles are on average smaller than those in America, but that is changing as a new wave of super-sized vehicles are gaining traction Down Under.Aussies now have the choice of four different US-style pick-up trucks: the Ram 1500, Chevrolet Silverado, Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra.The GMC Yukon, which is bigger than any SUV currently on sale, arrives later this year.Each generation of vehicle generally grows in every direction, slowly bringing up the fleet average.The head of ANCAP Carla Hoorweg told CarsGuide last year it had concerns about the proliferation of giant utes on our roads.“We’ve definitely got concerns. There are a lot of community concerns we are fielding,” said Hoorweg.“We’re looking at vehicles that are being designed for the US market, they’re not necessarily going to have a focus on pedestrian protection or vulnerable road user protection, that’s not a focus in those regulations. So we know there’s going to be a gap there.”“We are considering what our options are around physical testing, so there’s potential for pedestrian impact testing,” she said.This test involves firing adult and child head forms and leg forms at the bonnet, windscreen, front bumper of a vehicle to determine how well it can physically protect pedestrians from serious head, pelvis and leg injury.ANCAP’s new focus comes as its US equivalent, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), plans to crackdown on large pick-ups, SUVs and vans after pedestrian fatalities rose by 57 per cent between 2013 and 2022.

Aussies can now get their hands on one of the biggest rigs on the road — the 2025 GMC Yukon SUV.

GMC has introduced its second-edition GMC Sierra Denali EV pickup in the US ahead of the brand's local launch with the petrol-powered GMC Yukon Denali SUV next year.