The

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

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 pract ...

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

Cadillac The Cadillac Motor Car Division () is a division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM) that designs and builds luxury vehicles. Its major markets are the United States, Canada, and China. Cadillac models are distributed i ...

's K-body architecture. The platform was introduced in 1995 with Buick Riviera 2-door coupe (which moved up from the GM E platform) 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 had an extremely resilient structure. For its time, the G-body was one of the strongest unibody car frames in production (25 Hz). This fact did not go untouted as GM literature made much of 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. Vehicles built on the G platform are 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 w ...

with a MacPherson strut style front suspension and a

semi-trailing arm A (semi) trailing-arm suspension, sometimes referred to as (semi) trailing-link is a vehicle axle or wheel suspension design in which one or more horizontal arms (or "links"), perpendicular to and forward of the axle, are connecting the axle or w ...

style rear suspension that utilized aluminum 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 bar An anti-roll bar (roll bar, anti-sway bar, sway bar, stabilizer bar) is a part of many automobile suspensions that helps reduce the body roll of a vehicle during fast cornering or over road irregularities. It connects opposite (left/right) wheels ...

s and lateral links in the rear suspension to further control wheel toe.

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 Vin or VIN may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Vîn TV, a Kurdish language satellite television channel founded in 2007 * ''Vos Iz Neias?'', an American Jewish online news site * Coastal radio station VIN Geraldton (callsign), a statio ...

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 T ...

, 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

of the vehicle.

References

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