Detroit, Michigan – General Motors Co. and Navistar have reached a long-term agreement to develop and assemble future medium-duty, conventional cab Class 4/5 commercial vehicles, allowing Navistar to strengthen its product lineup and GM to expand its Chevrolet commercial truck portfolio.
“Bringing medium-duty conventional cab trucks back into the portfolio strengthens Chevrolet’s commitment to providing commercial customers with more choices and one-stop shopping for a versatile lineup of trucks, vans, and crossovers,” says Ed Peper, U.S. vice president of GM Fleet and Commercial sales.
The Navistar deal comes about three months after GM and Isuzu agreed to develop low-cab forward medium-duty trucks together. With both deals in place, GM will likely have more truck options than rival Ford, which has begun designing and producing its own medium-duty conventional trucks, but lacks a low-cab forward option.
The GM vehicles are slated for production in 2018 and will be manufactured at Navistar’s facility in Springfield, Ohio.
Navistar plans to add 300 jobs and invest more than $12 million in facility upgrades and state-of-the-art equipment to produce the new vehicles.
“Our collaboration with GM is another example of our customer-centric, open integration approach – providing our customers with the best technologies available,” says Bill Kozek, president, Truck and Parts, Navistar. “By working with an industry-leading partner like GM, we’ll be able to enhance our medium-duty product portfolio and leverage our scale and expertise in manufacturing medium-duty trucks.”
Navistar has supplied larger commercial trucks to Detroit’s automakers in the past. The company’s Blue Diamond subsidiary in Mexico used to make Ford’s F-650 and F-750 trucks.
Source: General Motors