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Easter eggs are all the rage these days, with companies adding small and unique details to everything from electric cars to pickup trucks. Falling in the latter category, there’s a neat little secret hidden on the 2019 GMC Sierra’s new CarbonPro carbon fiber bed, too, but it’s there for a much different reason.
If you pop off the spare tire and look closely, you’ll see imprinted in the bed “Connors Way.” It’s a tribute to Tim Connors, manufacturing chief engineer and the guy who spearheaded the CarbonPro project.
Connors was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident while the project was under development. However, his leadership and personality lived with the team through completion of the innovative component.
“Whenever you felt like something could get done, Tim was like the Energizer Bunny in getting it done,” said Tim Herrick, executive chief engineer of both Sierra and Silverado, to The Drive. “Tim made such an impression on me and my team.”
Herrick wanted some way to pay tribute to his engineer who was so instrumental in the project, so he came up with putting “Connors Way” on the bed. He told a couple of people his plans and then executed it without really getting approval to do so. The goal was to put it in a place where it wouldn’t really be noticeable, hence its hidden location.
As the project came closer to completion, Herrick did tell his superiors about the imprint. “I told them if they wanted to take it out that I would write them a personal check to cover the cost of removing it from the mold,” Herrick said. Of course, everyone loved the tribute and it made it to the final production version.
This is similar to that of the Jeep Gladiator, where there’s a “419” molded into the bed to celebrate the company’s history in Toledo as well as the people of the 419 area code. In the new GMC Sierra with CarbonPro, GMC is also celebrating a person who was pivotal to the success of the project by including a tribute to his legacy.
