More crew cabs and new GM heavies are big news for 2001.
Although nearly every manufacturer has worked on prototype models of compact crew cab pickups for several years, and several have sold small crew cabs outside North America, the floodgates began to open in late 1998 with Nissan's announcement of its Frontier crew cab. Just a few months later, at the 1999 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), a handful of production, concept and soon-to-be production crew cab pickups pretty much stole the show. Some are being marketed as SUV crossovers, while others make no pretense, and are identified as actual crew cab pickups.
Regardless of the applied marketing angles, all of these trucks share a common layout, with four conventional doors, two full rows of seating and a shorter-than-average pickup bed. Nissan's Sport Utility Truck (SUT) concept vehicle made its public debut a few years ago as a working prototype, with a fifth "door" in the form of a rear-window liftgate that, when combined with fold-down rear seats, allows long cargo to be carried when necessary.