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This may be a stupid question, but what exactly are Captured Test Fleet vehicles and what happens to these cars? I assume these are not techincally the Pre Production cars that have been going on the tours that will end up getting crushed, That I can at least figure on my own lol.
This article from yesterday says the last of the 500 Captured Test Fleet vehicles should be finished this week. Do these cars get sold as Demo's or sent to GM Execs to drive for a year, etc?
The road show cars are pilot production cars. Those can't be sold.
CTF or pre-production cars are ordered by GM and used for their staff to drive and evaluate and take to different corporate events. They're basically given out to internal GM 'customers' in exchange for those people providing detailed feedback to GM engineering so they can fix any last minute problems that might come up before regular customer production begins. They're usually sold off as used cars when GM is done with them. Aside from the VIN and RPO codes, they're identical to retail cars.
The GM employees that qualify for the company car program usually drive a car for 6 months and then are assigned a different car. GM pays for fuel, maintenance and insurance. Employee pays a couple hundred dollars per month to participate in the program and has to pay for fuel used that isn't related to work. They may or may not be assigned a CTF vehicle. Their next vehicle might be an Equinox, XT5, etc. The car that had it's wheels stolen was likely a CTF car.
The cars usually have less than 7,000 miles on them when they are turned in and then are auctioned off to dealers at auctions that are restricted to dealers that are GM dealers. That is how you get the used car adds stating that a vehicle was Driven by a GM Executive.
Back in 2008 I bought 2 2008 CTF vehicles from the Chevy dealer, a Malibu and a Suburban. They both had less than 5000 miles on them and were in near perfect shape. Both were driven in the Detroit area (Navigation and radio presets still there) and I'm in WI. Both were very good and I put about 100K miles on each one before they were traded.
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Originally Posted by LT1 Power
This may be a stupid question, but what exactly are Captured Test Fleet vehicles and what happens to these cars? I assume these are not techincally the Pre Production cars that have been going on the tours that will end up getting crushed, That I can at least figure on my own lol.
This article from yesterday says the last of the 500 Captured Test Fleet vehicles should be finished this week. Do these cars get sold as Demo's or sent to GM Execs to drive for a year, etc?
This article explains what these are. The CTFs are eventually sold at dealer auctions, though some of the last built are going directly to select dealerships across the country.
So these are the cars dealers are going to get and call up late comer customers telling them, "great news, a customer dropped out and I have an available car at on 10% adjusted MSRP".
This may be a stupid question, but what exactly are Captured Test Fleet vehicles and what happens to these cars? I assume these are not techincally the Pre Production cars that have been going on the tours that will end up getting crushed, That I can at least figure on my own lol.
This article from yesterday says the last of the 500 Captured Test Fleet vehicles should be finished this week. Do these cars get sold as Demo's or sent to GM Execs to drive for a year, etc?
These are the first cars off of the assembly line and often do not have 100% production parts. The cars are distributed internal to GM (as well as used for press events and loaned to "influencers" & celebrities for a period of time). After a program is launched as a dealer-saleable car the CTF cars are returned to the fleet where they are either retrofit with production components, software, and recalls performed (aka Retrofits) and sold at auction OR if it is not cost effective to retrofit the car and turn a profit at auction the cars are crushed so no component of them end up in the wild.
This may be a stupid question, but what exactly are Captured Test Fleet vehicles and what happens to these cars? I assume these are not techincally the Pre Production cars that have been going on the tours that will end up getting crushed, That I can at least figure on my own lol.
This article from yesterday says the last of the 500 Captured Test Fleet vehicles should be finished this week. Do these cars get sold as Demo's or sent to GM Execs to drive for a year, etc?
Captured Test Fleet vehicles
