The

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

G platform (also called G-Body)

automobile platform A car platform is a shared set of common design, engineering, and production efforts, as well as major components, over a number of outwardly distinct models and even types of cars, often from different, but somewhat related, marques. It is prac ...

designation was used for

front-wheel drive Front-wheel drive (FWD) is a form of internal combustion engine, engine and transmission (mechanics), transmission layout used in motor vehicles, in which the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel-drive vehicles feature ...

full-sized and

luxury car A luxury car is a passenger automobile providing superior comfort levels, features, and equipment. More expensive materials and surface finishes are used, and buyers expect a correspondingly high quality (business), build quality. The term is ...

s between 1995 and 2011. Previously, General Motors used the G-body designation for unrelated mid-sized cars. The G-body was based on

Cadillac Cadillac Motor Car Division, or simply Cadillac (), is the luxury vehicle division (business), division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM). Its major markets are the United States, Canada and China; Cadillac models are ...

's K-body architecture. The platform was introduced in 1995 with

Buick Riviera The Buick Riviera is a personal luxury car that was marketed by Buick from 1963 to 1999, with the exception of the 1994 model year. As General Motors' first entry into the personal luxury car market segment, the Riviera was highly praised by au ...

2-door

coupe A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and typically with two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the Fr ...

(which moved up from the

GM E platform The General Motors Corporation, General Motors E platform or E-body was the automobile platform designation used for a number of personal luxury cars produced from 1963 to 2002. Notably, early E-bodies were produced in both front wheel drive an ...

) and the Oldsmobile Aurora 4-door sedan (a new model that replaced the Riviera-derived Toronado). By the turn of the millennium, full-sized cars from four different GM makes were using some derivative of the platform.

Platform consolidation

Starting with the 1997 Buick Park Avenue, GM consolidated its four large-car platforms; C platform, K platform, H platform, and G platform; all to the G platform. However, GM decided to retain their previous platform designations. These legacy platform designations were used in the VIN number and official GM publications. Models designated as "G" went out of production for MY (Model Year) 1999, but successor models were sold until MY 2011. The G-body was noted for having one of the strongest unibody car frames in production (25 Hz). GM literature noted the need to use a 'frame crusher,' designed to test heavy-duty truck frames, to finally break the G-body structure in their crush-to-failure procedures. The G platform vehicles were also noted for having belt-in-seat style seat belts like the mid-size GMT360 SUVs. The G-body also featured four-wheel

independent suspension Independent suspension is any automobile suspension system that allows each wheel on the same axle to move vertically (i.e. reacting to a bump on the road) independently of the others. This is contrasted with a beam axle or deDion axle system in ...

with a

MacPherson strut The MacPherson strut is a type of automotive suspension system that uses the top of a telescopic damper as the upper steering pivot. It is widely used in the front suspension of modern vehicles. The name comes from American automotive engineer ...

style front suspension and a semi-trailing arm style rear suspension that utilized

aluminum Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

control arms. All-new aluminum control arms were introduced for the front suspension for 1998. The handling was further enhanced with standard front and rear stabilizer bars and lateral links in the rear suspension to further control wheel

toe Toes are the digits of the foot of a tetrapod. Animal species such as cats that walk on their toes are described as being ''digitigrade''. Humans, and other animals that walk on the soles of their feet, are described as being ''plantigrade''; ...

Vehicles 1995-2005

* Official designation given by GM, despite using a G platform-derivative. This name also corresponds to the 4th letter in the VIN of the vehicle.

2006 Revision

The G platform was updated for the 2006 model year. The final car using this platform was the

Buick Lucerne The Buick Lucerne is a full-size car manufactured by General Motors from 2005 to 2011. Named for the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, it served as Buick's top-of-the-line sedan until it was replaced by the second generation Buick LaCrosse. History ...

, which ended production in June 2011.

Vehicles

* Official designation given by GM, despite using a G platform-derivative. This name also corresponds to the 4th letter in the VIN of the vehicle.

References

List of GM VIN codes
{{General Motors platforms G 2