The American-based international automotive conglomerate General Motors (GM) underpins its many vehicle models with various platforms.
These platforms are established sets of axles, suspensions, and steering mechanisms which fit various bodies and powertrains from various marques that GM owns.
From the early twentieth century, a Latin letter-based naming scheme was used to designate platforms,[1] which were aimed at vehicles under different brands that served similar niches of the market.
This platform underpinned vehicles made by Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Marquette, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile.
Despite being mechanically very new and different, it kept the same name as the RWD C platform for the sake of consistency, as most of the models remained the same, such as the Oldsmobile 98.
[2] At the outset of the twenty-first century, General Motors' approach to platforms changed,[3] and so did the nomenclature they use.
In the 2010s, GM once again began to change platform nomenclature, this time to a four-character format: platform-generation-XX.
As of April 2020, GM produces cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) of multiple different sizes on 19 different platforms: 7 of which are inherently RWD, with the rest being FWD.
[11] 2020 Buick Encore GX Slated to underpin all FWD GM cars plus subcompact crossovers by 2025.
1978 Holden Gemini 1993 Asüna SE 1990 Chevrolet Lumina APV 1997 Vauxhall Sintra 2007 Saturn Relay 1968 Opel Rekord Also used for the Buick XP2000 concept car.
1991 Cadillac Allanté 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme 2004 Chevrolet Monte Carlo 2007 Pontiac Grand Prix 1973 Buick Apollo 1980 Pontiac Phoenix 1962 Oldsmobile Jetfire 2008 Cadillac XLR 1966 Chevrolet Corvair
In 2015 GM announced their intention to shift all of their vehicles (with the notable exception of the eighth-generation Corvette) to four platforms by 2025.
The following are those platforms, including the already-launched VSS-F:[18][19][20][21] Slated to underpin all FWD GM cars plus subcompact crossovers by 2025.
It is currently unknown whether GEM or a similar low-cost platform will be continued in some form as a subset of VSS.