If you walk into your local Chevrolet dealer, you’ll see the redesigned 2019 Silverado sitting there ready for purchase. Head across the street to the GMC dealer, and they most likely have plenty of redesigned 2019 Sierras for you to look at, too. But if you happen to prefer the older version of either truck, you won’t be entirely out of luck. That’s because GM plans to keep building previous-generation Silverados and Sierras for most of next year.
Automotive News reports that last week, Dhivya Suryadevara, GM’s chief financial officer, confirmed that Chevrolet and GMC will continue to sell old trucks right next to the new ones. Production for crew cab models won’t end until early next year, with double cab and regular cab production not stopping until “the early second half of next year.”
According to Suryadevara, this decision wasn’t made to prop up sales of new trucks. She said the launch is “going exceptionally well” and that the automaker delivered 45,000 redesigned Silverados and Sierras last quarter. By the end of the year, she expects that number to rise to 120,000. And even though Sierra sales are down 1.4 percent for the year, Silverado sales are up the same percentage.
If this plan sounds familiar, it’s because Fiat-Chrysler made a similar decision with the Ram 1500. Unfortunately for Ram, supplier issues have caused a slower-than-anticipated launch of the redesigned truck. And even though Ram sales are up 1.4 percent year-to-date, neither it nor GM is likely to take the top spot from the Ford F-Series. At least not this year.
Source: Automotive News (Subscription required)
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