Why does GM need GMC and Chevy Trucks?

GMC Yukon

In GM's recent government-forced purge of unnecessary brands (Pontiac, Hummer, Saab, Saturn, not to mention Oldsmobile a few years ago), I am very surprised GMC survived. For as long as I can remember, GMC has been an unimaginative rebadging of Chevy trucks. GM's rationale has always been that it makes sense for volume and distribution: there are Chevy / Cadillac dealers and Buick / GMC dealers. Why not turn Buick / GMC dealers into Chevy / Cadillac dealers? As an aside, I love Buick's new designs, but I still don't see where they fit in the GM product strategy, as they overlap with Chevy's top-of-the-line cars and Cadillac's low-end cars. And GMC trucks barely have any differentiating factors from their Chevy counterparts, yet GM has 2 separate ad campaigns that could easily be consolidated. Recent efforts to retool shared platforms to give GMC an identity have been lukewarm at best (e.g., Terrain). Click through for the rest of the discussion:

R.I.P.D. movie car chase scenes sighted!

During a trip through downtown Boston a couple weeks ago, I came across a film crew shooting some awesome car chase / car crash scenes and snapped a few pictures. Later I did some more research and found out that the movie was R.I.P.D. (stands for Rest in Peace Department) starring Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, and Jeff Bridges, and is expected to be released in 2013. The plot is evidently about a murdered cop who joins forces with living cops to find his killer. Sounds like a good action movie to me, and anything with a blacked out Porsche Cayenne has to be entertaining. It must be a big-budget film given that a good part of the city was shut down for the weekend. Click through for some more pictures.