CHEVROLET COLORADO

[ 2015 ]

ALL THE TRUCK YOU NEED.

AT SOME POINT, YOU COME TO GRIPS back without drawing lesser planetary bodies with the fact that you need a truck. Driving into their orbits. your track rat six hours to VIR may have been We’d opt for the 3.6-liter V-6 over the base okay when it was also your only mode of trans- 200-hp, 2.5-liter, direct-injected four-cylinder. portation. Perhaps as you’ve matured, however, This is the same quad-cam, direct-injected V-6 you’ve come to appreciate finery like air condi- that normally finds itself putting power to the tioning, a radio, and maybe even a headliner. front wheels of any number of General Motors Modern full-size pickups like the Ford F-150, sedans, but intake and exhaust tuning as well as the Chevy Silverado, and the Ram 1500 can a few calibration tweaks help it turn out 305 hp tow your entire house to Tibet and at 6800 rpm and 269 lb-ft of torque back, but God help you if you have PRICE $20,995 at 4000 rpm in this application. to traverse a packed Whole Foods POWERTRAIN 2.5-liter I-4, 200 hp, Those numbers fall short of parking lot. The solution? A truck 191 lb-ft; RWD, the engine’s output in the other that fits the job. 6-speed manual 3.6-liter, V-6-powered, rear-drive

The 2015 Chevrolet Colorado WEIGHT 3960 lb Chevy, the Camaro, where it makes and the mechanically identical EPA CITY/HWY 19/26 mpg 323 hp and 278 lb-ft. The engine GMC Canyon represent the first ON SALE Now still likes to rev, but the torque peak real effort in the mid-size truck seg- in the Colorado arrives 800 rpm ment in some 20 years. With a maximum tow sooner and there’s more low-end pull. rating of 7000 pounds and all the refinement A six-speed automatic transmission and subof the full-size pickups, the new GM trucks can stantial aero work, including active grille shutmerrily shuck you and a toy to the track and ters, help the four-wheel-drive, V-6 Colorado

return 20 mpg combined. That’s 3 mpg better than an equivalent Nissan Frontier, but the number bests a V-6, four-wheel-drive Silverado by only 1 mpg. If you’re basing your decision on fuel-economy ratings alone, there’s not much incentive to buy the Colorado. That said, the smaller truck doesn’t give up much ground to its larger sibling in capability. The full-size V-6 Silverado’s tow rating is a paltry 400 pounds more than the V-6 Colorado’s.

Indeed, the Colorado is a real truck in rational proportions. There’s room inside for four grown adults, and a maximum payload of 1590 pounds in four-wheel-drive guise means the smaller truck is more capable than most buyers will ever need.

It’s been a while since Toyota and Nissan gave their mid-size trucks a polish, and the Colorado’s interior shines a harsh light on that fact. Good materials, a massive touchscreen, and a quiet cabin all make the Colorado feel two decades younger than its rivals. A suite of electronic nannies, including lane- departure warning and forward collision alert, makes this a fully modern vehicle. For the first time, you can get a mid-size truck that’s more than a decontented dinosaur.

All the cabin fanciness hasn’t disguised the fact that this is still a truck. Live rear axle? Tall driving position? Big, squared-off nose? Yes, yes, and yes, and they all make the Colorado feel just like its big brother. This isn’t a crossover, nor is it a pint-sized S-10— we yanked 4500 pounds worth of boat and trailer up and down the hills leading from the coast north of San Diego up to Rancho Santa Fe, and the truck never seemed taxed.

Pricing starts at $20,995, though a wellequipped Z71 with the V-6, four-wheel drive, a crew cab, and a long bed costs about $35,000. Chevy expects the average transaction price to be between $5000 and $8000 less than the Silverado line—not a huge savings. If you were expecting a return to the era of the cheap pickup, sorry—that epoch is over in every way. There’s something to be said for the right tool for the job at hand, and if that job’s a daily commute with the occasional towing stint, we’d have a hard time suggesting anything else. —ZACH BOWMAN Scintillating marquise-cut DiamondAura center stone, 9mm x 4.5mm

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