ksss wrote:
GM did offer different ratios in their Medium duty trucks in the mid 2k"s. My 5500 4X4 CC had 5:19's. I dont think the motor liked those high RPM's, outside of those trucks, they have been pretty adament about staying with the 3:73's. Whatever the internal reason for staying with that ratio, it was worth it for them to give up the higher ratings to Ford and Ram that would run 4:10's. Comparing like ratio trucks to each other, they were about the same as shown above. The one thing that 12V proclaims that I do agree with is that GM verbally justified their lower tow ratings by stating that their ratings capture all but 5% of the buyers requirements.
While that may be true (I have no idea how that data was captured), but all other things being equal, do you want a truck that is capable of 30K which maybe 15K more than what your pulling, or a truck that is speced at a max of 23K even though it still covers your 15K, it would appear that the 30K is more capable. More is better, even if your not using it. It would be like saying I may only need 750 pound/feet but why wouldnt I buy a truck with a 1000 cause more is better (all things being more/less equal). This point is made by the Nissan 5.0L Cummins motor option.
This flawed thinking in the HD headquarters of GM always bothered me. I am a 5% outlier that choses to run the GM trucks. My personal experience at max weight has been positive, but without that, I may have chosen something else. I didn't expect them to address their previous position and to somehow offer a Mia Copa. But, knowing the reason for the 3.73 only position would make me feel better, even if I didn't like the answer. Whatever their real rationale was in the past, it is obviously gone now. We can speculate on the why, but I doubt anyone outside of GM really knows. I built a 3500 DRW a couple weeks ago, and the build sheet showed that as I speced the truck, it would have a gross combined weight of 40K. It is about time that they came to compete, without excuses. The 2020 is without a doubt one heck of truck from a capability standpoint. I think it reflects what GM is really capable of from an engineering perspective. They just too took long to "Bring it".
GM advertised that there was a small market about ~24k lbs towing limit; therefore they decided not to pursue that market. Having said that the next gen trucks are now covering that supposedly small market above 24k lbs. My take is GM continues to loose sales because of their poor decisions and are not forced to pay the piper.
Now Chevrolet/GM needs to clean house on the designers and every single manager who approved the latest Blazer, Camaro, 1500, and 2500/3500HD truck designs need to be gone, and start from scratch. Oh and if there's any engineers who were responsible for the DEF tank hanging low behind the passenger tire is still around they need to go as too.
The new GM still has not cleaned up their act!
