(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.
Well, 9 grand for the truck doesn’t sound bad. But can they upgrade the parts and accessories of these Chinese-branded trucks—like how we can upgrade Silverados and other US-spec pickup trucks? Would they dare to fit 30 inches rims and tires to it? Just like how we usually mod trucks and buy aftermarket parts from 4WheelOnline or other stores.