General Motors Ultralite
Car of the Day #199: General Motors Ultralite – Cruelly cool
Truthfully, I miss the days when General Motors had to at least design, engineer and build a car — then weave an entire web of lies to have us believe that it gave a damn about the environment.
These days, we’re living through the nepotism of successive generations of borderline white collar criminals; a long tradition spent scheming for profits before being overtaken in markets like Australia, Brazil, and China; not changing its ways enough after being bailed out by U.S. taxpayers; and making decisions that come at the cost of its own workforce — all while producing products best described, on average, as ‘general motors’.
At General Motors, for every Chevrolet C8 Corvette, friend, there are 50,000 Savannah cargo vans. For every sunscreen bottle-coloured Cadillac Sollei, there are practically 100 economy-focused concepts like the Ultralite.
1992 GM Ultralite • via GM
Sorry, but executives can’t claim something affordable, efficient, and well-built is a “bad business decision” when some of us are looking at the General these days like, “Y’all ok?”
From recalls of its latest-generation engines to a charitably shaky rollout of its new EVs, one can’t help but thank the trade protections that keep GM from reaching its full potential.
This is a company who will happily export entire outdated vehicle lineups — tooling and all — to developing nations, while importing major components (and entire cars) from regions with lower labour costs cough China cough…yet will never advocate for the erasure of outdated policies such as the 1964 “Chicken Tax” because, honey, it knows it can’t handle the competition.
Anything you could ever want to know about the GM Ultralite is in this corporate video from 1992, made by GM. Take a drink every time you hear a suspiciously impressive statement…
Yesterday’s bitching about government-imposed emissions standards for trucks or crushing our hopes of an EV-1 is today’s GM-backed autonomous driving assist systems (incl. subsidiary Cruise), general concerns about data gathering and security via embedded software, and my own worry there’s at least one sketch of a Corvette SUV taped to the wall in a GM design studio.
I dearly appreciate those within the belly of the beast who are working overtime to improve The Corporation, and I’m appreciative of the money that is being spent to move GM in a more equitable, affordable, environmentally-friendly direction.
If you work at GM and still don’t like my tone: prove me wrong by doing good work.
Similarly, a good car is a good car — a few recent GM products included — offering proof that some bangers slip through from time to time…
Humbly, I ask: why couldn’t one of them have been the Ultralite?
(Silly me, the brightest minds at GM must have been needed to ensure the success of the 1992 Buick Skylark.)
A shorter alternate look at the GM Ultralite from the Chicago Auto Show.
Thirty-two years ago in 1992, General Motors showed off the Ultralite sedan. Executives and engineers boasted that it had:
- A rear-mounted three-cylinder, 2-stroke engine
- Carbon fibre body structure weighing 191 kg (420 lbs);
- Drag coefficient (Cd) claimed to be at 0.19;
- Fuel consumption as low as 2.7 L/100 km average (88 U.S. mpg);
- Gullwing doors, like the Tesla Model Y;
- Horsepower, 111;
- LED rear taillights and slim ‘fiber optic’ headlights
- Quoted weight of just 635 kg (1,400 lbs);
- Top speed of 217 km/h (135 mph);
- Zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) in about 8 seconds.
Sick, right? Full marks.
I will say, credit where credit’s due — also in 1992, GM divisions were offering several fuel-efficient options. Saturn sold more than 100,000 SL sedans, Geo sold 95,000 Metro hatchbacks — and Chevrolet moved 420,000 C/K pickup trucks.
Right.
