1999 Chevrolet Silverado Chooses Mild over Wild

From the August 1998 issue of Car and Driver.

Let’s get this styling business out of the way right now: Chevrolet’s full­-size pickups haven’t had a major facelift since the 1988 model year, and there’s an argument to be made that with the new 1999 model, they still haven’t. Certainly, the restyled ’88 model differed dramatically from the ’87 model, just as the 1973 model was a radical departure from the ’72.

So it’s fair to question why Chevrolet chose mild over wild, when wild worked great for the current Dodge Ram pickup and reasonably well for the current Ford F-150. Chevrolet insists that the Sil­verado’s looks are the result of an incred­ibly intensive series of customer clinics, which left Chevy with the overriding impression that current Chevy customers, and plenty of potential buyers, do not want a dramatic styling statement. They want comfortable and familiar.

That’s what Chevy, and corporate near-twin GMC, delivered. Beginning late this summer, customers will have the oppor­tunity to vote with their wallets, which is the only kind of customer response that really matters. For now, then, let’s agree on this: Chevy’s conservative makeover is as interesting an experiment as Dodge’s still-startling redesign was for 1994.

That said, we can accentuate the posi­tive, because aside from the looks, the Silverado is just short of a quantum leap in pickups. Not because of any major inno­vation, but because of a very long list of minor ones. Such as making 16-inch tires and wheels standard, even on the base model. Also standard are: huge four-wheel disc brakes with ABS; battery-rundown protection; coolant-loss protection (as on the Cadillac Northstar V-8, the engine shuts down half its cylinders, turning them essentially into air pumps, air-cooling itself as you limp home); “Dynamic Rear Proportioning,” which is a computer chip that senses minute changes in wheel speed under braking and adjusts the proportion of rear brake engaged accordingly. Also standard are hydroformed front frame rails, just like the Corvette has.

The pickup’s track is wider, wheel­bases are longer. Cabs are wider, longer, and taller. In the extended-cab versions­—those will be the first to reach dealer­ships—the rear seat’s bottom cushion is extended a couple of inches, and the rear seatback is canted at a comfortable angle. There are four more inches of legroom, too. In other words, this is the only extended-cab full-size pickup on the market in which we’d agree to sit in the rear without protest for a long trip.

Chevrolet did miss the boat on the four-­door craze, as the extended cab has three doors for 1999 but should get a fourth in 2000. The official explanation is that Chevy needed to reach its goal of a body and chassis that are at least 60 percent stiffer than the ’98 model’s, so the com­pany elected to wait on the fourth door to allow for additional engineering time. The unofficial explanation is that product plan­ners misjudged the demand for four doors, and the speed at which the competition, especially Ford, would move to fill it. That seeming goof is offset, however, by a rear seat in the new trucks that is worth using, and thanks to seat-mounted front belts, you don’t have to climb through a hanging web to get into the back.

In fact, there’s precious little to criti­cize about the interior. The seats, even those in the base model, are very good. The controls and the gauges are where they should be, and the instrument panel has a neat little “information center” box that can read out 18 different messages, from “Trans Fluid Hot” to “Cargo Lamp On.” By depressing the trip-odometer button for four seconds, the display switches to indi­cate the total number of hours the engine has been running since the last scheduled service stop. This will allow fleet customers, whose trucks idle a lot or run power takeoff devices, to better plan their servicing intervals.

You may already know that GM chose to stick with pushrod engines, as the Sil­verado’s three new cast-iron-block V-8s are based on the Corvette’s LS1 aluminum 5.7-liter V-8. Truck engines start with the 4.3-liter carryover V-6 and top out with the carryover 6.5-liter turbo-diesel V-8. The 7.4-liter gas V-8 also stays in pro­duction for heavy-duty trucks.

Those new V-8 engines are a 4.8-liter (255 horses and 285 pound-feet of torque), a 5.3-liter (270 hp and 315 pound-feet of torque), and a 6.0-liter (300 hp and 355 pound-feet of torque). By comparison, the two V-8s these three engines replace are the 5.0-liter (230 hp and 285 pound-feet of torque) and the venerable 5.7-liter (255 hp and 330 pound-feet of torque). Chevrolet says the new engines have a wider power band than the old ones, meaning torque is spread out over a wider rpm range. Unfortunately, the 6.0-liter is for three-quarter-ton applications and bigger trucks—for now, anyway. It will fit in the half-ton truck (all three engines are the same size on the outside) and could even end up in a performance pickup to counter the coming Ford SVT F-150 Lightning. The 4.8 and 5.3 engines have aluminum heads; the 6.0 is all iron (alu­minum dissipates heat better, Chevy con­tends, but cast iron wears better for com­mercial customers).

The transmissions are updated, and there’s a new AutoTrac transfer case for four-wheel-drive applications that can automatically engage four-wheel drive when the going gets slippery. The four-­speed automatic transmission also has a “tow/haul” mode. Pressing a button at the end of the shift lever engages it, altering the shift pattern to maximize pulling power in each gear. The first-to-second shift, for example, occurs at 22 mph in the tow/haul mode, and at 10 mph in normal mode.

Prices should be official by the time you read this, but we’re estimating a three-to-four-percent increase over prices of cur­rent models, which isn’t bothersome when all that standard equipment is considered.

Mechanically and ergonomically, the 1999 Chevrolet Silverado simply advances the cause of pickups. As for the styling—­well, it doesn’t.

Driving The Top-of-the-Line LT Model

We drove a variety of 1999 Sil­verados but selected this top­-of-the-line LT (there are also a base model and a midlevel LS model) to gather some early test data. It’s an extended-cab four-wheel-drive Sport­side (rear fenders are injection-molded plastic) with the Z71 off-road package (larger shocks, beefier jounce bumpers, bigger tires). Power was supplied by the 5.3-liter V-8, with a four-speed automatic transmission and an Auto­Trac electronic transfer case.

It was dressed up inside, too—with power-operated leather seats, a pre­mium stereo, and a CD player. The LT was an exceptionally comfortable place to pass the miles, and it provided a sur­prisingly smooth ride that was quiet at highway speeds.

The 5.3-liter V-8 feels and sounds a lot like the current 5.7-liter V-8, although its fuel economy should be a bit better. It also pollutes less, which was a central purpose for creating this new engine family. We averaged a not-­great 13.6 mpg for our long afternoon of driving, but it was peppered with quite a few full-throttle runs to the speed limiter, which kicks in at a modest 97 mph.

On the road, the Silverado handled reasonably well, considering its rather cumbersome 143.5-inch wheelbase. Off-road, it was surprisingly nimble, and the AutoTrac system seems more intuitive than the similar system Ford uses. A 4.10:1 differential ratio certainly helped boost off-the-line performance (likely to the detriment of fuel mileage), resulting in a 0-to-60-mph time of 8.9 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 17.1 seconds at 80 mph. That beats the Dodge Ram and Ford F-150 full-size extended-cab rear-drive pickups we tested in June 1996. The 220-foot braking distance from 70 mph is simi­larly impressive, considering that the big Firestone Wilderness radials are true dual-purpose tires.

Stay tuned for the obligatory shootout of the GM, Ford, and Dodge full-size pickups, a test the Chevrolet people insist they can hardly wait to read.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com