Pickup trucks have been drifting away from their original work-related intent for many years now, and the car companies have been tweaking various models to suit this evolution to personal use vehicles.
But now GMC has designed a ground-up pickup, the 2001 Sierra C-Series, that Jim Kornas, the Sierra brand manager, says is "engineered for ultimate on-road performance and control," so much so that this "convention-breaker and game-changer deserves its own distinctive classification."
Kornas says that when the C-Series arrives this fall it will "cut across traditional load-rating and trim-level classifications to combine a comprehensive selection of powertrain, chassis, exterior, and interior features in one fully-equipped, extended-cab, half-ton pickup. Components and systems that constitute this new GMC product are for the most part without precedent in the pickup truck world."
Strain these technologies through this new attitude and you end up with a pickup that Kornas says has "unprecedented driver character in the 1/2-ton extended cab full size pickup segment."
The alpha DNA of this character is what Kornas and GMC like to call the Performance-Biased Driveline, and it's made up of several components:
- The Vortec 6000 naturally-aspirated 6-litre V8 uses 87 octane (aka "regular") fuel to develop 325 peak horsepower at 5000 rpm and a steady 90 percent of its rated 370 pound-feet of torque between 1600 and 5200 rpm.