(By Tom Lohnes) – Do you want to own a new small pickup truck for the price of a 20-year-old diesel truck with 335,000 miles, and an owner that thinks they have something special? Well GM has you covered, as long as you live in China.
For $9,033, the Wuling Zenghtu is a miniscule pickup truck manufactured by General Motors’ Chinese Subsidiary, Wuling. This is about as basic of a truck as you can get, with an N/A 1.5-liter 4-banger under the hood making a blistering 99 horsepower and 100 pounds-feet of torque sent directly to the front wheels through a rather ancient 4-speed manual. There are some standout features however, such as a standard crew cab and sides of the bed that fold down.
So, would you invest $9,000 into the Zenghtu? This is definitely an interesting truck, but I suspect we won’t be seeing this value-minded pickup stateside in the future. GM could use something like this to combat the upcoming Ford Maverick, which could be a valid reason to bring this basic truck to market here. The future is uncertain, but anything could happen with the Zenghtu.
Looks better than many US-spec’ed trucks, particularly GM’s!
Hard pass. Looks like they turned a crap van into a crap truck. People would probably flock to it with the proper marketing people telling everyone how they are saving the world by buying it.
It’s no uglier than a new Chevy truck. About 90% of the people driving pickups don’t need any more of a truck than that anyway.
So $9000 to Chinese consumers with how much contributed per vehicle by the Chinese government?
These trucks are probably gonna do more actual truck stuff on a daily basis than 90% of the trucks on the road in the US and Canada.
People are paying that much for old worn out Rangers just to get a basic light duty work truck.