ALL NEW 2017 CHEVROLET SILVERADO 1500

As a Chevy truck proprietor — we have a twenty-4-yr-old Silverado we use for hauling horses and hay — i used to be eager to pressure Chevy’s ultra-modern and finest, the 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 1500. After a week-long test pressure, i found that the new Chevrolet is a lot like our vintage Chevy — and that's suitable in a few approaches but not so outstanding in others. wherein does the 2017 Silverado 1500 pull ahead and where does it fall in the back of? allow’s drive it and find out on there own way's.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Ask the man who owns one.” That’s what the old Packard ads used to say. Although in this case, “ask the woman” would be more appropriate because our pickup technically belongs to my wife. We use it for horse-related chores, and the old truck is a bit like an old workhorse itself, with a solid, but reliable, work ethic. The seats are torn, the A/C is busted, and the stereo has long since gone silent, but when it comes to hauling and towing, the ol’ girl works as well today as she did when she was new.

And that’s something I see in the 2017 Silverado. Er, not the wear and tear. The leather in our nearly-top-of-the-line LTZ model looked like it would last much longer than the cloth-and-vinyl in our old Chevy, the A/C blew like an Arctic wind, and the stereo was loud and clear. But looking at the engineering, it’s clear that the new Silverado is designed for work.      allow’s start with the 2017 Silverado’s engines: On paper, they look a lot like the 350 in our old Chevy, with  valves consistent with cylinder and the camshaft in the block, same as Chevy pickup engines for the reason that Fifties. other manufacturers use engine designs with 4 valves according to cylinder and overhead camshafts, and Ford gives a dual-rapid V6 in vicinity of the conventional V8. Why the antique-tech design? Chevrolet says this engine layout gives you properly low- and mid-variety torque, which is what vehicles need to shift the heavy hundreds. It labored in ’93 whilst my Chevy was constructed and it works now. (greater on our towing adventures in a bit.)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             While the basic design is a bit old, the hardware is thoroughly modern: All of the available Silverado engines -- 4.3 liter V6, 5.3 liter V8, and 6.2 liter V8 — have direct fuel injection and a cylinder deactivation system that can run the engines on four cylinders when power demands are low. The system is completely seamless; only an icon on the dash (V4 or V8) tells you when it’s operational.

The benefit of these technologies is better fuel economy. Silverados are fitted with either a 6-speed or an 8-speed transmission, and EPA fuel economy estimates range from 15 mpg city/20 mpg highway for the big 6.2-liter V8 4x4 up to 18 mpg city/24 mpg highway for the 4.3-liter V6 4x2. Our test truck averaged 17.4 mpg in mixed driving (excluding our towing test; more on that soon), not bad considering the monster engine under the hood.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Our test truck changed into prepared with the large 6.2-liter V8, a completely near relative of the engine inside the Corvette. With 420 hp and 460 lb-toes of torque, that is  a muscle truck — floor the pedal from a stop and it's going to luckily spin the rear tires. If being first far from the site visitors lighting is your issue, no question, this is your truck! however what impressed me maximum is that if you do not ground the pedal, you'll in no way realize you've got a Corvette engine beneath the hood. The Silverado's throttle movement is gentle, and it's easy to feed within the energy slowly and lightly — a real boon while backing as much as a trailer or a loading dock. Our old Chevy doesn't have anywhere close to the electricity of the new one, however it does have a hair-trigger throttle, which makes maneuvering a pain. absolute confidence, the 2017 version gets it right.  Our old Chevy truck rides like an ox-cart, with springs so stiff one wonders if they compress at all. The new Silverado is the opposite — the ride is pillow-soft. I'm all for comfort — some of today's pickups, especially the heavy-duty models, are nearly as stiff as our old truck — but in my opinion, the Silverado 1500 goes a bit too far. I'd be happy with a slightly firmer ride.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             In lots of methods, the Silverado 1500 I drove felt like a very well contemporary truck: it's quiet, well-prepared, and has a roomy 4-door team cab. i am a big fan of Chevy's MyLink infotainment device, which I think is intuitive and easy to use, and i like having OnStar, a subscription-primarily based provider that connects you to a stay adviser for help with instructions (and calls for help mechanically inside the occasion of a crash).

but in other ways, the Silverado appears woefully in the back of the instances. It starts offevolved with a key, similar to our twenty-year-old Chevy; other trucks have moved directly to keyless push-button ignition. not anything incorrect with keys, but keyless could be very convenient, mainly for a work truck — there may be no need to fish round to your pocket or purse with grimy hands. The Silverado 1500 lacks superior safety functions like collision warning with automated braking or adaptive cruise manage,   features that can now be found in competing pickup trucks.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   My spouse offered our antique Chevy primarily to tow our horse trailer, and we placed the brand new Chevy to the same take a look at. The 2017 Silverado 1500 is rated to tow among 7,six hundred and 12,500 lbs depending on configuration, that is higher than many competition — a few competing 1/2-ton vehicles have towing capacities that dip properly underneath 5,000 lbs. Our test truck changed into geared up with the Max Trailering package, which includes an included trailer brake controller, so we had the maximum towing capacity of 12,500 lbs. additionally it is two-piece trailering mirrors, which I exceedingly advise, even in case you aren't going to tow a trailer; they offer an awful lot better visibility, specially inside the place subsequent to the truck. The Silverado's ordinary side-view mirrors have a diagonal reduce at the inner nook that makes it tough to peer visitors in the truck's blind spot.      With Aiden the horse on board, our trailer weighs around 4,900 lbs, less than half of our test truck's towing capacity. Our test-towing route takes us over the steep Santa Susana Pass in Simi Valley, California, and with the big 6.2-liter engine under the hood, we didn't expect any problems with power. Our route includes an uphill on-ramp, and with Aiden in the trailer, we can't just stomp the accelerator to the floor; he needs time to shift his weight to keep his balance. But even with gentle application of the accelerator, the Silverado 1500 was able to accelerate to 60 mph smoothly and swiftly without getting anywhere near full throttle, something few trucks can accomplish.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Unfortunately, that super-smooth ride came back to bite the Silverado in the butt: Whenever we'd hit a bump, the tail would bounce around for way too long. Ideally the truck's back end should move up, down, and then settle, but the softly-sprung Silverado would make a couple of oscillations before coming to rest — and that's not a good thing with a trailer on the back end. The previous two half-ton trucks we used to tow the trailer — a Ford F-150 and a Nissan Titan — displayed much better behavior on bumps. Other than that, though, the Silverado felt solid and stable. Fuel economy during our towing loop was 10.4 mpg, a bit thirsty compared to some other half-ton trucks with which we've towed. And once again, technology is lacking: Ford recently introduced a trailer backup assistance feature that allows the driver to steer the trailer with a dial on the dash, with the F-150 twirling its steering wheel as needed. You'll find no such technology in the Chevrolet. usual, I liked the 2017 Chevrolet Silverado: i found it to be a stable work truck that makes a secure day by day driving force. That said, i was amazed at the shortage of high-quit protection and comfort technology, even though I recognise that this isn't always vital to every truck proprietor; you do not need adaptive cruse manage to haul a 1/2-dozen bails of hay. still, Ford's F-one hundred fifty blows beyond the Silverado in terms of era, plus it has a more impregnable suspension that offers better stability when towing. Chrysler's RAM 1500 offers an innovative air-sprung suspension and a gasoline-green diesel, and the Nissan Titan and Toyota Tundra are also suitable work vehicles. Chevrolet desires to modernize the Silverado 1500 — otherwise it'll get tougher and tougher to tell the brand new Chevrolet pickup from my vintage Chevrolet pickup.