Anytime we get an ...Of the Year winner into our long-term fleet, there's quite a bit of excitement. Sure, by definition it must have done well over the weeks of road and track testing we did, but the real question is how will it last in the real world--as a daily driver and weekend workhorse.
To date, Motor Trend's 2007 Truck of the Year, the Chevy Silverado, is holding up like a hero. Six months into its stay, we've got 10,000 miles on it-a little more than average for most testers. Our test unit is a 4WD Z71 with 3.73:1 gears and its been on several big adventures. Our photographers have adopted the pickup as their support and chase vehicle for several multi-vehicle road tests.
Likewise, it's taken two trips to Arizona (almost a 500 miles trip each way) for various manufacturer press events, as well as acting as the chief pack mule for one vacationer heading into the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Although we opted for the NHT towing package, which gives us the bigger of the three available V-8s (the OHV 6.0 liter-320 hp, and 360 lb-ft of torque), we have yet to test the vehicle's towing capacity. We did, however, on an earlier jaunt to Pheonix, load the bed with 1200 pounds of payload and test out its fuel economy. On flat-as-a-pancake highway cruising through the California desert, we got 17.7 mpg, but around town it dropped like a stone to about 13-overall, not a whole lot different when compared to when we drive the truck around Los Angeles empty. Both loaded and unloaded highway cruising is helped by the cylinder cutoff mode (called Active Fuel Management by GM) available on all GM V-8s, except the smallest (4.8-liter) and largest (6.2-liter). This grouping of software and hardware is reported to offer as much as 10 to 12 percent fuel savings, but in our driving experience (mostly city and freeway commuting, with occasional couch-loading duty on the weekends), we've seen a little less than that. On highway driving, we're getting a bout a 400 mile range, while we're paying an average of $3.10 per gallon for regular gasoline.
Comments about the ride seem to center on the fact that when empty, there are certain speeds where the leaf springs seem to have trouble keeping the vehicle from getting into a infrequent harmonic hop. This makes sense, given much of the vehicle's suspension is designed to carry and haul heavy loads. This falls under the category of a simple tradeoff resulting from simple physics. Other drivers continue to sing the praises of the new GM truck interiors, especially noting that even with the "work truck" interior we have, this is the standard of the segment.
Several others have noted the four-speed transmission is the weakest link in the powertrain, because it tends to run out of breath on the local freeways. From our point of view, the faster they can get the 6-speed into the GM trucks the better. So far, we've had no mechanical issue with the truck, getting the oil changed twice at one of our local quick-lube shops. We've got a dealership appointment coming up. We've not heard about any recalls and have been pleased with how its meeting and, for some, surpassing expectations. In the meantime, we'll be moving more furniture, following more Motor Trend test vehicles, and battling the streets of Los Angeles with our 2007 Truck of the Year winner . . . and reporting all the good and the bad that follows.
So far so good.