It Has Come To My Attention that The GMC Envoy XUV Exists

I was going about my normal day, scrolling idly through Facebook marketplace in search of cars I will never buy. Then it happened. I came across a vehicle I had never seen nor even heard of, a vehicle that came at the peak of GM’s pre-recession weirdness.

The GMC Envoy XUV, on the surface, looks like any other GM SUV from the mid 2000s. Round, muted, dull. It has a kind of hearse-like look to it. However, it hides some incredibly practical features. Starting with the retractible rear roof, that essentially converts the rear into a high-sided pickup truck bed. This makes it easy to load tall items, such as fridges or dressers, without having to lay them down.

It also has multifunction tailgate, similar to the Honda Ridgeline. It can open down, like a regular truck tailgate, or open sideways, which makes getting something from the back (front?) of the bed/cargo area much easier.

Finally, it has arguably the best feature of any of these truck/car vehicles, a fold down mid-gate. This turns a tiny 4-foot bed into a much more useable 8-foot bed when you need it, without having to drive around in a long-bed pickup truck. Some other GM vehicles also have a folding mid-gate, such as the Avalanche or the Hummer H2T. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really caught on with any other manufacturers, even though vehicles like Honda Ridgeline would be even more practical with one.

So, what are the negatives? there must be some negatives. Well, for starters, they are pretty rare. Only 12,000 of them were sold. Im guessing buyers had a hard time justifying this over an Avalanche or a regular GM truck, especially with the abysmal fuel economy these things have, at 15mpg combined. Then theres the quality issues. These were not great times for GM, and a lot of their vehicles were plagued by poor quality, and this one was no exception. Even if you do find one of these, the likelihood that the all the cool features are still working is pretty slim.

Hopefully in the future, as crossovers become more and more popular, some of these features will be reincarnated. If we cannot stop the SUV apocalypse, the least companies can do it add a bit of cool practicality into their lineups.