The General's 'hoe.
-The new Tahoe bodystyle is selling out like crack - but will it be enough to give GM's financial burdens the back of the hand?

There’s something special about a big, truck-based SUV. Look down on fragile, little Highlanders, MDXs and Muranos with loathsome contempt. Old-school V8 torque and plenty of room for stuff, people, subwoofers, TVs, a dog and a barbecue grill. GM hopes that no one will ever get enough of that big SUV feeling with high hopes for the new Tahoe. Will it do for GM what the Taurus did for Ford in the 80s - and what Ford hopes the Fusion will do in the ...00s? Well, probably not - but it looks better.

The new Tahoe does look good! And this summer's custom shows are sure to show off a slew of pimped out Tahoes with TVs, dubs and airbags. But its current popularity doesn’t really signal a big revival. The truth is, while the shiny new Tahoes have been flying off dealers’lots in the 49 days since Tahoe’s debut (

det news )- this is no indication of long-term success. In fact, will SUVs be around forever? The '07 Sentra fetures two glove compartments and one is 'extra deep!' And it gets like 29 to the gallon (though that's sure to come down in real-life driving.) Detroit News’ article profiles a guy who replaced his old Tahoe with the new one when his lease ran out - not quite the against-all-odds triumph GM will need to change some minds or even make Cars Cars Cars guy forget about the Monte Carlo.

Drivers hooked on the ass-flattering comfort of the Tahoe platform will have a hard time staying away from the couch-like goodness of the new one. But, according to PIN Insights, an arm of J.D. Powers and Associates, the first five months of sales for a new model doesn’t reflect long-term success.


Of course, we all want GM to succeed and rain down with cheap, high-performance, roomy cars and trucks for years to come. The big push and the new grille are paying off for now, but let’s see if sales volume drops to where it was for the previous model by 4th of July.