THE EMPIRE
In this episode of The Open Road
Nick’s driving the Chevrolet Silverado Z71 Custom Sport
Unfortunately the first pass of this film was over 40 minutes long, no one wants to sit through me blabbering on about anything for that long. Here’s some stats and additional thoughts
2500HD LTZ “Custom Sport”
Engine: Duramax 6.6L Turbo Diesel V8
Transmission: Allison 1000 6-speed automatic
Power: 332kw ( feels like more )
Torque: 1,234Nm ( why it feels like more)
Price as tested: $163,990NZD
A couple of the things I touched on in the first pass of the video was the lack of blindspot assistance, I don’t see why that wasn’t added – This was also amplified by the fact the wing mirrors are the sporty versions – Other images show a more traditional towing / truck mirror which was far taller and perhaps a fish eye split would have been nice – That would have fixed many of the issues with looking down the side for things you might run over while driving.
The version I had was the Custom Sport – which basically coloured a lot of what would normally be chrome, and chromed a lot of what would normally be body colour – The Midnight edition does look evil and bad ass – But living on a dirt road keeping a big truck like that clean in black would be much harder than a white one – Personally I’d look at the white and do a chrome delete with something like a wrap or plasti – dip.
Some of the comments on our first post of having the Truck for review was to the essence of ” How can they charge so much for it when I can bring it in cheaper? ” – Well, that’s true you could bring it in cheaper – and if you chose to RHD convert it you’re either going to do a shit job of it yourself ( by comparison ) or pay someone else to do a professional job which will end up costing you about the same amount. Another upside of going through a dealer is all the little things you might not think about, for example are the air bags still certified when you get a 3rd party to convert it ? – Buying direct like this might be a bigger initial outlay of cash, but you have the peace of mind of a factory warranty and servicing.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to tow anything with this – The tow packages are still being worked out as the laws and regulations differ between the states / Aus and New Zealand so they need to sort out that red tape before they can put those on – But in theory it should be able to tow enough that you will get into class 2 licence territory – I might add more to this as I think of it over the next couple days.
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Here’s a neat little video on how the Right hand drive conversion is done
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