Fanbase happy to pay big for huge towing heft and business is good, local boss says.

PETROL price would have to go beyond the peak New Zealand has been experiencing over the past week before Kiwi interest in super-sized American traydecked trucks waned.

Even then, some people would buy no matter how expensive the feeding habit, because they need the heavy-duty fare, mainly for towing giant boats and horse floats, and have yet to see any logical alternates.

That’s the opinion of the general manager of General Motors Specialist Vehicles, speaking at a media introduction today to the three Silverado models the Australasian operation brings to New Zealand.

Matt Taylor, pictured, says while sentiment from the car industry in general is that buyer interest instantly waned as result of pump prices racing well above $3 a litre last week, it doesn’t seem to have rattled his customers.

Conceivably, there might be a price point where the cost of owning a vehicle of this size becomes too much, but that’s a theory yet to be tested.

“The people who buy these cars … well, they feel it’s a matter of ‘what’s the alternative?’

“They’ve got their four and half tonne boat, they have their four-bay horse float and they want to know what the options are? They don’t see anything to compare to the vehicles we sell.”

GMSV is used to challenge; right from kick off in November of 2020 it faced coronavirus, semiconductor shortages and shipping holds-ups.

Yet it has made hay, with 249 registrations to date.

In the main these have been accrued by the LTZ Premium which at $130,990 sits $11k above a LT Trail boss, which also runs a 313kW/624Nm 6.2-litre petrol V8.

Above those is the new boy, the slightly more gargantuan 2500 HD. It runs a 6.6 litre V8 turbodiesel whose 624kW and 1234Nm makes it the most muscular truck that be driven by a car licence holder here. It’s the heaviest duty, too, with a towing rate of 6.5 tonne (two tonne more than the petrols).

The HD has so far only found five placements, but that’s because it has just arrived.

Yet regardless these rigs being the epitome of “gas guzzlers” – with a maker cited fuel consumption of 12.3 litres in petrol and no count for the diesel (though it has a larger fuel tank, 136 litres versus 91) - Taylor says basically all models are subject to wait times.

He further contends this is a niche market in good health. Chevrolet and its only rival of the moment, RAM – which, having added 2500 and 3500 models, has similarly-sized and equipped fare - are together accounting for between 60 and 70 units per month.

There’s more for growth for both, he believes, though how much depends on whether other rivals show. Top of the watchlist is a giant traydeck from China’s Great Wall Motors, announced a year ago but yet to front in right hand drive.

Potential that Toyota and Ford might yet consider right-hand-drive conversion programmes for their respective Tundra and F-150 models seems less likely, but cannot be discounted.

“We have heard rumours of other competitors looking at launching big pick-up SUVs, but because this market is in its infancy stages we don’t know how big it could yet be,” Taylor says.

“It’s anyone’s guess. In 12 months’ time I could be proven completely wrong about what I’m predicting. But we expect it (demand) to keep rising irrespective of what fuel charges turn out to be.”

The next hit the big luggers will feel is the penalty Government will lay onto high CO2 vehicles from April 1.

Utility vehicles are public enemy No.1 with the Clean Car carbon tax and none sold in NZ seems set to escape penalty, let alone the 5.9 metre-long, 2.5-tonne US-sourced giants. They are in the highest penalty category.

Taylor, whose only other product in this market is the C8 Corvette sports car that is so volume-constrained fewer than three dozen will reach NZ by year-end, hasn’t offered a view on what impact emissions penalties will have on overall ute buying trends.

However, he says that when Clean Car was announced last June, the feedback from Silverado customers was that they didn’t mind paying the tax, but they were less keen on that impost “subsidising electric vehicles in Wellington and Auckland.”

As for last week’s big spike in pump prices? “We have not had any feedback from customers.”

GM in the US has announced an electric Silverado, on a platform shared by a battery-pure off-roader that resurrects the Hummer brand, but there’s no word about when, or even if, these will provision in right hand drive, says Taylor. “At the moment we are all about V8,”

What impinges on the Silverado order process is that it’s hardly a straight-from-factory affair.

The units have to be bought from the assembly line – in the United States or Mexico – then shipped to Australia.

They got to a bespoke facility in Melbourne where they are disassembled and rebuilt, a process that delivers all the requisite RHD-specific equipment and modified or newly engineered parts.

Entry and egress from Australia is via a holding yard. Vehicles on arrival in NZ take a little longer to reach customers if they are in the South Island.