IT’S GOT TWINKLES IN ITS WRINKLES
Once a darling, Colorado begins to show its age
Five years ago, GM defied a prevailing conventional wisdom and brought forth a pair of nifty midsize pickups and was rewarded with a tidy share of a market abandoned by American manufacturers.
Nimble, fuel efficient and garage-sized, the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon turned about to be right-sized for about 160,000 buyers a year. The Chevy outsells the GMC 4-to1. This year the pair commands a third of a niche that the Toyota Tacoma used to own, with a minor slice going to the Nissan Frontier.
As an aside, the two Japanese manufacturers built cult-like followings with incredibly durable compact pickups at the end of the 20th century. Both took note of American tastes and in 2005 shifted to midsize trucks, both manufactured here. Tacoma is built in San Antonio, Frontier in Tennessee. Neither truck has undergone a significant redesign in 13 years.
This recounting of the past is prologue to this: GM is about to become the victim of its own success. The next front in the truck wars is ready to kickoff. Ford and FCA, whom we used to call Chrysler before it was sold to Fiat, are getting back into the midsize game.
The all-new Ford Ranger, with best-in-class torque, towing and payload will be in showrooms early next year. Jeep’s all-new Gladiator will be unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show next week.
Both will make a splash, if on DNA and customer loyalty alone. F-150 fans are going to like the Ranger’s looks and, though we’re all still feeding on spy shots, Jeep’s new pickup will look very much like the new Wrangler, one of 2018’s biggest star.
In the car biz, there’s a benefit in being late to the dance. Technology—from computers and metallurgy to engine control components and cabin materials—seem to follow Moore’s law, that capabilities double every two years. In that sense, GM’s little pickups are two generations out of date.
Today’s trucks are lighter, stronger, more capable and, thanks to engineering design and to computer-aided driver-assist features, infinitely safer
From Wow! to How?
We were reminded of this when we spent a week behind the wheel of a topof-the-line Colorado, a 4WD ZR2. You can buy a standard Colorado work truck for right at $21,000, less if a fleet buyer, but the ZR2, with a 3-inch wider track, 2-inch factory lift, dynamic suspension dampers, all terrain-tires, 2-speed transfer case, and more, starts at $42,500.
Since they first hit the streets, Colorado/Canyon have earned strong buy recommendations from us for people seek a “right-sized” pickup. We will soon rescind that, but we weren’t wrong at the time. The trucks consistently earn top resale marks and have generally scored average or above on studies
of long-term durability.
So imagine our surprise when we first took our 2019 Colorado tester out for a test spin, and were immediately surprised at a plethora of shortcomings. What set the bar five year ago now no longer gets through preliminary qualifying.
The truck did not change. Standards did.
Before we even turned the key on the $45,000 truck, we were struck at how cheap and plastic the interior felt. We have no way of knowing whether Ranger or Gladiator will have nicer interiors, but it is hard to imagine their designers overlooking such an opening.
A quick review of gauges and switches revealed that the pricey pickup had none of elements of driver assist safety gear that manufacturers such as Toyota make standard on every vehicle they sell. Our trifecta? Dynamic cruise control, which helps avoid rear-end collisions, lane-keep assist, which avoids sideswipes and rollover situations, and blind-spot monitoring, which helps avoid highspeed crashes out on the interstate.
Consumer Reports said dynamic cruise control is an option on Colorado/Canyon, but we scoured Chevy’s and GMC’s build-and-price websites, as well as industry news and user forums, and could not find a shred of evidence that even one of these technologies—shown to reduce injuries and fatalities by a third—is available.
Five years ago, that was no big deal. Now we are in the age of semiautonomous vehicles—note the “semi,“these assist, not replace the driver—and lives are at stake. Kelley Blue Book puts the average transaction price for a new vehicle in 2018 at $35,285. If manufacturers want today’s dollars, they need to do more than offer yesterday’s safety.
Forging ahead, We let the truck warm up and took it out on the Interstate. As we accelerated into traffic, the 3.6-L V6 engine roared liked a lion for his food. Then the all-terrain tires kicked in.
“At least the tires drown out the engine,” Boy Wonder, our certified mechanic in residence, happily chimed in.
We soon figured out that the EPA estimated 17 mpg was a bit on the generous side. We got 16, which doesn’t sound so hot when a full-size Ram or F 150 gets better than 20 mpg. Of course one could always opt for Chevy’s 2.8L turbodiesel, which averages around 30 mpg, but adds $4,000 to the price of a Canyon.
The ZR2 was TFLtruck’s 2018 Gold Hitch Truck of the Year as well as Best OffRoad truck. Judges praised the truck’s combination of “qualities of a capable offroad vehicle” along with its “ease of use and comfort as a daily driver.”
Where in the world, we wondered, did they determine the latter? On a dirt track? In a demolition derby?
Off-road champ
“Yes, yes,” some will counter. “But this is an off-road truck. Those other things don’t matter.”
So we took the ZR2 out on a muddy, rocky, 10-15-degreee gradient. The thing was perfect. Nary a slip, bobble or hiccup. We might go so far as to suggest that it would be a terrific competitor to a Jeep Wrangler or Rubicon, had Jeep not done so much to make the new version reasonably tolerable road vehicles.
For close to $50,000, Colorado buyers can add the ZR2 Bison package, with five Boron steel skid plates, stamped-steel front and rear bumpers and 31-inch Goodyear Wrangler off-road tires.
A Jeep killer, indeed. If your neighbor buys one of these, do a little spying for us. Try to figure what percentage of the vehicle’s time is spent off-road.
How it all plays out
With desirable vehicles with contemporary engineering and materials joining the game, picking winners and losers is probably more fun than figuring out American politics.
Jeep and Ford will likely allure more buyers into the midsize waters, but they will also take a bite out of somebody’s wallet.
Frontier will lose a little, but a fresh redesign is expected in showrooms in 2020.
Honda builds the best-driving midsize pickup on the planet on the Accord chassis in Indiana. The Ridgeline has one major weakness. No one buys ‘em. Last year Canyon outsold Ridgeline 5-to-1.
The Tacoma is not competitive in many ways with modern vehicles, save for legendary durability and unwavering brand loyalty. Every time a Western camera crew sends back footage of some Mideast militia heading out into the desert with a heavy machine gun bolted to the roof of a Tacoma, Toyota wins another convert.
Fat chance we’ll see Chevys in that role. Alas, most of us recall the central lyric of Eagles’ New Kid
in Town: “They’ll never forget you ‘till somebody new comes along.”