To celebrate the anniversary, General Motors dug through its past and recent archives and came up with some little-known facts about the GMC brand:
- On August 1, 1909, a Rapid F-406-B (a predecessor to the GMC brand) became the first truck to reach the 14,110-foot summit of Pikes Peak, just outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
- If GMC was a standalone manufacturer, and not part of the General Motors family, it would be the tenth-largest automaker in the United States (comparing total vehicle sales from January to November, 2011).
- GMC built some early electric vehicles from 1912-1917. The trucks had single-digit model names that indicated their load capacity, from one-half-ton to 12 tons.
- Currently, GMC’s luxury Denali trim level outsells the entire product lines of some luxury-oriented automakers, including Land Rover, Jaguar and Porsche.
- GMC was involved with engineering and production of the 1936 Parade of Progress vans and the 1941 Futurliners, which toured the United States carrying mobile road shows.
- Today, GMC and the Denali trim level are fast-growing nameplates in the United States, with (respective) sales increases of 22 percent and 91 percent year over year.
- GMC manufactured about 584,000 military vehicles during World War II, like the CCKW-353 Deuce-and-a-Half and the amphibious Duck.
- The GMC Sierra truck is the brand’s top selling model. It outsold the Toyota Tundra and Nissan Titan combined (by about 40,000 trucks) through the first eleven months of 2011.
- GMC produced 23-foot and 26-foot motorhomes from 1973 to 1978. GMC motorhomes appeared in Bill Murray’s 1981 movie, Stripes and in the the 1996 film, Twister.
Flip through all seven pages to see a collection of historic GMC trucks.
