If you need to pull a stranded piece of drilling equipment out of the mud in the middle of nowhere or haul a giant trailer of off-road toys into the desert – and then reposition your house on the other side of the hill in the middle of rainy season – the Chevrolet has a Silverado 2500 HD ZR2 to sell you. When powered by the 6.6-liter turbocharged Duramax diesel engine, it adds 511 pound-feet of torque over the petrol V8 to the off-road version of the Silverado HD, making it an absolute sledgehammer of a truck. With 470 horsepower and 975 pounds of torque, the 6.6-liter diesel model is capable of pulling 18,500 pounds behind it on a loaded trailer. With the ZR2’s Multimatic DSSV Dampers and Off-Road Mode added to the HD chassis, there’s not much in the way of terrain that can stop it.
Of course, there will be compromises, starting with the $80,095 price tag (destination excluded) – a few dollars shy of $10k more than the 6.6-liter gasoline V8 option. We spent a week with the Silverado HD ZR2 Bison to better understand its strengths and weaknesses.
Size Is A Compromise
The fact that the Silverado 2500 HD is big goes without saying – it’s a heavy-duty truck. In America. And in ZR2 Bison form, it grows an extra couple of inches due to the upgraded AEV bumper. Total length comes to 252 inches (around two inches longer than the regular model). For perspective, that’s 5.75 feet longer than a Honda Civic sedan, so you’ll need to check that your garage can accommodate the big truck, with room along the sides to open the truck doors – it’s 105.1 inches from the tip of one exterior mirror to the other, and that’s before you try to open it up. Add another 23.2 inches for extendable exterior mirrors if you regularly pull a wide trailer.
On the plus side of having a massive truck, the bed can safely accept a payload weighing 2,811 pounds (the gas V8 can do a little more). In terms of trailer, the diesel Bison can pull up to 18,500 pounds while transporting five professional basketball players in the cabin without them complaining about leg or shoulder room. Unless you’re basketball-player height, you’ll appreciate the folding side-step to help overcome the 11.8 inches of ground clearance and get into the cab.
Little Compromise Inside
The Silverado HD ZR2 comes only in 2500 Crew Cab configuration with the standard bed, and is designed to carry up to five burly people to work sites. To make it truly livable, there is 43.4 inches of legroom in the back, which is plentiful for just about anyone. There are some nice premium materials used in the cabin, but they’re also all simple to wipe clean after a weekend playing in the dirt.
A 13.4-inch infotainment screen sits in the center of the dashboard, and it’s easy to read, responds quickly to input, and has all the bells and whistles you would expect at the price tag. However, the 15-inch head-up display with an off-road inclinometer and HD Surround Vision in our tester is a paid upgrade – it’s excellent, though, and easy to read with bold and clear graphics.
The wireless charging area has been redesigned and holds phones in place well on bumpy roads, and the center console that ‘flows under’ the dash adds to the storage space inside the cabin. We loaded up for a trek with three people – and two persons worth of camera gear – a full load of electronic devices, drinks, and snacks, and the Silverado 2500 HD still didn’t feel cluttered inside.
Zero Compromise Drivetrain
Chevrolet is not messing about when it comes to HD trucks, and the pairing of a Duramax 6.6-liter turbocharged diesel engine and a 10-speed Alison (famed for its commercial-grade transmissions) automatic transmission is a fearsome one. It delivers its 975 pound-feet of torque at just 1,600 rpm and its 470 horsepower at just 2,800, making it absolutely effortless to propel the unladen truck around town or up steep, rocky slopes. It’s pure overkill for off-roading, but an absolute pleasure to tow with. The power comes surprisingly smoothly for such a brutal powertrain, making it a controllable towing machine that never needs to yank its load to get going.
Off-Road Enabled
The ZR2 badge adds Chevrolet’s off-road race-proven Multimatic DSSV Dampers and HD-specific front upper and lower control arms and steering knuckles, and makes for a super-capable suspension system adapted from the Silverado and Colorado ZR2 trucks. Add that to a steel transfer case skid plate, front aluminum skid plate, an electronic rear diff locker, and 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires mounted on 18 x 9-inch aluminum wheels, and you have a beast of an off-roader before adding the Bison package. The Bison package adds steel-stamped bumpers with recovery points and space for a winch from AEV, along with stamped steel underbody skid plates for the front of the vehicle, steering rack, exhaust, and transfer case.
On And Off-Road Compromise
The result of the weight of the HD truck chassis and the extra bumpers is a disappointing ride quality compared to the regular Silverado 1500 ZR2 and the Colorado ZR2. It’s quite the compromise and shows itself on the mildest of dirt tracks, where high-frequency bumps turn what is usually a nice, easy scenic ride into an annoyingly jiggly one. The same goes for on the road where choppy pavement becomes annoying, although the way the HD ZR2 Bison drives is excellent – the steering isn’t wayward, and the truck drives with purpose and can even be hustled a bit on a back road.
However, what you’re paying for in ride quality is the ability to go absolutely anywhere you damn well please, as long as it’s not narrow, and pull just about anything you want either on the road or out of trouble. The bottom line here is that this is the recovery vehicle you want at base camp when a group is going out into a tough environment where mishaps are likely.
When you think of the Silverado HD ZR2 like that, it starts to make a lot of sense. It’s one hell of a speciality vehicle that allows you to pull all your gear out into the middle of nowhere and rely on it to get people out of a muddy situation. From a construction point of view, its ability to pull machinery into place or out of trouble can be a major selling point – and then it’s there for the weekend’s fun.
What it isn’t is a dedicated off-roader to pack up and head out in. It’s just too long and too wide, despite impressive approach and departure angles, to be a go-anywhere vehicle – particularly if there are rocky areas to negotiate. It’s also too big and too thirsty to use as a daily driver between putting it to work or play.
The takeaway is that the HD ZR2 only makes sense if you’re going to regularly carry or pull big loads or recover big vehicles. Otherwise, the Colorado ZR2 or Silverado ZR2 are smarter options – both are exceptionally comfortable in ride quality and our time with the Silverado 1500 ZR2 underscored its improvement over the standard truck. They are also good off-road, The Colorado ZR2 being excellent with or without the Bison packages, and somewhat fuel efficient (for what they are). Both are excellent as daily driver workhorses that are equally adept for fun escapes into the wilderness. The Silverado 2500 HD ZR2 is a tool for several hardcore jobs, and if that’s what you need, then it’s a beast of a tool.