When GM Tried to Go Green… and Created a Total Disaster

During the 2000s, the world was a different place. Fuel was still cheap, George Bush was president of the USA and hybrid cars were the hottest thing you could own.

Toyota were the king of the hybrid back then, with the Prius selling like hot cakes not just in Japan, but in Europe and North America as well. This hybrid system worked so well, they took all of the good bits about the Prius (the self-charging bits) and shoved it into the Lexus RX, giving us the RX400h - a car that would become the status symbol of dentists and spray-tan enthusiasts.

Naturally, other manufacturers wanted a slice of their market share, with the likes of Honda, VW Group and even Mercedes experimenting with hybrids in the late 2000s. Most of these were rubbish first-generation hybrid cars, but none of them were as rubbish as what General Motors had to offer. 

So in 2008, General Motors (GM) revealed its ‘eco-friendly’ GMT900-based hybrids. They were offered in Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon flavours and let’s be honest, they were all terrible, terrible cars. 

Powering the GMT900 hybrids was a combination of a very eco-friendly 6.0-litre V8 engine and two electric motors, producing a combined 379bhp. Notably, this setup returned an EPA-rated 22mpg on the highway, equivalent to 26.4mpg or 9.34km/L for us living in the real world. This is still piss poor for a hybrid, but it’s a strong improvement over the equivalent non-hybrid 6.2-litre V8-powered GMT900, which got an EPA-rated 17mpg on a highway. 

What makes this fine piece of automotive tat even funnier is that the car was named ‘Green Car of The Year 2008’ by Green Car Journal. Of all cars to win an award like that, an oversized SUV with the worst excuse of an ‘eco-friendly’ powertrain wins. What a load of shit. 

The timing of the GMT900 hybrid launch couldn’t have been any worse, either. 2008 wasn’t a good year in the financial world, with GM launching these cars during that woeful financial period. Even GM were suffering, pulling jobs, killing brands, but somehow selling a load of terrible cars. 

The GMT900 hybrid must have been some kind of sick joke made between an engineer and a product manager to see if they could put these ridiculous things into production and waste a load of money that could have been better spent elsewhere while doing so. 

The cars went on sale in 2008 and were taken off sale in 2013. Unlike the Prius and Lexus RX400h, they didn’t catch on, with just under 15,000 (Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC combined) finding owners. Ironically, the two generations that have succeeded the GMT900 have been more fuel efficient than the hybrids ever worse, therefore making them a bit pointless. GM hasn’t offered another full-size SUV with a hybrid powertrain since.