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Video: 2015 Light-Duty V-8 Challenge: Davis Dam
By Cars.com Editors
January 5, 2015About the video
PickupTrucks.com editor Mark Williams is in Arizona at the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park for PickupTrucks.com's Annual Physical pickup comparison.
Transcript
(upbeat music) Anytime we get a chance to test brand new pickup trucks, we wanna find out what the engineers had in mind. That means for us, the top priority has to be on towing.
That's why we've come here just outside Kingman, Arizona, to the infamous Davis Dam grade. We're gonna see how these trucks do pulling a 7,000 pound load behind them. Here are the top three finishers. For our uphill grade testing, we picked out one of the steepest sections of the Davis Dam grade. Behind each truck, we put a 6,700 pound Logan horse trailer in order to find out if these trucks can perform when asked to do heavy duty work. The Chevy Silverado 6.2 liter v8 with new eight speed transmission did zero to 60 times on that part of the grade in 19.92 seconds. The Chevy pulled hard off the line and impressed us at how smart the transmission was, making very fast shifts very smoothly. In second place, the GMC Sierra 1500 was just behind the Chevy with a zero to 60 time of 20.05 seconds. Now, the GMC has 3.42 gears and the Chevy has 3.23 gears, so the fact that the GMC was a little bit slower might surprise some people, but a lot of it has to do with the type of suspension that's on the GMC. It's a little bit different than the Chevy and the fact that the tires are a little bit higher performance oriented on the Chevy Silverado. In third place, the Ram 1500 with a 5.7 liter Hemi. Now this was a good performer, but it did zero to 60 on that same section of the Davis Dam grade in 26.15 seconds. Quite a bit behind GM's new 6.2 and eight speed transmission. It's also worth noting that the Ford with the five liter, a much smaller V8 was just a tick behind the Ram for fourth place at 26.28 seconds. So those test results are just a part of our 2015 light duty challenge. For more test videos, information, and who takes home the trophy to this competition, go to pickuptrucks.com. (engine revving)
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