Chevrolet Pokes Fun At Aluminum Trucks With The ‘Almighty Aluminum Man’: Ad Break
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While we explored why Chevrolet would poke fun at aluminum usage earlier (especially considering the Silverado’s engine uses the material) we’re here to highlight another ad from the recent portion of “Real People, Not Actors” ad campaign.
What we have here is the full version of the advertisement, but snippets will surely make their way to television airwaves near you soon, if they haven’t already. Being honest, the spot is quite humorous to us. But, comic relief is hit or miss when viewing the ad from a marketing standpoint.
It’s been proven humor is quite effective in an ad only if the audience has a positive perception of the brand to begin with. If the audience viewing has a negative connotation, the ad won’t do much to sway them.
The ad also provides zero factual information for those interested in a high-strength steel and aluminum debate, but we digress. Taking it at face value, it’s fairly well executed, though those “real people” are starting to really seem like actors if you ask us.
Let’s forget General Motors has already locked in deals with aluminum suppliers for the next-generation of Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra, too.
Check it out for yourself down below.
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As a C7 Z06 owner I find these ads both amusing and confusing. 🙂
That Silverado looks great with those aluminum wheels.
Are these ads attempts to prove many people are stupid – like a late night chat show
bit where the “man on the street” gets lame answers from passers by? Because this
stuff falls short if they are trying to talk about what is the best material to build a
pickup truck out of. For one – lightness was spoken of, but as a negative? The entire
point of aluminum in cars and trucks is to make them more efficient. Naturally.
some fictional super-character isn’t going to be named, “Efficiency Man – or Woman”.
Yet efficiency will be good for your wallet. Efficiency will be great for the air our
families breathe.
So what’s the point? Steel isn’t a superior material. Mainly, pressed-stamped steel
has been used for a hundred years to build automobile bodies because it is the
cheapest option ( most affordable for the manufacturer ). Now aluminum is coming
down in price. Why? Because major users of aluminum, like the commercial and
military aircraft industry, are using more composites, insuring there is a whole lot
more aluminum sitting around to be had. Modern alloys make aluminum one of the
best choices for car and truck bodies. No corrosion yet high strength – sometimes
higher strength than steel. Aluminum can be cast into complex-shapes in structures
designed to be strong, yet light. Another downside to aluminum is cost of repair and
availability of repair. Some body shops won’t do aluminum, or charge excessively for
their “aluminum guy” to do the work. This changes drastically when the number one
vehicle sold by volume ( Ford F-150 at well over 1,000,000 units/yr ) are made with
that material. Shops need to know how to do it, or will train and hire people who can.
Why lose business because you can’t work with it? A boon to business if you can and
are good at it. This brings up economies of scale. Something we talk a lot about in
the electric car field. If manufacturers would choose a model ( Like full-size trucks )
that sell in mega volumes to be a plug-in, those expensive batteries’ price comes
down drastically because the buying power of the manufacturer rises exponentially
with volume orders. Sell lots – the price comes way down.
Aluminum was a power move – a great move – by Ford to keep their lead in the
truck market. Insiders have been quoted from inside GM as admitting they
are on the extreme fast-track to turn their own trucks to aluminum bodies
too. You can even find an article on this very website about the subject.
This kind of situation is more common than you may think. T-Mobile decided to
get out ahead of it’s competitor’s by belittling 4G LTE. All the while, business
websites were reporting behind the scenes T-Mobile was scrambling like hell to
switch their entire nationwide network to 4G LTE! One visit a couple years ago
to a T-Mobile store in the mall, and you would see eight foot tall banners on the walls
saying, “Our 4G Is Better Than Their 4G!”. One look to expert websites told us that
T-Mobile’s current system back then was HSPA+, and that it wasn’t even technically
4G! What a lark! So the CEO of T-Mobile was flat-out lying to the public, trying to
avoid the embarrassing facts, should they get out – that Verizon and AT&T caught
them with their pants down, and they were working overtime to catch up. So go
on the offensive and try to convince some people that your stuff was actually
as good or better.
This is what we have here. I am a GM guy, but it makes me sad to see them do
this pathetic stuff, belittling aluminum as a material, because they didn’t get
off the schnide first and take the risk Ford did to make their trucks as capable
with less HP ( more efficient ) than they were with big pig engines.
Chevy should keep it’s head up and be proud. Just read the shootouts and
comparos. The Ford EcoBoosts aren’t really getting amazing MPG!!! Even with
a smaller EcoBoost engine and 700lb lighter bodywork, their big trucks are still
in that 20-23 MPG territory! GM is making more money per truck by selling
them in stamped steel. They don’t need to carry on this hogwash campaign.
Here’s a tip, GM: Built better engines. Add plug-in and hybrid systems that
are not as terrible as 2-Mode was.
T-Mobile is now 4G LTE ( big surprise! ) nationwide. Surely, nobody at T-Mobile
wants to talk about how they used to bash 4G LTE. In the same way, 2 years
from now GM’s large trucks will have aluminum bodies and they’ll boast about
it like they were the ones who did it first.
Corporate games people play suck, don’t they?
I will add, as one who has looked at several metal manufacturer association websites and such,
that steel companies are fighting back. New alloys have been developed to compete with
aluminum and composites. So there is this race going on for the heavy industry hearts of major
car manufacturers. It boils down to margins. Who can get what material the cheapest. Some
high strength steel alloys do nearly the same job as aluminum ( sans the corrosion benefit )
for a bit less money. Surely, every carmaker will try to include those steels where they can
in structures for all lines of their vehicles into the future.
Just look at some of those graphs that show how much of what material are used
in each new 2016 model. It’s always a mix of aluminum, high strength steel and composites.
Each used in such a way to maximize cost and efficacy. I do believe the higher the aluminum
alloy content the better. It’s the next best solution to using titanium to build our cars — Now
THAT aint gonna happen! : )
Well Aluminum is a very good product and has many advantages but it is not the panacea that will cure all things. Some of the things GM point out are true as well as other issues they have not pointed out.
Things like repair time is marginal as repair times for a properly equipped shop are no longer than any steel repair.
Cost at this point is a little more yet but prices will continue to drop
Repair cost are more yet and until more shops are properly equipped and trained. There is much more to repair as special sets of tools and more training will have to be invested in.
Paint Less Dent Repair is not going to work as well if at all in some cases. Aluminum has no memory as steel does so fixing a ding is not easy or always possible. Not bondo or body fillers can be used either. This means more panel replacement that is always more expensive even in steel.
Aluminum also can corrode. I have seen many panels blister with rot even being aluminum. My buddies Explore has a major case going on now and will have to have the rear hatch replaced. Note even the steel is rust free to this point.
Boron Steel that is being used in a very high grade of steel that is very strong and light. It is a great alternative to Aluminum in holding cost.
The real trick is to engineer the mass out. This is where you really need to start as you can see with the Ford and GM trucks the Chevy is nearly the same weight with only engineering the weight. Ford will do this too on the next model but GM will also continue to lose mass.
Finally GM may not go all aluminum. No one there has said they would yet officially and I suspect they will do much like the CT6 and use a mix of many materials to hold the cost down and profits up.
The truth is With everything that is going on the land scape will remain much the same. The sales numbers will not change much and price or rebates will do more to move sales number than anything.
In the end it matters little how many trucks you sell vs. how much money you make off of them. This is where GM has an Ace in the hole with the Denali line. These trucks are a profit center all to themselves. There is very little content added but a lot more money is charged and made for there’s trucks.
As for now the marketing here is just that marketing. How many times have we seen stupid things from all the MFG. Dodges driving to cliffs. Toyotas driving up flaming ramps, Fords driving with another truck on the back driving up a pile of rocks, Chevys running from the Nuke Holocaust.
It is all just a big pissing match to a public that either wants entertained or easily fooled.
The bottom line is this. Aluminum is nothing new as UPS and Potato Chip trucks have used it for years. But it also is not going to solve all the issues trucks face in the future. This is where the Colorado and Canyon have shown the door is open to a smaller truck that could replace the half ton at some point in the future.
I truly expect most MFG will move most half ton sales to a smaller truck like the Colorado, Canyon and eventually a Ranger. The 2500 and larger trucks have so far has avoided the harsher regulations and can be used to supply the people who still want a larger truck. Price will also be used to regulate volumes of larger trucks too. Lets face it trucks do not have to be this expensive today.
The truck market will fundamentally change in many ways as we move forward. How we build them, how we sell them and how we repair them will change.
For now just enjoy the pissing match as PT Barnum if alive today would be marketing cars and trucks.
Until we have greater supplies of unobtainum we have what we have and the engineering of the construction will do more than anything to lose mass.
@Hyperv6
You make some interesting points about aluminum body repair and corrosion. Where you and I depart is this whole, “let’s just sit back and watch the pickup truck circus”, stuff. It is a circus, worthy of PT Barnum – but the joke is on us – it’s not entertaining watching people get lied to, bamboozled and distracted with bullshit ( millions upon millions of dollars worth of advertising and PR bullshit ). Since full-sized pickup trucks amount to the largest-selling category in consumer vehicles, you see their motivation is keeping people in the dark and using their wallets to vote for the same, ole, same ole, just wrapped up in new hype. As you stated, trucks are selling for record amounts. As a writer and blogger involved with the industry, I’ve commented over the last three years or so about how spending $50,000 for a pickup truck is no longer extreme, but mainstream. A buyer goes in to a dealer expecting to come out with a nicely-equipped pickup truck for around $35,000, and ends up buying into the hype and bullshit – tacking on navigation, laser cruise and MyFordTouch all to the order north of $50,000. All profit for the manufacturer and dealer. The size of the behmoths gets larger each iteration, to the tune of a new “midsize” Colorado/Canyon that equals the size of a full-size truck less than a decade ago. The new larger trucks seem to get more gargantuan based on a well-known male attribute known as “penis envy”. Don’t laugh. I bought a 4X4 truck in 1995 and thought it sat a bit too high for my liking. A year later, I’d pull up to a stop light and some yay-hoo with a lift kit would be sneering at me with a grin and a look of pride as he rolled off with a truck that was taller than mine ( thus, his psychology was – he was better than me ). It wasn’t my imagination, as one of my best friends became another moron guilty of truck fashion. He bought a lift kit for his truck and it made me laugh because you nearly needed a step stool to get in. Suddenly, the aftermarket step and brush bar companies were popping up out of the woodwork! The knumbskulls who bought in ( and they are legion ) didn’t realize that the ground clearance their lift kits were supposed to be made for were nullified due to these ridiculous steps and bars they had to buy so they and their passengers could even get into their stupid-looking trucks! LOL!
Each new guy had to have a bigger-looking truck. In the ’80s, Dodge scored a big market share increase by designing a grille for their RAM that looked like a Peterbilt semi-truck! So men who buy trucks are all about image and not a whole lot about driving off-road and using that vehicle as a tool to get things done. And the bigger, brawnier ( and less aero-efficient ) your iron beast looked, the more macho points they thought they had purchased with their now-tiny bank accounts. Don’t you think for one second this was lost on truck manufacturers. They began giving their audience just what they wanted – bigger and bigger and BIGGER trucks.
So now they had to start “innovating” things like steps built into the bumpers, and folding out from underneath or the tailgate itself just so the truck owner could grab things out of the back of his behemoth! This stuff adds even more cost. The penis-match of who had the most cubic inches and horsepower raged on and on. More hp = more dollars at the dealer. Now these ever-huger machines that 80% of owners used to drive that 10 mile trek to work and back 5 days per week at 11MPG had to have a Hemi or a High Output engine that sucked those dollars from wallets and gave giddy Arab kings the ability to have bigger harems and gold-plated Lamborghinis and Bentleys. Oilmen in Texas, while getting even more subsidies from the government ( read: your money and mine ) began ripping apart the great plains in N. and S. Dakota creating a whole new Gold Rush. Soon, the over 3,000,000 large pickup truck buyers per year were lining Big Oil’s pockets to the tune never seen before in history. While T. Boone Pickens was on Fox News trying to get voters to buy in to a complete overhaul into a natural gas economy ( of course, he owns lots and lots of gas ) – Big Oil was blowing unglodly amounts of that natural gas off the tops of their oil rigs ( Google the night satellite views of N. Dakota from space – the firey plumes look like millions of acres of forest fires ) . The truth about this story? It’s not entertaining to watch – it’s tragic. The waste is epic. The losers are you — and me.
Who is the fool? The pickpocket, or the victim who doesn’t see it being done to him? I’ve illustrated how this costs you – even though you laugh out loud and say it’s a circus to watch and be bemused.
Aluminum is just one avenue of lightweighting. As you say, a mixed-materials approach is the one that is spreading throughout the industry on all categories of consumer vehicles. The efforts brought on my legislation not duty – by mandates like C.A.F.E. and C.A.R.B. and looming deadlines like 2025 and fleet MPG averages of 54.MPG. Yes, the automakers are being forced to do what is right. Yes, they are finding the cheapest and easiest path to meet regulations. Other avenues are not cheap either, but companies will grab the lowest hanging fruit first, before they are forced to toy with alternative drivetrains like hybrids, hybrids with plugs and even all-electric trucks and truck-based behemoth SUVs. It’s not going to happen without a fight. The public has to demand efficiency and stop drinking the Kool-Aid of bullshit advertising they’ve been serving out for the last lifetime or so.
Aerodynamics is another modality to trucks that don’t enrich our enemies and give them power over us. Say, next time Iran threatens to block the Straits of Hormuz or mine the Persian Gulf, we tell the to go f&^%$ themselves! Say, the next time Big Oil wants to allow Canadians to run leaky pipelines over our largest and most agriculturally-productive aquifers, we tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine! When our government subsidized their industry while they hydro-fracture our drinking water into oblivion, why don’t we tell them they can kiss their royal governmental-gifted position goodbye! Ask yourselves why my 1950’s-era GM pickup truck is more aerodynamic than any F-50, RAM or Chevy/GMC. When the industry can place flat undertrays over the messy frame and round the grille areas instead of making them look like 1990 Kenworths. Here’s irony: Kenworth, Peterbilt Mack , Volvo and Freightliner are reducing the frontal areas of their over-the-road truck cabs while GM, Ford and FCA seem in a battle to make their grilles the most semi-trucklike. When will they get the memo that big flat ugly grilles are not macho, but push air like a snow shovel pushes snow? Sheesh, even the commercial truck builders know this!
Many of you out there understand economies of scale. This means when you build and sell a lot of something, the parts you buy from suppliers cost much less. Volume buying gives power to the manufacturer to negotiate better deals from suppliers since they are buying SO MUCH of their product. Example: Alcoa is giving Ford a screaming deal on aluminum because Ford needs so much to build over 1,000,0000 F-150s/yr.. Same goes for lithium ion batteries. Today, the cost of an electric car is high due to expensive batteries. When Tesla sells only 45,000 Model S in one year, Nissan only sells 25,000 LEAFs and GM can only sell 22,000 Volts, there is no incentive for battery companies to compete by offering lithium cells for less. Enter Ford or GM. If those manufacturers needed enough battery cells to sell, say 300,000 pickup trucks like the VIA PHEV/EREV full-sized
Chevy trucks and vans, economies of scale would make those plug-in trucks available to the public for around $50,000 or so. What you the consumer would get would be a truck that drives 40 miles using zero gas, after that, it uses it’s efficient 4 or 6 cyl. ICE go the rest of the way at around 30+MPG. Add the ability to power your electric tools or power your entire house in event of electrical outages, and you have one very capable tool that gives you bragging rights too! This truck exists. In fact, they are built near GM’s Hermasillo, Mexico Silverado plant! VIA Motors takes GM trucks straight to their facility, pulls out the stock transmission, replaces it with power electronics, electric motors and stuffs lithium ion battery packs between the frame rails. Each truck sells for $80,000. Top-line ones have bed covers with solar panels that charge their batteries. The trucks are so expensive, only fleet users can justify the expense due to the immense gasoline savings. This would be different if Ford, FCA and GM just built these trucks themselves. At about the same price as top-tier Silverado, they would fly off the shelves!
We are being bamboozled with flaming mountains of bullshit. When that gravelly-voiced movie actor tells you that his company’s trucks are “RAM Tough”, or that smarmy asshole who makes fireman movies snarks that Ford trucks make you a man because construction sites use them….And that nutball pulls up next to you and smirks because his piece of crap hunk of iron is taller and longer than yours?….. Tell them to take a long walk off a short pier. Better – tell those companies to stop the madness and build trucks that save us money, last longer and don’t take a rope ladder to climb up in!
Dumb. Who rounded up this bunch?
Note like in the Bear commercial they are actors. The whole idea was just humor and marketing.
Shouldn’t be making fun of newer tech. If GM had its way, without the healthy competition from the better manufacturers, we’d still be driving cars with massive panel gaps, carburetors, and five digit odometers.
New technology? Grumman vans would beg to differ.
If it were not for GM Ford truck would not even be close to GM weight.
Aluminum, just a few of its contributions to society:
-Helping win WWII.
-Going to the moon and back.
-Your favorite cold beverage comes in it (unless you prefer bottles).