Trailblazer cuts its own path
with a canopy to give us a little blue-collar cred, or an SUV that can provide more on-road refinement because it has been designed to meet more urbane values rather than the expectations of a Thai rice farmer that it simply do the hard yakka.
In Holden’s case, it didn’t help that both the SUV and the ute it was based upon bore the same name. The only thing to distinguish the SUV was the ‘7’ added at the end of ‘Holden Colorado’ – a hint at the SUV’S capacity to accommodate seven occupants.
With the recent upgrade to the Colorado came the opportunity to bless the SUV spin-off with new nomenclature. The dusting off of GM’S historic ‘Trailblazer’ moniker for the newest Coloradobased SUV isn’t the most significant feature of the upgrading of the vehicle for the 2017 model year, but it is still highly symbolic, and arguably one of the new Holden’s best moves.
It goes some way to solving the identity crisis that blighted the Colorado7 from the moment it first established a new genre of pickupbased SUV back in 2013.
It’s this ID crisis that is at the root of why these vehicles are failing to establish a decent following here. The market can see that these SUVS are utes-indisguise, and it views the utes that they’re based upon as the more preferable buyer choices.
This prejudice is blinding us to the joys of owning a truck-based SUV instead of the truck. The Holden Trailblazer LTZ costs the same as a Colorado Crew Cab 4wd LTZ ute – $62,990 – and you definitely get more comfort and versatility for the money. Sure, you can’t pop down to the garden centre with the Trailblazer and place a Phoenix palm tree conveniently upright in a load bay, but the 3000kg towing capacity ensures that a solution is just a trailer hire away.
And it’s where that load tray usually sits on a Colorado that the Trailblazer presses home its advantages. The extension of the cab permits a third row of foldaway seating that will accommodate humans of all sizes. Fold that away and you have 550 litres of luggage space, and a storage compartment for wet items beneath the floor of the load bay.
Need more stowage? Fold down the ultra-roomy second row seats, and you have a cavernous 1043 litres of luggage space. And underneath all this sits the Trailblazer’s pie` ce de re´ sistance – the independent multi-link rear
All of the advantages of Colorado’s recent upgrade late in 2016 carry over to the 2017 Trailblazer. In come a wealth of extra safety equipment for the LTZ specification tier, which gets collision warning alert (highly valued when dealing with the concertina-like nature of congested motorway flows), blind spot monitoring, lane departure warning, and rear cross traffic alert.
The new eight-inch touchscreen allows a clear view for the high-res reversing camera, and can turn itself into a cellphone interface via Apple Carplay and Android Auto. Sat-nav, Mylink connectivity, and leatherupholstered seats that have both heaters and power adjustment in the front row give the TB cabin a premium ambience. The lack of fore-and-aft adjustment for the steering column doesn’t.
Colorado’s powertrain benefited from increased refinement in the recent upgrade, and while maintaining its strong performance it got a lot smoother and better-mannered.
Transfer that into the lightest of the truck-based SUVS, and the Trailblazer is the only one that can cut out the 0-100kmh sprint in less than 10 seconds, and consistently deliver fuel use figures that read less than 10 L/100km.
It is a whopping 300kg lighter than Ford’s edifice-like Everest, and you feel this in the more responsive handling of the Holden, which gains more agility from a quicker-geared steering rack and a tighter turning circle for 2017.
The Trailblazer not only beats its rivals on performance, it also undercuts them on price, and stepping up to a Fortuner or Everest will require spending a five-figure premium. Only the Triton-based Mitsubishi Pajero VRX 7 comes close, but it’s still four grand more.
Given that the TB represents the best value in a value-leading SUV segment, the Holden could be the vehicle that eventually breaks down our somewhat-irrational prejudice towards truck-based SUVS.