full-size style
Tahoe refined for today: An all-new design retains capability, adds comfort and economy
Full-size SUVs may never again scale the highest peaks of popularity like they did in the 1990s, but that doesn’t mean these vehicles are irrelevant today.
I just spent a week driving the Chevrolet Tahoe, one of the very few body-on-frame SUVs that hasn’t gone extinct. It’s easy to see why drivers still fall in love with the capability of a truck like this — if you’re the right type of person.
If you’re just carrying kids to soccer practice, well, this kind of vehicle doesn’t make much sense. That’s why the plethora of lighter, better-handling, more fuel-efficient crossover vehicles have taken over most kid-hauling roles these days.
But if you need to do more than kiddie duty, the Tahoe starts to look far more appealing.
V8 power and an 8,600-pound trailer rating mean the Tahoe can do some jobs you’d normally need a big pickup for, such as pulling boats and tromping through the mud. The available off-road suspension package and 4x4 traction help this full-size SUV easily reach places that would make most family crossovers squeamish.
The Tahoe’s tall, king-of-the-road, trucklike seating position is a plus for drivers who like that sort of thing.
That said, General Motors took a long list of steps to bring the old-school Tahoe into the new-school era, where fuel economy and carlike handling qualities matter more than ever.
The Tahoe’s new design largely succeeds, improving the highway gas mileage by 10 percent without sacrificing capability, which is the
whole reason people buy a Tahoe in the first place.
The new Tahoe has a remarkably quiet, stable and sophisticated feel over the road.
In fact, the only misstep I can see that General Motors made on this redesign is with the Tahoe’s cargo capacity. With a high-loading floor that eats into the volume, there’s just not a whole lot of room for roadtrip luggage when the back seats are in place, which makes the Chevy Suburban seem considerably more appealing to me.
Pricing starts at $47,000 for the Tahoe, and $49,700 for the more cargo-friendly Suburban. You’ll pay slightly more still if you prefer the look and feel of GMC’s closely related cousins, the Yukon and Yukon XL.
From a comfort and quality standpoint, all of the newly designed
General Motors SUVs are all light years ahead of where they used to be. They’ve even got the same softtouch materials and air-tight cabin construction that buyers have come to expect from nice cars and crossovers — something unheard of in the truck world until recently.
The tester Tahoe that Chevy loaned me was a nice LTZ model — including two-wheel drive and a rear-seat entertainment system — that rang up at $64,540. While not quite as snazzy as GMC’s incredible Denali trim, it comes close, including a magnetic suspension system that lets you adjust the ride quality, along with leather seats that make long stretches of highway a joy.
For people who need its abundant power and sizable footprint for towing and traveling off the pavement, the Tahoe makes a compelling case for why the full-size SUV still has a meaningful place in 2015.