Remember the Future CC post on the Saab 9-4X last month? Amongst the comments, our own JPCavanaugh lamented that he did not get photos of an Isuzu Ascender he had spotted (as unofficial CC Isuzu Guy, after his CC on the Hombre). Well Jim, I’m about to make your day!
I was on my way to the grocery store when I saw this elusive variant of the Trailblazer/Envoy twins. On my way out of the store, I paused long enough to get a couple of shots of it. This one must be at least a 2005, as only the long-wheelbase 7-seater was available in 2003-04. So there you have it: the last Isuzu passenger vehicle sold in North America, save their version of the Chevy Colorado pickup, the i-Series.
You did indeed make my day, Tom! The Hombre made me realize that I had not shot one of these. I saw one driven by a distant relative of Mrs. JPC at a family funeral, but thought it bad form to go out and start taking pictures of his car in front of the church.
The many variants of this vehicle are, to me, like the glassware that gas stations used to give out with a fill-up: I want to collect the whole set.
I wonder – did these use the Atlas I-6 or an Isuzu 4? I have absolutely no idea.
I might be able to help you with the Japanese variants JP we have those and the Australian versions.
The Atlas series.
They were all GM, made at the Moraine OH plant from what I recall.
And Oklahoma City.
I am in the market for an SUV due to changing stuff that I need to do. The Isuzu Ascender was advertised with a 4.2 engine. I assumed that was the GM I6.
Does anyone know about the durability of that engine?
I recall that there may have been some issues with the “early build” models with the Atlas I6 because GM adopted a new casting method (lost foam casting?) and needed to work the bugs out of it.
However if you end up with the extended wheelbase Isuzu they were only available with the 5.3 V8. Although knowing you, Sir, you are frugal individual and would likely rather have the I6.
Happy hunting and I’d simply avoid the first model year of the Trailblazer family, which was 2002.
Yeah, 4200 Vortec, or LL8. You want a post-2005, as they’re rated at 295hp, some folks saying true HP is closer to 315 on the later engines.
Was on Wards’ 10 best engines every year they ran it, I think. Maybe not as powerful, but far more interesting than the LS3, IMHO.
I’m putting one in my 68 Camaro. Because I can.
Now I remember that I was supposed to get pictures of my neighbor’s! Sorry JP
The I6 is a great engine. Some had head cracking problems for a couple of years, but at this point, if it is still running it is probably already replaced.
No worries, I had forgotten too. My folder of CC photos is overflowing as it is.
The GMT360, one of the more heavily badge engineered vehicles in recent GM history, Chevy, GMC, Olds, Buick, Isuzu and Saab. of which only Chevy and GMC made sense.
Chevy TrailBlazer
GMC Envoy
Olds Bravada
Buick Rainier
Isuzu Ascender
SAAB 9-7x
More versions than the GM J car! [Cava-Cimarron]
Well, yes and no, the J-car was also exported all over the world, though the versions outside the US were changed from the domestic J-car a fair bit, there was a Holden, Opel, Vauxhall and Isuzu J-car too.
Also Daewoo. This was the most changed of all of them, courtesy of Bertone. It’s called an Espero.
I rather like the looks of them but the interior is quite crude.
Wow, all the way to Daewoo?
I guess you could also sort of count the Toyota badged Cavaliers from the 90’s too?
GMH exported shiploads of engines to Korea for assembly into those they would have been better dumped at sea
Also a toyota cavalier in japan.
I’m just talking about the J cars built in the USA, as the GMT360 was sourced from one plant. Yeah, there were J’s overseas, but not per US specs.
Interesting grill. We never got these in Canada but doesn’t look like we missed out on much.
looks like an Isuzu Wizard 3.1L turbo diesel here same engine as the Big Horn in fact under the skin the same ute, I could be wrong we get them ex JDM and the various models dont quite match what you guys have.
As David says the grille is unusual, the ute not so much
Are you sure there was a JDM equivalent of these? I could have sworn these were North America only.
Like i said not an exact match, I;ll see what I can find
Can there be a pre-CC effect? I saw one yesterday!
I think one reason this SUV was dropped was it got too close to the current Tahoe in size.
But Tahoe has more room and power, but gets same mileage, so when GM needed to cut some dead weight…
It was done in a very GM way, expensive to make, to close in dimensions and capacities to another car that GM sold, the full size SUV’s in this case, which were more profitable than these, and on top of everything else, these used and engine that you couldn’t use in ANY other GM car at the time, so the all new DOHC Atlas 4200 and all the money that was spent developing it was a total waste, since it has gone on to the dustbin, the smaller S-truck replacement shared nothing with it, so there were no cost savings there, it was a total bonehead program.
Not to mention how fugly the extended versions were. I did kind of like the Denali.
I can’t even imagine Don Draper can pull one out of his ass to make the extended versions appeal to anyone.
The Atlas engine was when I knew that GM had gone off the rails for good. As you note, why would anyone throw a ton of money into a completely new engine that had almost zero adaptability to any other vehicle line. I was always amazed that the Atlas engine never made it into the pickups or vans. But no, they just killed it when this platform died off. This sort of thing was understandable in maybe 1960 when GM was big enough and strong enough to do whatever it wanted. But not in this era.
Wasn’t the later I5 based on the I6?
@ajla, what I’ve always heard is that the lessons learned developing the Atlas I6 went into the I5 in the Colorado/Canyon and the 4 cyl that went into the Colorado/Canyon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Atlas_engine
Yes, dad’s got a 07 Canyon with the Deuce and Quarter I5 (3.7l) It’s a gutsy little motor, really easy to hit the speed limiter at 98mph with it on the highway.
Not terribly quick off the line, but its no slouch once it gets rolling. I never understood why it got such a drubbing in the press.
The six I’ve thought about transplanting under the hood of my ’77 Chevelle but I’m not sure its tall enough to fit that engine.
Tommy, my father-in-law has the 4 cyl Canyon with no options. The I4 version is gutless of the line too but once when I was running a yellow light changing red I punched the pedal in the middle of the intersection. The transmission actually kicked down two gears and barked the tires. Even with no weight over the drive wheels that was surprising to me from a 4 cyl automatic vehicle.
The smaller 4 and 5 cylinders were semi shared with the 4200, and I imagine that at one point there was probably some other range of vehicles that it was supposed to go in, I always expected that it would become the new base engine for the full size pickups replacing the old whore 4.3 V6, but it never did. Theres probably a bigger story in there somewhere.
You just can’t keep an all-iron 90-degree V6 down.
I have had the pleasure of listening to and riding around in a few Atlas 6s. They were so smooth and punchy that if GM had put them in their trucks I would be driving a 2004 Chevy/GM WT style beast instead of a 2004 F150 Heritage 4.6V8.
I wish they had stuck around… these are my favorite engines of the last decade or so and I often daydream making one of them live in a Disco Nova/Omega/etc. or something like that. A 290HP twin-cam straight six that will rev to 6,300rpm is ridiculously cool, as are the five-cylinder and (gargantuan 2.9l) four-cylinder versions.
AFAIK, the old 4.3l V6 is still available in brand new 2014 vans and pickups. That’s crazy… I mean, that’s a pretty sturdy old lump and everything but it’s prehistoric at this point.
LL8 should’ve been the base engine in the new Camaro. Just sayin.
The thing I always notice on these cars (all GMT360s) are the huge gaps between the bumpers and the body.
Yeah, you can shove your hand in those gaps.
A guy at work had an Ascender til a couple years ago. Someone who visits one of my neighbors has a 9-7X.
The Bravada was, IMHO, the best looking of these. Of course it’s kind of like trying to pick the prettiest turd.
See I like the Trollblazer the best, the Saab windowdressing looks pretty good on it, followed by the GMC version.
I kind of like the Saab the best too. Only because I think the Saab 9-7x Aero is probably the sleeper out of the bunch. The 6.0 LS2 with AWD makes it the fastest out of the lot. If you read what’s out there in the www the 9-7 is just as quick, if not faster than the Trailblazer SS. These two models are kind of the Syclone/Typhoons of the new millenia.
Now I’m just trying to figure out what GMC was thinking when they made the EnvoyXUV. Thats one totally useless truck IMO.
Presumably the XUV was designed for people who routinely carry refrigerators vertically.
Well I saw an Ascender here in NYC the other day and then yesterday, a 9-7x! Trailblazer EXTs are fairly common here but I’ve yet to see a Rainier or final Bravada.
Me too, and parked only a few blocks from each other as well. I didn’t get a picture of the Saab, but was this the same Ass-Ender you saw?
When the housing bubble was at peak, everybody and their mom had a Trailblazer in the driveway. At least in metro area Minnesota. Now, most seem to be on second or third owners and I haven’t seen an Isuzu badged version in years. I see some 9-7x versions and rarely a Buick. Oh well, I hated working on these and the Colorado pickups.
Based on past experience, I’d bet that spare wheel/tire is going to be on there for awhile and the owner is trying desperately to collect enough pennies to replace the damaged tire.
About the bumper, I thought it was due to suburban house mom mall parking lot mishaps. Then I realized they all looked that bad. WTF? The rear door sculpting catches a lot of gravel and debris that blasts the paint off in short order too.
The Atlas I6 was a pretty impressive engine when it was released… Ample power and torque! I wouldn’t have bothered with a V8 GMT 360
GM released these during the “you cant have too many SUV’s” era.
The plug was pulled on GMT360 at same time Chrysler killed the Deleware built Durango and Aspen SUV’s.
I did not know these even existed. Of course from an earlier comment I now know why, they weren’t sold in Canada. I see the Oldsmobile version around fairly often, or maybe I just see the same one or two repeatedly.
The GMT360s weren’t bad trucks, in hindsight. I remember thinking they were at the time, because of how desperately GM’s marketing-babble tried to squeeze them into disparate brand identities (Saab, Buick, GMC, etc).
My favourite of the breed was the 5.3 Buick Rainier. Its V8 was smooth, woofly, and packed a decent punch, and the traditional interior and primary controls had a light, oily slickness that sat well with the Buick badge. I can’t say I’d mind one as a daily driver even now.
The Ascender, though, was forgettable–drove one of those too, and it left almost zero impressions, being plasticky and anonymous inside, and devoid of style outside. Too bad, as the mechanicals were just as solid as its GM siblings.
I was hoping for a MerCruiser 4.2 but it never happened.
I sold these when they were new at the isuzu/suzuki dealership.
No one was fooled into thinking these were isuzu’s, but we were quick to point out that for less than the trailblazer you got a 5year 60k warranty vs 3year 36k and third row seating as standard.
I still still see plenty of these here in texas running around
As a Trooper owner and (wanna-be) aficionado, the introduction of the Ascender is when I knew Isuzu was dead. What a crappy replacement for a great little truck.
When these came out, they were HUGE improvements over the outgoing Blazer/Jimmy. I really liked the Envoy versions of these on launch. Like a LOT. But they seemed to age very quickly and lose their appeal.
I see a gold Buick version driven by a guy around 20 years old who goes to my gym. There’s no way he chose that car for himself. It’s hideous.
Agree that the Bravada version looked quite nice.
Come on the Rainier as Buick’s version was called has the distinction of being the least ticked vehicle in America a few years back. I’d love one with the V8 and AWD just to see if the cops really would ignore me. 😛