On Wheels by Brooks Peterson

Saturday, December 23, 2000

Silverado leaves smaller pickups in the dust

There are endless ways to look at the vehicles that are the stuff of our automotive dreams. Such as? Well, we can look at a vehicle and ask ourselves: If this thing were a movie, what movie would it be?

Chevrolet Silverado LS 2500HD 2WD Crew Six-passenger crew-cab pickup Base price: $28,241 Price as tested: $32,326 Drivetrain: Fuel-injected 8.1-liter V-8, 340 hp; optional five-speed automatic-overdrive Allison transmission Brakes: Front and rear discs, power-assisted, with standard antilock (ABS) EPA mileage: N/A Website: www.chevrolet.com

   With some vehicles, the answer just leaps out in front of you. The Hummer, of course, would be "Apocalypse Now." The ultra-high-tech Honda Insight gasoline-electric hybrid would be "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."
   And the big, honkin' hulkin' Chevy Silverado 2500 Heavy Duty Crew Cab (whew)? Neighbor, one movie just wouldn't do this rig justice. Way I see it, what this monster macho machine incorporates is pure "Patton" - but with a dollop of "The Days of Wine and Roses" tossed in.
   Permit me to explain: The Silverado 2500 (etc.) goes through the ranks of lesser vehicles much like Patton's Third Army sliced through Europe and tore into Hitler's Germany - but, well . . . it has a drinking problem.
   This vehicle, in other words, is not for the faint of heart; neither is it for the thin of wallet. The fuel mileage would bring joy to the hearts of OPEC's nabobs. In mostly city driving, which included quite a few expressway miles, I was registering miles per gallon in the high single digits. (Thoughtfully, the Environmental Protection Administration does not require manufacturers of trucks in this segment to undergo fuel-mileage testing. Just as well. You don't want to know.)
   In fairness, however, I should point out that a truck like this one operates way outside the frame of reference in which we consider lesser vehicles. Here's the thing: This is a working truck, and it's designed to do jobs that would leave your drugstore-cowboy civilian pickups wheezing and gasping pathetically by the side of the road.
   True, there may be a few cash-flush poseurs who buy trucks like these in order to bask in the high-testosterone aura they emanate. The more fools they. Granted, Chevy (and GMC, which offers its own re-badged versions of the same line of HD trucks) has given these big guys an air of belligerence that is altogether lacking from the light-duty pickups. The lesser Silverados are handsome customers, no question, but some critics gripe that GM's stylists didn't muscle 'em up sufficiently, aesthetics-wise. The General has definitely addressed that concern with these bad boys of the 2500 HD (3/4-ton) and 3000 (1-ton) series.
   Vastly more important to the good ol' boys for whom these trucks are intended, however, is what's gone on under the hood, and around the chassis, and out where the rubber meets the road.
   Chevy p.r. modestly claims that its new line of engines - the standard Vortec 6000 V-8 (300 hp, 370 lb.-ft. of torque), the optional Vortec 8100 Big Block V-8 (340 hp, 455 lb.-ft.) and, finally, the optional turbocharged and intercooled Duramax 6600 diesel V-8 (300 hp and a mountainous 520 lb.-ft.) - simply overwhelms the opposition. I have neither the time nor the number-crunching skills to sort that out, but believe this: These are prodigious haulers.
   Our tester, as it happened, came with the larger of the two gasoline V-8s, the 8100. If the "Big Block" descriptor has a familiar ring to it, there's a good reason: It does indeed trace its lineage back to the awesome big-block engines that powered the ultra-hot Corvettes and Chevy muscle cars of the late '60s and early '70s.
   Even plunked into a seriously large, heavy vehicle like the Crew Cab, the Big Block has Presence. Stand on it at a stoplight and you'll be rewarded with the kind of performance you don't normally associate with a working truck. (Of course, you're also shoveling money into OPEC's coffers, so a certain degree of restraint is indicated.)
   Handling and ride, now . . . that's where your truckin' wannabes are really going to experience buyer's remorse should they invest in one of these babies without thoroughly wringing it out. Chevy's (and GMC's) heavy-duty trucks, just like everybody else's, are about just that: heavy duty. Thus, unless you've had the foresight to toss some serious weight into the bed out back, you're going to be doing the Stiff Spring Stutter the first time you encounter a wavy or potholed stretch, much less a caliche byway in the vast wastelands of South Texas. Those stiff, stiff springs are there to enable you to haul BIG loads, not to coddle your derriere. Wrap your mind around that concept before you even think about crankin' her up.
   If after all this you determine that you really do need one of these big boys, and can afford to slake its thirst with numbing regularity, you will find that the General has at least tossed in a decent helping of creature comforts.
   Of these, the most noticeable, and perhaps most appreciated, are the throne-like seats for driver and front-seat passengers. These things are ee-normous,, know what I mean? Sitting up there, high above the passersby (even in the 2WD version, you're way up there), you get a feel for just what being king of the road is really all about.
   And so you run over the occasional curb? So? Was that a pedestrian you just sent hurtling through the air? Why didden he look where he wuz goin'?
   Finally, you should know that after a week with the big fella, I finally learned why it is that so many drivers of crew-cab vehicles back into parking spaces. I sort of suspected it was just another one of those macho posturing things - but no: Put a vehicle configured like this one into a slot head first, and you may be looking at a lot of backing and filling, sawing at the steering wheel, before you ever find daylight.
   To hark back to Dirty Harry as I so often and, no doubt, tiresomely do: Man's gotta know his limitations. And his truck's dimensions. Otherwise, he's lookin' at a three-quarter-ton case of heartburn.
  
  

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