More comfort, tech and improved ride
Upscale Denali not the traditional truck-like SUV
As Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy once wrote, “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, we have to at least consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”
Well, GMC takes great pains to point out that its new Yukon Denali is not a luxury vehicle. It's “professional grade” and “well equipped,” but don't you dare — at least, in the presence of anyone wearing a corporate polo shirt — call it a luxury vehicle.
But with a Denali version of the big sport-brute starting at $82,998 — and it's not hard to get it to 100-large — it's certainly priced and equipped like a luxury vehicle. What's more, this not-exactly-cheap Denali accounts for almost 60 per cent of Yukon sales in Canada. Indeed, with Denalis accounting for three in 10 of all the GMC trucks and SUVs sold in Canada — a greater percentage than south of the border and almost double the penetration compared with just five years ago — you could make an argument that GMC is a luxury brand. At the very least, the Denali sub-brand is squarely upscale, the average transaction price of anything wearing the Denali badge now $63,750. That's higher than BMW or Audi, says GM.
What makes the new 2021 Yukon “nicer” than its predecessor?
Yukon does not ride like any truck you've driven before. That's because, unlike the GMC Sierra with which it shares a traditional “ladder” frame, the Yukon boasts independent rear suspension. It sports a low-profile three lateral link design with a huge trailing arm thing-a-ma-bob to keep the whole “axle” in place.
While base Yukons — i.e. non Denali versions — feature standard shocks with progressively wound springs, the Denali boasts what GM says is the first-in-class four-corner air suspension with its latest generation magnetorheological
dampers. Essentially what happens is that metallic flakes in the shock oil change their orientation when pumped full of current, and this effectively changes the viscosity of the damping fluid.
This means the Yukon Denali can alter its suspension compliance once every millisecond, or about once every 25 millimetres of road at 100 km/h. The ride, then, is pretty darned special for what, from the outside, looks like a typical truck-based GM SUV. Oh, it's no Mercedes S-Class over road ruts, but even if it doesn't quite accomplish the “cloud-like” ride GMC's press presentation promises, it's a long way from the buckboard that is a traditional full-size SUV with a live
axle. For the better ride alone, it's worth trading in your old Yukon.
Because those air bladders are fully adjustable, the entire Denali will also rise up some 50 mm on those suspenders, so you can traipse off-road to your heart's content — though that's probably best left to the new Yukon AT4 variant with its superior approach and departure angles. The same air bladders will also lower the big Yukon about 20 mm at highways speeds for improved aerodynamics, and like so many other air-suspended behemoths, the new Yukon also lowers itself some 50 mm when parking, so passengers won't have to exert their quadriceps during ingress or
egress. About the only thing GMC's trick suspenders won't do for you is bow and curtsy.
As for the other big news for 2021, the Denali gets its own unique interior. The Denali has a different centre stack and console than the rest of the Yukon lineup. The gauges and climate controls are identical, but the infotainment system and centre console are sufficiently different that it really does feel like a different cabin. A more luxurious one at that, all leather and (some) hand-polished wood.
There is also the requisite set of high-tech gee-gaws, including the 10.2-inch GMC Premium Infotainment system with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and a wireless charging
pad. Also it has the largest head-up display in this segment, 15 inches of turn-by-turn navigation directions projected onto your front windshield.
One new feature that did lose me is the Power Sliding Centre Console. Essentially, with the flip of a headliner-mounted switch, you can send the centre console sliding back toward the rear passengers.
Seriously, GMC, you claim you'll have nothing to with the foofaraw of traditional luxury marques, and then you come up with this? Somebody in the engineering department definitely missed the “we're not a luxury brand” memo.
On a much more pragmatic note, the 2021 Yukon is a lot roomier than its predecessor, especially for those squeezed into the previously dun-geon-rear seats. Part of the reason is that GM squeezed another 124.5 mm out of the wheelbase (and 155 mm overall). But the lion's share of the extra room in the back is the result of those independent rear suspenders. Because the rear differential (almost 30 centimetres in diameter) is now fixed to the rear frame and not riding up and down with the solid rear axle, the third-row seat can be lowered dramatically.
All told, GMC says there's more headroom and a whopping 260 mm more legroom in the rearmost seats. It's still not as easy to get back there as in a real minivan, but the new Yukon is now officially a genuine people mover.
And it's a luxurious people mover. There's leather worthy of a bordello, a ride that any Mercedes SUV would be envious of, and enough high-tech gizmos to keep the most attention-deficit-disordered Millennial occupied. What I'm saying is, the Yukon Denali is about as far from the traditional truck-like SUVs of yore as you can get.
Actually, that's not quite true. It still feels like a truck. Oh, that Fancy Dan rear suspension really does dampen the ride like never before. And the smoothness of the big 6.2litre V8 — unchanged for 2021, still producing 420 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque, and still mated to a 10-speed automatic transmission — won't be mistaken for a 20-year-old Sierra. But behind the wheel, there's still very much the sensation that you're driving a truck. It feels a bit more ponderous (fans would say deliberate) than an S-badged Audi SUV and doesn't respond with the direct steering of a BMW Ultimate Driving Machine.
But it has a presence — a weight, if you will — that's unmistakably American. And one can only assume, given the incredible popularity of GM's big SUVs, that is exactly what the customer wants — but all dressed up in leather, chrome, and enough hightech gee-gaws to choke a Mercedes, of course.