Well now! Another curve-ball...Here I am trying to get the absolute best price on these trucks and my non-salesperson lady friend at GMC dealer informs me that GM is about to release the 2017's...Certainly this opens up more possibilities, not only increasing my page views for my blog by putting this info on blog, heh, but also that GM will offer greater incentives for 2016 trucks that will become much harder to sell due to new features and/or performance of the 2017's. Of course, my statements are theoretical, and should be viewed as such. I have gathered GM has modified the Duramax and/or the Allison in a manner to, at least on paper, be more competitive with the powerstroke you and come-apart... The reason I say on paper is because anybody can readily ascertain in real world operation the Duramax/Allison already outperforms both competitors in almost every head to head test. When Ford and Dodge put out numbers for torque and horsepower they cook the books. In actual street tests the powerstroke you and come-apart lose to the less powerful (ON PAPER) Duramax and Allison. Why do you suppose that is? Are they measuring from the crankshaft instead of the rear wheels? Whatever they have done and continue to do is about to come home on them hard... I think GM has gotten tired of reading all the smoke blowing crap from powerstroked-you and come-apart on you and decided to spank the little boys for misbehavior and send them to their rooms. It's a safe bet that when GM says the torque and horsepower figures are closer to the powerstroked you and come-apart, those boys are in serious trouble.
While I may be firing people up, I'm going to go ahead and point out another observation I've made. Having a conversation with my brother recently (A true hard Toyota fan) my brother suggested that since we KNOW Toyota owns Hino (diesel engine/big truck manufacturer) and has still chosen the 'familiar to Americans' come-apart for the Toyota diesels, can mean only one thing... Toyota will control every aspect of the come-apart manufacturing process and the engines will meet Toyota's specifications in every way. My belief is that Cummins will benefit tremendously from being told how to make the engines from Toyota and the come-aparts for other lines could become good engines in the near future.
Imagine for a moment Toyota decides to build a crew cab dually one ton... This post would be a whole lot different! In one clean sweep the Toyota would destroy the American truck capabilities and redefine the industry. We might finally have trucks worth owning from all manufacturers. Smoke on that for a little while!!!
As a parting note; If Americans could build a Lexus, wouldn't we have one?
