cars news 10: 2016 Chevrolet Colorado Z71 Diesel Update 6: Little Room For Improvement

I’ve gotten to know our long-term 2016 Chevrolet Colorado Z71 4×4 Duramax diesel well over the past 11 months and nearly 30,000 miles. I know what it can and can’t do, I know what will or won’t fit in its little 5-foot bed, and I can squeeze it in to a tight parallel parking spot without breaking a sweat. We’ve covered a lot on our Chevy Colorado in the last five long-term updates, but there are a handful of little things that I like in the truck and some features I want in the Colorado that don’t warrant a larger standalone update.

Features I Like:

The corner steps. I don’t know if you’ve loaded heavy equipment into the back of an older pickup in the rain, but it’s a slippery affair (and I have the scar to prove it). The Colorado’s standard corner-mounted bumper steps make it super easy to pull yourself up and into the bed to load or unload or secure your cargo. Unlike Ford’s “man step” solution, the bumper steps are also usable with the tailgate closed, they’re simple, and they don’t block you from loading the truck’s bed.
Cargo storage underneath the rear seat. The Colorado features a decently sized cargo cubby underneath the rear seat. It’s no Ram Box, but it’s where I keep ratchet straps, a tarp, some paracord, and work gloves.
Chevrolet’s MyLink Infotainment system. Chevy’s infotainment system is snappy and easy to use. Its Apple CarPlay compatibility is a huge plus, too. My favorite part about it would probably be the OnStar 4G LTE Wi-Fi hot spot feature—when you travel as much as we do in this business, having reliable internet access while in the middle of nowhere is a huge plus.
The Duramax engine. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: this Duramax rocks. The numbers show it isn’t the faster engine available under the hood of the Colorado, but its 369 lb-ft of torque makes it feel much quicker than it actually is. Its fuel economy is downright impressive, too.

Features I want:

Better headlights. There’s no nice way of putting this—they suck. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) agrees. It rates the Colorado’s headlights as “poor”, the lowest possible rating. The halogen projector lights are fine in an area with plenty of ambient light such as a city or suburb, but out in total darkness, such as at Death Valley National Park, they’re barely adequate to see more than 100 feet or so ahead of the truck. Turning the fog lights on helps some, but they’re designed for use in the fog, not in everyday conditions. When traffic allows, the yellowish high beams help somewhat, but again, they barely reach out farther than the low beams.
Better transmission responsiveness. I gave some serious thoughts to excluding this because 95 percent of the time the Colorado’s standard six-speed automatic is great, but there are times when changing lanes to pass traffic that the transmission is slow to kick down. Combine this with a diesel engine that makes its power below 4,000 rpm, and that safe gap you had in traffic is suddenly a lot less safe. It’s quite easy to drive around this quirk once you’re used to it, but every once in a while I forget and it rears its head. Given that the Colorado’s Duramax diesel can now be had with an eight-speed automatic in the Chevrolet Express van, I’d be willing to bet that the more modern transmission would help alleviate this issue.

More bite from the brakes. They’re pretty good, but I wish they were a touch more aggressive. If I owned this Colorado, I’d invest in a set of higher-performance brake pads once a change was due.
A better four-wheel drive selector. There are a few major issues with it. Let’s start with its location—at the 8 o’clock position relative to the steering wheel and by my left knee. If you’re driving, it’s hard and dangerous to operate because you have to lean to the left and look down at your knees to twist the knob to select a different drive mode. The only indication of what drive setting you’re in is a faint little orange light above 2Hi, 4Auto, 4Hi, or 4Low, which again, you have to stare at your knee to see. Why there isn’t a 4WD indicator in the little digital instrument display on instrument cluster like in every other Chevy truck is beyond me. And last, but not least, the four-wheel drive knob is right next to the identical headlight knob. Did I just turn off my headlights or shift into 2Hi? Who knows!
Consistent volume and HVAC knob tuning. On a similar but less important note, I don’t like that sometimes you turn either the volume or one of the HVAC knobs one ‘click’ and nothing happens, and other times you turn it a single click and it responds as you asked. In other words, if I want to change the temperature setting from 72 degrees to 70 degrees, sometimes it’s two clicks to the left, and other times it’s four or five. I just wish it were consistent.

HVAC vents for the backseats. There looks to be a blank space where GM could add HVAC vents to the backseat, but currently there are none. Even though my dogs don’t mind using the windows for backseat ventilation, I sometimes do.
More standard tie-downs in the bed. Each Colorado equipped with a spray-on bed liner comes standard with four fixed tie-down points in the corners bed, and with the capability to add up to 13 more (five on either side, three on the front) via Chevrolet GearOn tie-down rings, which fit into fixed slots built into the bed. Chevy was kind enough to send us over a pack of four GearOn tie-down rings, which retail for $120 a pop, but as someone who follows a ‘the more the merrier’ approach to securing cargo, I’d have probably shelled out for at least two more packs of GearOn rings. With the bed divider occupying two of the cargo rings that Chevy sent over, that would leave me 10 extra tie-down points for luggage, off-road gear, tires—anything, really. Isn’t that the point of having a pickup?
An automatic-locking tailgate. As someone who lives in a city, I’d appreciate the convenience of having an automatic locking tailgate, versus having to manually lock and unlock it with the key.

The features I want list might look long, but were I in the market for a truck like the Colorado, none of them would be deal-breakers. Yeah, some, such as the bad headlights or the four-wheel-drive knob location really get on my nerves sometimes, but my experience with our 2016 Truck of the Year has been a positive one. As our time with the Colorado draws to a close, I’m already dreading handing the keys back to Chevy.

2016 Chevrolet Colorado Z71 Diesel Update 6: Little Room For Improvement

Features I Like:

Features I want:

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