“I just passed my first smog check on my 2011 Silverado in July, at about 236,000 miles.
I was just comparing notes with a 2011 Suburban owner. I had my 2003 Suburban with me, and we chatted it up a bit.
The GMT800 truck has been my favorite since my 2000 Yukon. Reliable, well built and optioned appropriately. The GMC is built for the commercial / professional consumer (Who tends to buy fleets of them and GMC likes to treat them well) and the Chevy is “essentially” the same, but there are differences in quality. The Silverado, for instance doesn’t offer a manual trans but the GMC Sierra does. There is no other reason other than a few clients actually requesting it. Chevy doesn’t care about customer requests.
But these trucks ARE THE LAST of the quality, available models we have. The rest are just made to be as cheap as possible. The trucks are built the best because they need those return customers who get vehicles that withstand commercial use.
I had (have, still apparently) an E46 BMW as well. This was one of the award winning BMWs. Since then they are all faster, they are all nicer and full of more toys - but they break in catastrophic ways. A new BMW will leave you stranded on the highway with no electrical at all. Hell, I’ve even seen a Honda Accord do that.
So for me, cars died in 1991 and trucks in 2008. Motorcycles are the next since we’re now out of our “golden age of motorcycles” and we’re back to putting lipstick on pigs in the 2 wheel world. Although Harley is coming out with some new stuff and the jury is still out if it’s good or if it’s just cool harley junk.
I’m pretty reluctant to buy another new vehicle, especially in light of their increasing electronic “smart” stuff. I also got such a ridiculous deal on it with GM just coming off the ropes that I’ve seen used ones this past summer for more than I paid for new. Whenever it starts to blow a bunch of oil or such I’ll get a crate engine put in. When it comes down to it if you’re not concerned with impressing people the frame and suspension of a heavy duty version of a truck will basically last forever out west.
Oh, I did put a tranny in mine at 185K, but doing that rather than tear it down was a decision made in large part for amount of driving I do, a lot of it for work too. Dealer gave me a loaner for 2 weeks and the replacement has 100k warranty. I put 2000 miles on the loaner and I did note that they’d really kicked up the mileage, we got 19.9 on highway doing 80-85 whole time and I usually run around 17-19 in mine.
I couldn’t believe I made it this long without a pickup truck, it’s my office, I sleep in the bed out at the ranch, cart all my treasure/prospecty stuff about, drive it across the country, it’s the modern horse :-)
in a previous quality role, I was responsible for 3-4 parts in every GMT800 platform vehicle.
when they redesigned that platform, it started the economic downslide in Michigan in 2005-2006, as much of the component work was offshored to China.
great strategy, GM.......lol
idiots