Back at the end of July 2018, I purchased a 2018 GMC Canyon mid-size pick-up truck from AutoNation GMC Henderson. I’ve owned the truck for just over 7 months now, and here are the experiences I’ve had owning the truck.

• The seat is incredibly uncomfortable for long-distance driving. I have the SLE model (yes, I am sure it is the SLE, it’s just that the exterior is modified to look like the all-terrain) and it does not come with lumbar adjustment. I’ve been on multiple trips across the Mojave Desert from Las Vegas to Southern California and back, and I usually have noticeable back pain if I don’t stop a few times to take a break and stretch my back.

  I’ve resorted to sitting half cross-legged – that is, I take my left shoe off and fold my left leg under my other leg to give my lower back a stronger base of support – to ease the pain during long-distance driving. I’ve also tried a variety of different lumbar pillows, but none of them seem to fit just right.

  If you also have lower back problems, I would recommend either purchasing a different truck (I’ve driven between Las Vegas and Southern Cali­fornia in both the Toyota Tacoma and Nissan Frontier via rentals from Enterprise, and I’ve had no back problems with either of those trucks) or upgrading to a higher trim with adjustable lumbar support.

• Right around 4,380 miles on the odometer, the vehicle just randomly shut off with no warning while I was driving. Luckily I was cruising at approximately 20 MPH (30 KPH) because I had just turned out of my cousin’s neighborhood, but I noticed that the accelerator had stopped working, and when I checked to see what was going on, I saw that the vehicle was off.

  I continued cruising to the side of the road, stopped, put the vehicle in park, removed the key normally as if I was turning off the engine, waited several seconds, then started the vehicle again, and it worked perfectly fine. I’ve driven a couple thousand more miles since then and haven’t en­coun­tered the problem again.

  I brought the vehicle to the dealership to get it checked up, but the mechanic could not find any error codes in the history, and he was unable to replicate the problem (which was expected, seeing as I had already driven about 2,000 miles since the issue without the vehicle randomly dying again).

• The transmission is slow and lurches the vehicle when the fluids are still cold. There’s an option to display transmission fluid temperature in the gauge cluster, and whenever it’s below ~100°F, the transmission takes longer to shift to different gears. This is particularly noticeable when you’re just starting up the vehicle and making your first stop of the day. If you do not come to a complete stop then wait a few seconds (and instead just slow down and roll through a stop sign), the vehicle will hiccup and lurch when you ease your foot off the brake and begin accelerating again.

  This problem did not happen right away, but became an issue a few months into ownership. After a few months, it happened with a 100% replication rate. Unfortunately, when I took it to the dealership for warranty service, the mechanic said that he could not recreate the problem, and said that the transmission is working as intended. The worst part about it is that it literally only happens after the vehicle sits overnight and completely cools down, so because the mechanic had already driven the vehicle earlier in the day, I couldn’t just get into the truck and show him myself.

  I plan on bringing the vehicle back for warranty service, though I need to figure out a strategy to actually show the problem to the mechanic my­self (which will be difficult unless I literally drop off the truck, use rideshare service to come back home, use rideshare service to go back to the dealership the next day, then drive the truck with the mechanic in the passenger seat the next morning on a cold start).

• The climate control was fickle and often would not fully shut off, even though the center console claimed it was off. As a result, I couldn’t just set the temperature to very cold or very hot, blast the climate control until it was a comfortable temperature, then turn it off. Instead, I had to actually select exactly what temperature of air I wanted, because even in the “off” position, it would still blow out air of that particular temperature.

  The mechanic apparently forgot to write comments about this problem after bringing it in for warranty service, but after I tried to recreate the problem, it no longer happened, so I presume that they ended up finding some problem somewhere and fixed it.

• The dealership, AutoNation Buick GMC Henderson, was great right up until my actual warranty service began. My salesperson was awesome, and my service consultant was probably the only service consultant I’ve ever seen who seemed like they actually cared about the customer. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I’m extremely dissatisfied with the mechanics.

  Not only did they fail to recreate a very basic transmission problem, even though I went as far as to drop off my truck and let it sit at the dealership overnight so they could drive it from a cold start, but for whatever reason, they decided to disconnect my dash cam part-way through servicing my vehicle. This was apparent far before I actually looked at the footage – I knew right away because, when they reconnected it, they didn’t even bother mounting it properly again, and instead left it dangling by the wires from the headliner (I have the dash cam hardwired).

  As far as I’m aware, the only reason to actually disconnect a dash cam then literally mention nothing about it when I went to pick up the truck (and also leave no mention about it in the service notes) is if they were up to something suspicious that they didn’t want me to know about. There’s another AutoNation GMC on the other side of the Las Vegas Valley, and I’ll likely end up taking my truck to the one on Sahara for a re-check on the transmission problem, hoping that the mechanics there know what they’re doing and opt to not disconnect my dash cam (or at least tell me if they need to).

So, do I regret the purchase of a GMC Canyon? Absolutely not. But would I do it again? … Absolutely not.

My decision was a toss-up between the Toyota Tacoma and the GMC Canyon; the Canyon won because it had substantially better styling for the price (both on the exterior and interior) as well as interior luxuries and conveniences. With the mid-size pick-up truck segment evolving with vehicle redesigns in the coming few years, I’m hoping that Toyota can up the quality of the Tacoma enough that it becomes the leader in the segment in both looks and reliability.

As for my Canyon, I was originally planning on keeping it for about a decade – and if I had gotten a Tacoma, I almost definitely would’ve kept it for a decade, as those things tend to run buttery smooth for a long, long time. However, at this point, with electric vehicles poising to take over the market, I’m almost glad that I have a semi-unreliable vehicle, as it will likely encourage me in the next 4-5 years to just trade it in and upgrade to an electric pick-up truck (while if I had a Tacoma, I would likely hold onto it forever).

Ever since moving from Illinois to California, then to Nevada, I never owned my own car. I didn’t ever really need one, as in California, I just borrowed other people’s cars, and in Nevada, I lived in a place where everything was conveniently in walking distance. When I did need to go somewhere decently far away, renting a car for a day or using rideshare services was way cheaper than covering all the costs associated with actually having a car.

However, there are some changes happening to my living situation (which I will explain in further detail sometime soon) that is requiring me to get a motor vehicle. I’m obviously not going to lease a car, because most people who know how to calculate the real numbers behind leases know it’s an absolute scam, so I started doing some research on what vehicle I wanted to purchase.

I was considering getting something affordable and compact, but I’m the type of person who would buy a vehicle and stick with it for 10+ years, so I wanted to buy one that I knew I would be happy with at least 8 years from now. If I get something too economic and cheap, I was afraid I would get sick of it after a handful of years and regret underspending on my vehicle. I also didn’t want to get something too small and compact because there is a very real chance that I will literally be married and have a kid in under 8 years, and having too tiny of a vehicle would make transportation inconvenient.

I also recently became a fan of very large vehicles thanks to the local Enterprise Rent-a-Car never having sedans available when I booked them, then giving me free upgrades to pick-up trucks and SUVs. I had driven sedans my entire life (my parents had a Buick LeSabre, Infiniti I35, and Honda Accord), and at first, because of the comparatively larger size of pick-up trucks and SUVs relative to sedans, I thought I would never be able to effectively maneuver anything other than a sedan.

But, after Enterprise repeatedly kept giving me pick-up trucks and I started getting used to them, I realized that there was a whole different world of vehicles that I was missing out on. I got used to the high ride height and ground clearance of pick-up trucks, and it boosted me up into the air enough that I could see over anything. The maneuverability was still a small problem, but I eventually got used to it, and the back-up camera was helpful as well.

Because of my positive experiences with these huge vehicles, I decided that I wanted to get a mid-size pick-up truck. I didn’t want an SUV because it had worse fuel economy due to the extra metal in the rear of the vehicle, and it had less versatility in terms of cargo. I didn’t want a full-size pick-up truck because most of them just come with higher towing and hauling capabilities and a higher price tag, and I would never even come close to towing or hauling anything near the maximum capacity of a mid-size pick-up truck, let alone a full-size one.

Within the mid-size pick-up truck category, I immediately eliminated the Honda Ridgeline because the exterior styling looked too close to an oversized sedan with a truck bed. I also immediately eliminated the Nissan Frontier because it severely lags behind the rest of the segment, and it has the worst safety scores. I ended up eliminating the Chevrolet Colorado because it’s the twin of the GMC Canyon, and if I was going to opt for that model, I might as well get the more upscale version of the truck.

Between the Toyota Tacoma and GMC Canyon, I opted to go with the GMC Canyon mainly because of aesthetics and interior functionality reasons. Everything both inside and outside the GMC Canyon appeared to be much more polished, and the Toyota Tacoma had less of an aggressive exterior appearance in terms of styling. One thing that I did think hard about was the historical reliability of the Toyota brand, but within Toyota, the Tacoma is usually considered the least reliable vehicle anyway, and I haven’t really heard of American trucks being that bad, so I decided to go for the GMC Canyon.

I resisted going straight for the maximum Denali trim, and instead opted for the lower trim and decided to “build my own Denali.” A lot of the features of the Denali were things I did not really need, or were standard add-ons that I could just install myself on a lower-trim model for less than half the price. With availability, price negotiations, and all other things considered, I came to the decision of purchasing a truck at the SLE trim level.

The stock image above provided by the dealership is what my truck looks like right now, though I have a long list of modifications that I want to make to the truck. Some of the items that I can install myself, I plan on purchasing the parts off Amazon and working in my garage, but for everything else, I’m looking to set up an appointment with an auto customization shop within the next week or so to get that all done.