A Brief History of America’s Best Truck

This is everything you need to know to get up to speed on the Chevy Silverado.

The history of Chevy’s Silverado begins with Chevy’s iconic C and K series full-size pickup trucks. The C/K models span four generations between 1959 and 2000. So what is the difference between the C and the K series trucks?

About eight letters.

It was the drivetrains. The C was rear-wheel drive. And the K was four-wheel drive. Chevy C/K trucks were trusty steeds and were well-loved by anyone who made an honest living hauling heavy payloads: ranchers, farmers, fishermen, race teams, farm farmers, fish racers, etc…

In the late ’70s, Chevy introduced the name Silverado as a trim level of their third generation C/K truck. It was a bit classier with chrome trim and a snazzy interior but maintained the offroad ruggedness that earned the Like A Rock reputation.

By the early ’90s, them boys ‘n girls at GM realized that the landscape of the American truck market had changed. Imported trucks had created a new small truck market through the ’80s. And Chevy knew that they had to go one of two ways with their new truck line.

Smaller and more fuel-efficient? Or bigger and more manly?

So what would they do?

They already had the tiny S10 pickups, so they went bigger!

Chevy doubled down with the Silverado and decided that while the other guys were all chasing their tales making little baby trucks, they would position the Silverado as the workhorse against which other’s workhorses would be measured.

In 1998 through the 1999 model year, a bigger, badder Chevy truck, the Silverado, finally made it onto the scene.

The Silverado was setting a new standard for trucks. It was bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter. The Silverado 1500 got better gas mileage than the F150, made more power than the Dodge Ram, and could tow more than either of them.

After proving itself to be America’s best truck, the Silverado earned Motor Trend’s Truck of the Year award. Sure, they gave it to the Mercedes M-Class the year before and the Aerostar Minivan in 1990, but that’s beside the point.

During this generation, the top of the food chain, the large adult son of the Chevy truck lineup, was the 3500HD which stands for Heavy Duty. And get ready, all you diesel nerds, here’s the thing you’ve been waiting for.

Duramax!

The 3500 Heavy Duty was powered by a 6.6L Duramax diesel V8 and cranked out 360 horsepower and 650-pound feet of torque. This big boy could tow almost 17,000 pounds and haul around 5,000 pounds in the bed. But what if you don’t need to haul heavy stuff?

What if the only thing you need to haul is you and your crazy friends around?

Enter the Chevy Silverado Super Sport, a 345 horsepower beast powered by Chevy’s 6L LQ9 V8. It came with a four-speed automatic gearbox, all-wheel drive, and had an aggressive four-ten gear ratio for basically burnouts.

It was a burnout truck.

By 2006, it would come with more cool upgrades like performance suspension, 20-inch wheels, and even a limited edition Intimidator SS, which I will talk about – right now.

Dale Earnhardt was one of the winningest race car drivers in American history. The very sight of Dale in the rearview was enough to make you quiver with fear. Catching a glimpse of that legendary mustache intimidated the competition into submission, thus the Intimidator.

In 2006, five years after Dale’s tragic death, Chevy honored his memory with the Intimidator SS edition. This sport truck only came in Onyx Black and had a whole bunch of sick appearance upgrades like a rear spoiler on a truck, headrests emblazoned with an image of Dale winning against a big E, and Intimidator badges all over. Handling was improved. It had bigger anti-roll bars with the locking 3.73 diff in the back.

You know what that means, right?

Big old smoking burnouts with both tires spinning!

Do it for Dale!

I really liked this guy, and everybody should go watch a NASCAR race. At least once.

As fun as race-inspired trucks are, they’re not the reason most people buy trucks. Most people who buy trucks, buy trucks because they’re rough and ready work doers. And that brings us to perhaps the most iconic Silverado there is, the Z71.

I know you’ve seen the iconic Z71 badge. I’m about to tell you cute, little babies what it means. Originally, Z71 was just an internal code for an options package. The Z71 package came with upgraded Bilstein shocks, skid plates, and an offroad-ready locking rear diff for ordering purposes.

To GM’s complete surprise, the Z71 sold like hotcakes. And why wouldn’t it? The fact that the most purpose-built version of Chevy’s most purpose-built truck further proved that when you wanted a real truck workhorse, you got a Chevy.

Chevy had also been running their Like A Rock ads for over a decade. And by 2004, I guess they figured they’d made their point. Chevy’s new umbrella slogan for all of their vehicles was-

Chevy Silverado, an American Revolution.

And they tried to expand their market share. Chevy offered the Silverado as a hybrid in 2004, dubbed- the Silverado Hybrid. The Silverado Hybrid was also the first mild hybrid that used an electric motor to help with starting up, charging batteries, and powering accessories.

So, it wasn’t really one.

The second generation Silverado was everything the first generation was and more. It debuted in 2007 and got a more plush, more upscale interior, with a revised exterior, smaller panel gaps, and tighter lines. It sat atop an entirely new frame and completely revised suspension. The new frame improved body stiffness by a massive 92%, a bigger transformation than Christian Bale going from The Machinist to The Dark Knight in under a year.

The new 6.2L, 403 horsepower Vortec V8 was now available to make the new truck faster and haul more lbs. The new, sleeker body design offered better fuel economy, which was getting more important while America entered the Great Recession.

Speaking of fuel economy, you can finally get a six-speed automatic transmission, a much-welcomed upgrade over the previous gen’s dog of a four-speed.

Welcome to the 21st Century, Silverado!

Chevy aimed to make it even better. 2014 saw the introduction of a brand new Silverado after the second gen’s seven-year run. The third generation K2XX Silverado came on the scene with updated bodywork, a better grill, bigger wheel arches, and a host of new trims and engines.

What else were you expecting? It’s a Chevy.

For the third-gen Silverado, GM did away with the Vortec family of V8s and introduced the Ecotec V6s and V8s. They made more power, baby! With this generation, Chevy made a bunch of changes that increased the strength and dropped the weight of the new Silverado.

They used aluminum in the hood, engine block, and massive control arms to save weight. Ask your grandpappy if he ever thought the hood of a Chevy truck would be made out of aluminum.

And he’d say, “Who are you?”

This was also the first time the Silverado had a model with high luxury, high spec, and high class. The High Country came with a beautiful leather interior, all the amenities you could want, and because it’s a Chevy, special badging!

The biggest development with the third-gen Silverado was the massive amount of special editions. Whoo boy, were there special editions. There was the Texas edition, Alaskan edition, Rally edition 1, Rally edition 2, Blackout edition, Midnight edition, Midnight HD edition, Custom Sport edition, Realtree edition, Redline edition, Special Ops edition, and High Desert edition.

I think that’s it.

It was all kinds of trucks for all kinds of people. In 2019 Chevy debuted the fourth generation, T1XX Silverado.

It has an even more aggressive front end, more muscular wheel arches, Robocop-inspired headlights, and a healthy mix of engines. This one is also the first time Chevy has put a 2.7 liter turbo under the hood of a Silverado.

This turbo four-cylinder engine gets as much as 22 pounds of boost. This little puppy cranks outs 310 horsepower and 348 pound-feet of torque.

Just like before, if you’ve got a pulse, they got a Silverado for you. And don’t lament the loss of the Z71 package because they still got two of them, the Trail Boss and Custom Trail Boss.

The Trail Bosses have a lift, offroad tires, and of course, a skid plate. And it doesn’t stop there; the old Duramax diesel V8 gives you 910 pound-feet of torque through a new Allison ten-speed.

For 2021, the Silverado saw relatively few changes. Most notably, the Silverado 1500 offers the newly named Multi-Flex six-position tailgate, which is borrowed from the GMC Sierra, and the introduction of wireless CarPlay and Android Auto projection capability. In addition, 2.7L 4-cylinder and 3.0L Duramax diesel-equipped Silverado see increased tow capacity ratings and new towing technology, including a jack-knife alert and trailer length indicator.

New for the 2022 model year is a 13.4-inch Infotainment 3 touchscreen infotainment system that is standard on all Silverado 1500 models except for the Work Truck and Custom trims, as well as a new fully digital instrument cluster. Base model (Work Truck and Custom) trucks will retain the smaller infotainment system screen and instrument cluster from the outgoing pre-facelift Silverado 1500. An all-new ZR2 model will be the most capable model in the Silverado 1500 lineup and will include a standard 6.2L EcoTec3 V8 gasoline engine. Silverado 1500 models equipped with front bucket seats will also offer a center console-mounted shift lever for the first time.

Tags: chevrolet, new chevrolet, silverado
Posted in Silverado 1500, Trucks | No Comments »