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 Front-wheel drive (FWD) is a form of engine and transmission layout used in motor vehicles, where the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel drive vehicles feature a transverse engine, rather than the conventional longit ...

full-sized and

luxury car A luxury car is a car that provides increased levels of comfort, equipment, amenities, quality, performance, and associated status compared to moderately priced cars. The term is subjective and reflects both the qualities of the car and the ...

s between 1995 and 2011. Previously, General Motors used the

G-body The General Motors G platform (also called G-Body) automobile platform name was used three times. * 1969–1972 GM G platform (RWD) * 1982–1988 GM G platform (RWD) * 1995–2011 GM G platform (FWD) The General Motors G platform (also called ...

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 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 two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past parti ...

(which moved up from the

GM E platform The 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 and rear wheel drive configu ...

) and the

Oldsmobile Aurora The Oldsmobile Aurora is a luxury sports sedan, manufactured and marketed by General Motors from 1994 until 2003 over two generations — sharing platforms with Buick Riviera and using the Cadillac-derived G platform. At the time of product ...

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 GMT 360 is a vehicle platform that was manufactured by General Motors from the 2002 and 2009 model years. Designed primarily for SUVs, the GMT360 architecture served as the third generation of mid-size SUVs produced by GM. Directly succeeding i ...

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 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, and is named for American automotive engineer Ear ...

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 Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It 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 (fingers) 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 ''plan ...

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 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 VIN of the vehicle.

References

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