29 November 2024

The Chevrolet Silverado isn't Australia's favourite US 'pick-up', but maybe it should be

30 November 2024 | James Coleman

The Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Premium LTZ is nearly as big as Tharwa Bridge. Photo: James Coleman.

Technically, yes, we invented the ute.

You probably know the story about how a Victorian farmer’s wife wrote to Ford in the 1930s, asking for something they could use to go to church on Sunday and take the pigs to market on Monday.

But it took the Americans to inject it with a Big Mac dose of steroids and call the result – quite aptly – a ‘pickup truck’. And in recent years, they’ve been bringing them over here to show us the handiwork.

We’ve had the Dodge RAM since 2018, now of Yellowstone fame, the Ford F150 is another, and just this week, Toyota announced its Tundra is going on sale here from $155,990.

Then there’s this, the too easily forgotten Chevrolet Silverado. The one the RAM has repeatedly outsold in Australia nearly two-to-one.

It arrived in Australia a couple of years ago, with the steering wheel on the wrong side, and it’s the job of a factory in Dandenong, Victoria, to make this right and sell it as a General Motors Special Vehicle (GMSV), for $128,000. Or a good deal more than they cost in the US.

And for 2024, this price has gone up even higher – $2500 higher, in fact, for my 1500 LTZ Premium model, which makes it the most expensive of the pickups after the Tundra.

Photos: James Coleman.

But you do now get a sports exhaust as standard, and believe me, that’s worth it all on its own. In Australia, the LTZ also comes with the ‘Z71’ off-road package, which throws in an automatic rear-locking diff and black Chevy ‘bow-tie’ emblems for good measure.

The first thing you – and everyone around you – will note is that the Silverado is enormous. Like properly enormous – 1.93-metres-tall-by-5.9-metres-long enormous.

This means that when entering an underground car park in central Sydney, there were moments when the bonnet-mounted antenna traced the roof like a record needle. According to the height limit, nothing else was going to suffer, but I still found myself – heart thumping in my mouth – watching the concrete pass mere inches above the sunroof.

The 1500 Premium comes standard with a ‘Z71’ off-road package in Australia. Photo: James Coleman.

Then there was the actual parking bit, which required a million-point turn followed by a lot of stomach-sucking to get myself out of the driver’s door.

And this isn’t even the biggest model.

The Silverado 1500 LTZ Premium is, in the words of GMSV, the “all-rounder” and “ideal for urban drivers who still require a tough vehicle for towing or long-distance driving, with the bonus of refined comfort”.

In other words, the one you drive on the highway with a caravan in tow, a beefy arm on the window sill and Garth Brooks on the Bose sound system.

The tailgate is electric. Photo: James Coleman.

But there’s also the 1500 ZR2 “ultimate off-roading companion” with a “two-inch factory lift, wide stance, and 33-inch off-road tyres”. And as of this year, there’s all 6.3-by-2-metres of the 2500 HD – “the ultimate tow partner”, with a 6.6-litre turbo-diesel V8.

Despite all this, the Silverado isn’t actually as hard to manoeuvre as you’d expect. And not just because it doesn’t care about pesky things like kerbs and gutters and small mountains. It’s basically just a big rectangle.

The side mirrors are big, and there are cameras that form a handy birds-eye view of the car on the centre screen. These also make up for the rear-view mirror, which – while you can flick it to a camera view – looks like it’s off something much smaller – a Holden Barina, perhaps.

As for when the parking sensors detect you’re getting close to things, there’s the option for it to … um, vibrate your bottom. For the record, I found the beeping less off-putting.

I kept the lane-keeping assistance on for the drive out of Sydney, but turned it off soon after and never touched the button again. And yes, thank you, Chevy, for giving everything its own physical button. Whoever did this deserves a knighthood, or whatever the American version is (a cabinet position?)

It rocks and rolls under pressure as you’d expect from a tower block, but it handles its weight well. On the highway, it just floats. Need extra oomph? Plant your foot and you feel a wave well up from underneath you, carrying you towards the horizon with astonishing ease.

Photos: James Coleman.

It has the same stonking great 6.2-litre petrol V8 used in the SS Commodores, so this sensation is best accompanied by turning the dial by your right knee to ‘Sport’ and opening the small gun portal in the back window – via a switch near the rear-view mirror – and listening to the roar. You’ll feel all fizzy inside.

Fuel consumption isn’t appalling either. On the highway, I got it down as low as 10.3 litres per 100 km, while around town was up around 14. That’s coming from a 96-litre tank, mind you, so filling the beast’s belly with premium fuel does still cause shooting pains from the hip pocket.

The Dodge RAM offers an extra seat where that glovebox is. Photo: James Coleman.

In the end, then, there’s only one problem, and it reared its head when I went to pay the parking man in Sydney.

In the notebook where he recorded details of all the cars under his care, he had “white Dodge” written next to my number plate. It seems the Chevy Silverado will always play second fiddle to the RAM when it comes to the desirability of the big US pickups. And that’s a pity.

We’ll blame Yellowstone.