The 2026 GMC Canyon AT4x AEV is an absolute beauty

2026 GMC Canyon 84X AEV. Now this is a $10,000 option and my question is, is it worth $10,000 to put the 35-inch tires on here, the skid plates that you have all underneath, the steel bumpers as well compared to the regular 84X? That is the question we're going to try and answer in this video. We're going to have a look at the front end design, the side view of course, the rear end, the beautiful interior and last but not least, we're going to take this for a drive. Of course, before we jump in and talk about this design, we're going to have a look at what's underneath the hood of this 2026 GMC Canyon 84X AEV in Volcanic Red. First of all, this color is a $645 color option. I think it looks pretty sick to be honest, specifically with all these blacked out features that we have going on here. Now yes, it is very, very windy today, so I do hope you can still hear me through the wind. Otherwise, we might have a problem. We have a 2.7 liter turbo max inline-four, 310 horsepower, 430 pound-feet of torque. It's connected to an eight-speed automatic transmission. Obviously, you do have four-wheel drive. You also have locking front and rear differentials for this one and this optional AEV snorkel on the side, which looks pretty cool as well. They're at 60, not the quickest, eight seconds. Who cares? MPG, 16 city, 16 highway. The price for this comes out at $72,655. That makes me question, do you want this or do you want maybe a Ford Ranger Raptor for this price? You have a three-inch lift with the AEV package here as well. In addition to these, they put 35s on here. I love to see it, and also 17-inch beadlock-capable wheels. Looking fantastic. Let's close down the hood and let's have a look at this design in detail. Now, looking at the front and design of the GMC Canyon, I love what AEV has done here, American Expedition Vehicles, because we do have a proper steel bumper in the front and the rear. You can see we have skid plates right here, fuel tank protected, the diff is protected, and the front-end chassis here is protected as well, and the transmission case as well. Everything is protected for this, so proper off-road vehicle. I love to see it. If you're going to spend an extra $10,000 on the vehicle, you obviously want it to be properly capable off-road and not just look cool. Now, this looks very, very cool as well, because we have full LED here for the headlight unit, as you can see, and also LED fog lights hiding all the way down here in this lower section. Completely open, AT4X right here, GMC logo in the middle with the front-mounted camera in this area. The hood looks very clean as well, nicely sculpted with these dips that we have going on here that you can see from the driver's seat when you're sitting up top, and you feel like you're sitting very, very high up. I mean, you do, obviously. It's a three-inch lift compared to the regular Canyon. Now, it's getting extremely windy here, so I'm going to have to review this footage and see if I have to redo this review or not, because the wind is pretty nuts right now. You have full LEDs. Love this LED here, because this feels like it goes straight through, and it's just covered up by this piece of the bodywork. Beautiful-looking headlight unit here as well. So, very, very clean design from GMC, and it definitely has a strong brand identity as well. Now, coming around to the side view, and here is where it gets very, very interesting, specifically when you look at these wheels. I mean, 35s on a truck this size, I love it, specifically since it's coming like this from factory with the AEV package, and on top of that, you also have a full spare tire, which is full-size, right here in the back. Now, as you can see, the problem with that, you have the mirror in there covering up pretty much the entire rear view, so you can't see anything when you're looking in the rear view mirror, and it also takes up a lot of the bed space in here, as you can see. Salta wheels, in this case, having them in black, it just suits this vehicle, since it is an off-road vehicle. It's not supposed to be very, you know, aesthetic, beautifully-looking wheels, even though they are, but having them in black just makes it feel like it suits, it just suits this overall vibe, and I do love the design of these wheels, as well. 17 looks great, big 35-inch tires, as we talked about, and we have this steel rock slider here, protecting the side of the lower section, blacked-out door handles, and the trim around the greenhouse, also blacked out. Overall, I mean, from an aesthetic standpoint, it looks great, and also the functionality, it's a proper off-road truck, straight from factory, even though I do wish we had a little bit more power, maybe 0-60 in about 8 seconds at 310 horsepower, compared to the Raptor, this is the weakest one in that category. Now, coming on to the rear end, we have LED light bulbs here, which is a shame, come on, GMC, put regular light bulbs in here, I want to have LEDs in here, obviously, when I pay over $70,000 for this truck, it feels like maybe that's a sort of a trend that's happening right now, Ram just ditched their LEDs for the 1500 models, which does not make sense, since they've had it since about 2015 or something, but here, I definitely want to see LEDs in the back, but I do like the steel bumper, again, the EV steel bumper right here, and we have the parking sensors integrated in that area, and it sits, as you can see, very, very high up, you have the exhaust pipes right here on the side, and if we fold down this bed, you have the rear-mounted camera located in this area, folding this down, we have some cardboard flying around here as well, as you can see, very interesting over there, and up there, and we have a spray-in bed liner here, nice to see it, we can open this up, this area right here, if we want some more storage underneath here, you can see we have this big tray, and lock it back into place like that, and we are good to go, we have some tie-downs on the sides, and a house outlet in that area, and that is pretty much it, and of course, the big spare tire that you have in the back here as well, I'm not sure if I want to have that be in the bed at all times, because it takes up so much space, and as I said, you can barely see anything from the driver's seat when you look at the rear mirror, now close this back up, and hopefully, you could hear anything I said, because it feels like a mini tornado out here, it's pretty nuts, this wind, so with that said, we talked about the exterior design, let's take cover, and have a look at what's going on in this interior, in case you missed it, my 11 hour online class in design sketching is now only $47, if you have any desire to pick up the skill of sketching products using simple tools, such as a big pen and cheap print paper, this is something you want to check out, over the years, I've taught thousands of students from all around the world how to sketch cars and products, and most of them have seen amazing results from my classes, analog design pro pack is the full bundle of all my classes I've released over the years, and it's yours for just $47, check out everything that's included, and see what my have to say in the link in the description, or simply visit analogdesignerpropack.com Now, this interior is absolutely beautiful to me, I pretty much love everything that goes on here, there's not really nothing I would want to change, some people will think that this looks like a sports jacket or something like that, I think it looks cool to have the white leather here, AEV, of course, making it feel special when you're paying over $70,000 for this, power assisted seats, obviously, nice leather integration here, and this trim piece looks almost like carbon fiber, beautiful door handles, memory seat settings, lock, unlock, mirror controls and window controls in this area, the red, white leather coming back here, cup holder in that area, now we don't have any steps to jump up here, so we kind of have to make a little jump to jump straight into this, we have an 11.3 inch gauge cluster right there, and then we have the 11 inch, I mean 11.3 inch infotainment screen, 11 inch gauge cluster, and man, it's nice to be in here when it's completely nuts with the wind outside, so let's turn the hazards off, and as you can see, I mean, check this out, how beautiful is this, all these physical toggles, locking the rear diff, front diff, automatic shut off, red lights, turn that off absolutely right now, immediately, hazard button, lane keep assist, also love to see that this is a physical button, so we can turn that on and off, always want to have that off, aux button, and this is to lower all four windows at the same times, and look at this, we have hard touch material up here, which is totally fine, both sound system, but the integration of everything, it looks beautiful, and we also have a nice screen here with all the information you want in the center portion, we can switch these out and have it be like this, if you want to have this, or you can press this button right here on the steering wheel, now we have the full map there as well, looking beautiful, so fully customizable, and that is of course exactly what you want when you have a digital screen, otherwise what is the point of having a digital screen, they're all pixels if you can't customize it, we also have this dual housing for it, looks nice, and the integration of the infotainment screen, I'm a fan of it, it doesn't stick up too high, we have some nice white leather with the red stitching, 84x in that area, glove box down here looking beautiful, two vents in this lower section, start button here as well, and of course everything being physical, love it, these toggles here of course for the temperature, you have a small little display inside there looking beautiful, and we have the infotainment system here, you can go into the native map, which is pretty responsive, I mean no problems at all, you can also go in and fiddle around a little bit with the settings here for example, fog light, head-up display, you can change that here, we can also change the headlight settings up here, so you have to go into the software to change the headlight unit, or the headlight settings for GMC these days, which I think is a little bit over the top, I just want to have it be here in a stock or maybe down here to switch, you know, the different headlights settings, but you have to go in here to do that, we also have, let's see what we have here, we have all these apps as you can see, pretty standard stuff, google maps, wireless apple carplay, wireless android auto, putting it into reverse is going to pop up the 360 camera, GMC probably has some of the best cameras in the business, you can see we have the under body camera, which is great if you go on the trails, I mean you can see the front axle there, so you see exactly where the, I mean it doesn't get better than this for off-road, for sure, you also have this full 360 view, top view right there, and trailer camera as well, so everything you need when it comes to camera settings, for sure, you have everything from GMC, and that is what you want to see when you're paying this premium for this vehicle, putting it back into park, we have some drive modes here, four-wheel high, four-wheel low, four-wheel auto, and two-wheel drive, it's in two-wheel drive most of the time of course, but you can see the drive modes here, we have Baja for example, terrain, we go into tow haul, off-road, and then we have normal there of course, and parking brake is located right here, two cupholders, love to see that we have remote start, specifically on cold days, you just want to fire it up, and you have the lock, unlock, and panic button right there with the GMC logo on the back side of the key, looking pretty sweet, now we talked about these seats already, 84x stitched into the side, and then you have the AEV logo up here with the red stitching, I personally like this color combo with the white and the black, I think it just feels very unique for an interior setting in a truck like this, up top we do have the sunroof, of course you can open this up fully if you want to do that, you also have some LEDs here in the back, as you can see right there, same LEDs that we have up here in the front as well, so beautiful to see that, looking at the steering wheel, feels like they're missing some buttons in this area, but other than that, it's a pretty nice looking steering wheel with the GMC in the middle right here, voice command and heated steering wheel in this area, and also this button like we talked about to customize the gauge cluster right there, and cruise control settings on the left side, pretty standard stuff, indicator stalk, and this is also the washer stalk right here, actually press it on the side and then we go, wash it a little bit later, clean it up, and that is pretty much it for the front end, the armrest, want to have it be a little softer than this, this is like solid, it feels almost like hard touch material, and underneath here you do have this tray and also some storage in addition to a 12 volt outlet right there in the bottom, so very very clean interior, I love to see that we still have in 2026, we still have physical stuff for everything and a housing right here for the gauge cluster, looking beautiful, so with that said, the problem with these type of trucks is if you want to carry four adults, it's going to be pretty tight to be honest, that goes for all the trucks in this size, it's a Koma as well, so let's jump in there, more cardboard flying over there, let's jump in here and check this out, so step it up here, pretty difficult to do because of the three-inch lift, but I don't, I would much rather have the three-inch lift and a little bit harder to get into it because it looks so cool, now back here, the headroom is I would say decent, I mean I'm 6'1", I'm sitting behind my own driving position here, the leg space is not the best, as you can see, I wouldn't expect it to be better than this, we also have USBs down here, one regular USB and a USB-C, some vents, and if we fold down this, we do have two cup holders, and in addition to this, if you need more storage, we actually have storage underneath the seats, all we got to do is use this, fold this up like that, and there you go, you have a little bit of storage underneath there, not a lot as you can see, but it's not also a very very big truck, so let's fold this back down, boom, there we go, and we talked about the exterior design, which I think is the killer selling point for this vehicle, it just looks so cool with the 35-inch tires and 17-inch wheels, so that's what I talked about, the exterior design, interior design, now let's take this for a drive, let's see what that is all about, let's get out of here, I feel like this Canyon right now is a rescue vehicle to get me out of this tornado, so let's take this 2026 Canyon 84X AEV for a drive, I actually love to see independent companies doing collaborations with big manufacturers like GMC, American Expedition Vehicles, making a collab there and creating a beautiful truck like this, and specifically that they decided to put 35s on this, which some things might I think look a little bit comical with the massive chunky tires that we have on this, but it just adds to this confidence when you take this off-road, you know that it doesn't matter what type of obstacles you're trying to conquer, it's not going to be a problem with this type of protection that you have in the ground clearance, it's a great job by GMC overall for the styling of this, it looks clean, specifically when you have it in volcanic red like we have right here, $645 option for this color, not sure if I would go for it myself, but the question is, is it that much better than a 84X? I'm not entirely sure, it definitely looks way cooler than a regular 84X, with the skid plates and the tires we talked about, and the Salta wheels as well, 17-inch Beetle capable wheels, looking great, so you don't really need to do any of your own modifications to this, however you could still buy the regular 84X and remember this package is $10,000 and I think you could get more, you know, if you want to personalize it more, you could do that by just using that $10,000 to customize your own 84X, put the 35s on there, maybe lift it a little bit more, this having a 3-inch lift, so it's kind of up to you, do you want the warranty that you get from factory buying this, you know, as it comes from factory with the AEV package, or do you want to customize it yourself, that is something you're going to have to answer if you're in the market for one of these vehicles, so we're going to come on to the highway here and hopefully we don't blow away when we're out there, so 310 horsepower, 430 pound-feet of torque, not bad numbers, but I did review the Ford Ranger Raptor and I fell in love with that truck when I had it, because I think the Ford Ranger Raptor, you got 33-inch tall tires with that one, I love the styling of it and it has a better sound to it than this engine, I'm not a huge fan of how this sounds, it almost sounds like a diesel engine out of the truck, but that's a small detail, but would I personally buy this one or the Ford Ranger Raptor, I think honestly I would go with the Ranger Raptor, if it was my choice, even though this is not a bad truck at all, obviously very very capable and fully protected all underneath, so you don't have to worry about anything when you're taking this specific truck on the trails, but that goes for the Ranger Raptor as well, I just preferred how that one drove, it just felt very very nice to drive the Ranger Raptor, got the dual exhaust pipes in the back as well, which is a big deal for me, small detail for everybody else, but cruising along here with this 8-speed automatic, 72 miles per hour, you have a head-up display as well, I forgot to mention that, very very sturdy, I mean I wouldn't expect anything else, it's an expensive truck and you could definitely get a full-size truck for this, I mean this is almost Ram RHO base trim, if you keep it options very low, I mean almost in that price range, so I don't know, it's gonna be interesting to see if people are actually going to choose this, how many, what percentage are going to choose this over a regular 84X, because it is a substantial price difference between the two, the AUV package and the regular one, but it drives fantastic, and as I said, if you want a truck from factory with all the warranties that you get from GMC and you still want an extremely capable mid-size off-road truck, there's really nothing better than this, I would say, with the 35-inch tires and the 3-inch lift that we have for this one, and it looks great as well, and that's my review of the 2026 GMC Canyon 84X AEV, thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next video, take care!