Short Take Road Test
When we attended GM's all-new full-size-pickup rollout last summer, the knockout among the knockouts (relatively, of course; bear with us) was the sexy GMC Sierra Denali. The Denali was a tantalizing proposition: Drop the Escalade's 6.2-liter V-8 engine into a lighter pickup packed full of luxury and slathered in buckets of chrome. It would be the Escalade EXT for the working person with a penchant for the fabulous.
Although the Denali would be among the last of these new big'uns to roll out—arriving in dealerships this spring—there in a corner of the display at the event shone a Denali prototype, lookin' all blingy and glitzy and movie-starry in a shiny deep-black clear-coat with chrome-pipe side rails and gobs of chrome coating the door handles, 20-inch wheels, and upper and lower grillwork, all gleaming in the Michigan summer sun. We couldn't wait to get our hands on one and roll wit' da Hummers and Escalades on Sunset Boulevard.
Black: The Difference Between Bad-Ass and Just Bad
Then came our Denali crew-cab tester, which showed up at the doorstep of our West Coast Bureau rendered in a milquetoast off-beige Silver Birch Metallic. Wait, where was the chrome? It was there, but it had nothing to set it off. The pipe side rails would have helped, but they, too, were missing. Thus, the Denali looked like any ol' Sierra, and the eight inches of clearance above the wheels completely dwarfed the chrome 20s. The rear bumper and the black-trimmed taillamps were downright cheap-looking. Blah.
You know, it's hard enough to get excited about a pickup, and, heck, we couldn't even out-pimp an Altima with this thing, let alone a Slade. Oh, how we longed for a few cans of black spray paint. Or 22s. Or lowering springs. Or all of that. Man, what a difference a color makes.
