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GMC is the truck division of the General Motors Company. It was formed by the purchase, in
1909, of Max Grabowski's Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, which had developed some of the
earliest commercial trucks ever designed. Grabowski's trucks used a one-cylinder engine.
That same year, GM purchased another manufacturer, the Reliance Motor Car Company. In 1911
Rapid and Reliance merged, and a year later, under the marque GMC Truck, they first presented
at the New York Auto Show. That year, 22,000 trucks were produced, but only 372 were
GMC's. That number would dramatically increase during World War II, when GMC Truck
produced 600,000 trucks for use by the US military.
GM purchased controlling interest in Yellow Coach, a Chicago, Illinois-based bus manufacturer,
in 1925, and then purchased the remaining interest in 1943, after which the company was
renamed GM Truck and Coach Division. It produced transit and inter-urban buses in Canada and
the US until the 1980s, but, facing steep competition, it stopped producing buses at that time.
GMC's bus models were sold in 1987, to Transportation Manufacturing Corporation (also Motor
Coach Industries in Canada), and later NovaBus.
Now known simply as GMC, the brand is used on trucks, vans and SUVs marketed by General
Motors in North America and the Middle East. GMC was GM's 2nd largest selling light vehicle
division after Chevrolet in January 2007.
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