Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Extended Cab Truck Review
Truck Reviewer
When you’ve got a winning formula, you don’t want to mess with it too much. With the Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Extended Cab you get the same stylish full-size heavy duty truck as you got before, with a useful 8 feet of load space, but some things have gotten bigger and more powerful. There are minor changes to the looks – it has regained the traditional “power bulge” hood and some areas are a little more rounded – but it’s under the skin where the real work has been done. Before it had a strong chassis, now it’s incredibly so. The fully boxed steel construction helps take the payload to well over 6,000 lbs for the “Dooley” dual rear-wheel version. They’ve worked on the suspension as well. The independent front and leaf-spring rear has all been beefed up, yet also refined so it deals well with rough surfaces and provides sharp handling on tarmac too. In fact driving the Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Extended Cab is an all-round pleasant thing to do, even empty, which is when many big pickups can be skittish and unpredictable. Then, when you need to tow, you’ll have to go a long way to beat it’s trailering capacity of up to 14,000 pounds.
More power for the Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Extended Cab comes from a choice of rumbling gas fueled 6.0 liter V8 and a staggering 6.6 liter v8 turbo-diesel. It’s an option, but sure to be a popular one. Horsepower is impressive at close to 400 but torque is astounding at 765 lb-ft. Never is it brutal though. For a start there are hydraulic engine and cab mountings to keep vibration to a minimum, then there’s the Allison six-speed auto box with its finely judged ratios. What’s even more remarkable is that this extra performance comes not at the cost of higher consumption but with a claimed 11% saving. Amazing. Once you’ve chosen from two or four-wheel drive, the rest of what you get for your investment is going to depend on the trim level and any options that might tempt you. You will never be short of vital necessities or safety features, although the entry-level WT is fairly basic. Move up the scale and you can have your Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Extended Cab with off-road suspension options, snow plow package, power to things like mirrors and seats, plus a wide array of modern connectivity and navigation equipment.
What you get with the Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Extended Cab is an extremely well thought out pickup. There are things that are really useful out there in the real world, like the exhaust braking system that comes with the diesel engine, scrubbing off speed before you need to apply the pressure to the pedal. There’s also an integrated trailer brake controller available. Then there’s the work they’ve done to make it do its job even better than before, and the fact it’s such a good drive. A lot of people are going to get a lot of enjoyment out of the Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Extended Cab.
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