Why GM chose to bring yet another brand to Australia

General Motors will soon have three brands being distributed across two retail channels in Australia, even though it no longer has a mass-market, high-volume marque here following the demise of Holden in 2020.

The GMC Yukon Denali is reaching dealers over the next couple of weeks, with first customer deliveries occurring over the third quarter of this year.

Like the Chevrolet Silverado, it’s being remanufactured locally in right-hand drive by Walkinshaw Automotive, and sold through GM Specialty Vehicles (GMSV) showrooms.

Unusually, GM has chosen to launch the GMC Yukon here despite the Chevrolet and Cadillac brands offering the mechanically related Tahoe and Escalade, respectively.

GM has already confirmed Cadillac will be an electric-only brand in Australia, so why not launch full-size Chevrolet SUVs instead of debuting the GMC nameplate?

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“If you look at the market here, it’s really going to be those buyers that are either in the very top end of the LandCruiser space, the Mercedes, the Lexus, those larger SUVs – when you look at the appointments… it really is a premium level, and that’s why that extra step up from a Chevy Tahoe to a GMC Yukon made more sense,” explained Jess Bala, managing director for GM Australia and New Zealand (GM ANZ).

“When it came to what we see the opportunity as, and when you look at that extra-large SUV space, and the price point that we’re going to command and the level of technology, features, luxury appointments that need to go into that, that’s why we felt the GMC Yukon Denali fit was better and more appropriate for that buyer, that segment, and the attributes that come with that car versus a Tahoe.”

However, the Tahoe can be had in a range of trims culminating in the High Country, which can be had with much of the same high-end features as the Yukon Denali including 24-inch alloy wheels, Magnetic Ride Control, adaptive air suspension, a head-up display, and a digital rear-view mirror.

In the US, it also comes with the same 6.2-litre naturally aspirated petrol V8.

It would therefore appear to be a simpler fit for GM Specialty Vehicle (GMSV) showrooms, and sit neatly alongside the Silverado pickup with which it’s mechanically related.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say it was simpler,” Ms Bala contested. “When you look at the symmetry of the vehicles, specifically, I wouldn’t say it’s simpler.”

Notably, the Yukon has a different dashboard design to the Tahoe, featuring a portrait-oriented infotainment touchscreen instead of the angled, landscape-oriented unit of the Chevy.

“From a branding standpoint, I understand the question for sure, but if we look at the price point and the positioning within our own parent company, GMC is the higher-specced, higher level of luxury vehicle so that’s why we went down that path,” continued Ms Bala.

“It wasn’t just a left-hand to right-hand drive conversion analysis, it was a bigger strategic play.”

Much as Cadillac is being rolled out to markets like ours and New Zealand, GMC is also being pushed outside of its traditional North America and Middle East domains.

GM launched the ‘Professional Grade’ brand in South Korea in 2022, where it offers only the Sierra 1500 in posh Denali and Denali-X guises. The brand is also being launched in China.

GMC used to be little more than another dealer network for Chevrolet, with its vehicles typically sold alongside Buick and Pontiac models and swapping the gold bow-tie for a red-letter badge… and receiving little else in the way of changes.

But in the 2000s, GM started making more of an effort to differentiate GMC models from Chevrolets in terms of sheetmetal and interior design, and the launch of the posh Denali trim level shortly before this in 1999 also started the brand on a path towards where it currently sits in the market.

In terms of positioning, GMC sits between Chevrolet and Cadillac, though it’s not always as clean-cut as that – as mentioned, there are posh Chevy models available, while GMC still sells straight rebadges like the ancient Savana van.

“It’s a brand that over time we’ve continued to reach higher and higher and take advantage of those white spaces, if you will, that exist in between the mainstream and the more obvious luxury brands,” said Tim Simmons, senior product marketing manager for GMC in the US.

Making GMC an easier brand to launch than, for example, Buick is the fact its name is almost identical to that of its parent company. But GM also says Australians love of American pop culture has given the brand a leg up.

“American pop culture helps us a lot here… We get people who know the GM brand, they recognise the car, they don’t know necessarily what the badge on the front is but they know it’s a GM car and they know that they’ve seen it in TV and that’s the car they like, that’s the car they want, we get asked all the time,” said GM International communications director Lauren Indiveri-Clarke.

“Cadillac was the same, people knew the brand Cadillac. Could they point to a logo? Probably not, but they’d heard of Cadillac.

“So when we launched it here, it was pretty easy for us to overcome that lack of brand recognition. We were able to say that it’s a Cadillac and people knew that name. They didn’t know that car was like a Cadillac because they hadn’t seen the modern-day Cadillac, but they knew the name.”

Unlike Cadillac, the GMC Yukon Denali will be sold through GMSV showrooms alongside Chevrolet models.

“We care that it’s GMC on the front, but customers are looking at it as a GM, it’s part of the GM product portfolio,” said Ms Indiveri-Clarke.

That “house of brands” approach allows GM ANZ to take vehicles from throughout GM’s global portfolio, though it has ruled out offering any Buick models.

“We do have a job ahead of us to get the [GMC] brand familiarity up and awareness up and then ultimately consideration to buy the vehicle as well,” conceded Ms Bala.

GM isn’t the only carmaker rolling out multiple brands successively in our market.

After relaunching here in 2023 as a factory-backed operation, Chery introduced its spinoff brand Jaecoo this year and will add the Omoda brand later this year. It has also confirmed the iCaur brand for our market.

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