GMC — General Motors' Truck Brand From Pontiac to the Hummer EV

GMC at a glance

Origins: the Grabowsky brothers and Rapid

The story starts with two brothers, Max and Morris Grabowsky, who founded the Grabowsky Motor Company in Detroit in 1900. In 1902 they moved to Pontiac, Michigan, and renamed the business the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company. Rapid built commercial vehicles rather than passenger cars.

The company caught the attention of William C. Durant, the founder of General Motors, who was busy buying up carmakers. Durant gained control of Rapid in 1909 and made it a GM subsidiary; that year Grabowsky's factory produced 300 vehicles. Durant had already bought the Reliance Motor Car Company in 1908. In 1911 GM formed the General Motors Truck Company and folded Rapid and Reliance into it, and in 1912 both old names were dropped in favour of GMC. All GM truck production was concentrated at the former Rapid Plant 1 in Pontiac. The wider story of Durant's group is told in the history of General Motors.

Trucks for two world wars

GMC's first big customer was the army. In the First World War the company supplied the Model 16, a 3/4-ton truck, and later one-ton troop carriers. By 1918 more than 90 percent of production was military, and GMC delivered 8,512 trucks to the US government during the war. Peacetime brought long-distance demonstrations: a GMC truck crossed from Seattle to New York in thirty days in 1916, and in 1926 a two-ton GMC drove from New York to San Francisco in five days and 30 minutes.

In 1925 General Motors bought a controlling interest in Yellow Coach, the Chicago bus and taxi maker founded by John D. Hertz. The business became the Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company, and GM's truck production moved under it. Plant 2 in Pontiac opened in 1928.

The Second World War made GMC a household name among soldiers. Its truck division produced 600,000 trucks for the US armed forces. The best known was the CCKW, a 2½-ton 6x6 cargo truck nicknamed "Jimmy" and often called the original "deuce and a half". Built from 1941 to 1945 in Pontiac and later also in Chevrolet's St. Louis plant, the CCKW family reached about 572,500 vehicles, including the DUKW amphibious truck. Its 4.4-litre GMC 270 straight-six is listed at 68 kW (91.5 hp) or 78 kW (104 hp) at 2,750 rpm, and the trucks were the backbone of the Red Ball Express, the convoys that supplied the Allied armies after the Normandy landings.

In 1943 GM bought the rest of Yellow Coach and renamed the operation the GMC Truck and Coach Division.

Pickups, motorhomes and the road to Denali

From 1920 GMC and Chevrolet light trucks shared platforms and body panels and differed mainly in grilles and badges. GMC sold to commercial buyers, Chevrolet to private owners, and from 1973 the two ranges became even more alike. The pattern still holds. The Sierra name first appeared on GMC trucks as a trim for the 1968 model year and became the name of GMC's full-size pickup with the GMT400 generation of 1988, while Chevrolet kept the C/K name for another generation. Today the Sierra and the Chevrolet Silverado share their body, chassis and mechanical parts, and the GMC usually costs more.

GMC also tried things no other GM brand did. Its motorhome, built from 1973 to 1978, was the only Class A recreational vehicle designed by a car manufacturer. It used the front-wheel-drive layout and 7.5-litre V8 of the Oldsmobile Toronado, an aluminium frame and glass-fibre lower body, and the front drive let the floor sit about 14 inches (35 cm) above the road. GM made 12,921 before production ended in July 1978. In the early 1990s came two performance oddities: the Syclone of 1991, a fast version of the Sonoma pickup, and the Typhoon of 1992–1993, based on the S-15 Jimmy.

The bus business ended in May 1987 and the division became GMC Truck. In 1996 GM merged it with Pontiac, and many dealers sold the two brands side by side. The Sierra, the Yukon and its luxury Yukon Denali became the core of the range, and Denali grew into a GMC sub-brand for the best-equipped versions; the Sierra received a Denali version in its 2014 generation. GMC marked its 100th anniversary in 2002, added the Acadia crossover in 2007 and the Terrain in 2009, and left the medium-duty truck market the same year.

The Hummer EV and GMC today

After the original Hummer brand was closed in 2010, GM brought the name back under GMC. The electric GMC Hummer EV pickup was revealed on 20 October 2020, and its first-year Edition 1 sold out within minutes of pre-orders opening. Production of the pickup began at Factory Zero in Detroit-Hamtramck on 17 November 2021, and the SUV followed on 30 January 2023. The Edition 1 has three electric motors and 746 kW (1,014 PS), and the largest battery holds 212.7 kWh of usable energy. By October 2024, 14,039 had been built. The model has also drawn criticism for its very high weight and efficiency. The earlier petrol models are covered in the history of Hummer.

GMC's current line-up has no passenger cars in North America: the Sierra, Canyon and Hummer EV pickups, the Yukon, Yukon XL, Acadia, Terrain and Hummer EV SUVs, and the Savana van. The brand is usually sold alongside Buick, and its headquarters are in Detroit. GMC arrived in South Korea in 2022 through GM Korea and in Australia, New Zealand and China in 2025; GM stopped importing GMC vehicles to China in May 2025. For every model see the GMC catalogue. Rival trucks are compared in the best pickup trucks.

GMC timeline

Landmark GMC models