I test drove a diesel Canyon (not a ZR2) over the weekend, looking for something to replace the diesel Golf that VW will be buying back in a few weeks.
I could not believe how unrefined the baby Duramax is. Or at least, I don't think any attempt was made to insulate the cabin from the increased noise of it relative to the gas engine. In my Golf, VW made the windshield thicker, put double seals on the doors, and otherwise made a strong effort to reduce the noise.
In the Sierras I looked at, both the double and crew models had back seats that could fold up revealing a nice useful, flat load floor. In the Canyon, there is this stupid plastic storage affair taking up half the floor, that means there is no point in folding the seats up at all. You can't even unbolt the stupid thing and put it in the garage, because that's what supports the rear seats.
As far as I could tell, the price of the Canyon is the same as the price of the Sierra after the heavy discounting due to the highly competitive half-ton market.
I could not give the key to the Canyon back to the sales guy, fast enough.
I understand that there is an appeal to "off road" vehicles, but if most people are honest, the suspension tuning you get is not really compatible with the actual use you will put the truck to. And I'm not sure the exotic multimatic shock, which was designed for road racing, has any type of off-road pedigree in terms of its ability to take abuse.
I don't think GM are going to sell a lot of these. Too expensive, crushing depreciation.
