Chevrolet Colorado wants to be More Than Just a Truck

Naza Quest launched the all-new Chevrolet Colorado in Malaysia, with all the creature comforts of a car.

The pick-up truck segment is incredibly competitive here, not because we are a country of jungle-dwellers and can only get from village to village on muddy paths (in case some of our readers from other lands think so - WE'RE NOT and WE DON'T). 97 percent of businesses in Malaysia are SMEs, and they are just the kind of customers who could use a pick-up truck or two. The best-selling model in this neck of the woods is hands down the Ford Ranger, which continues to post stronger and stronger sales each year.

But Naza Quest, the sole distributor and importer of Chevrolet vehicles in Malaysia, is hoping to claim a bit more of the tasty pie with the launch of the 2016 Chevrolet Colorado. With the addition of a 2.5-litre to the 2.8-litre option, and five variants to choose from, Naza can cater to a slightly wider range of the market.

The variants:

• 2.5L Standard LT (MT) - RM90,188
• 2.5L Standard LT (AT) - RM97,588
• 2.5L Standard LTZ (AT) - RM104,088
• 2.8L Standard LTZ (AT) - RM112,788
• 2.8L High Country (AT) - RM120,088

The 2.5-litre Duramax four-cylinder turbo-diesel (VGT) engine is capable of 180HP and 440Nm of torque - just slightly bettering the Mitsubishi Triton's VGT engine which offers 179HP and 430Nm of torque - while the Colorado's 2.5-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine (FGT) is still available in the lowest spec option. The upgraded 2.8-litre Duramax four-cylinder turbo-diesel (VGT) engine churns out 193HP and 500Nm of torque, which betters the Ford Ranger's and the Nissan NP300 Navara's top-of-the-range offerings.



But moving out from under the hood and into the interior of the cab, this has to be the most car-like and most comfortable of them all, and since pick-ups are no longer just a utilitarian vehicle, this is an important selling point. Perhaps what makes the new Colorado really stand apart is the creature comforts that it offers, specifically the Apple CarPlay, which connects to the iPhone and allows voice command via Siri. It also comes with the Remote Engine Start function that can turn the air-conditioning on from a distance, a feature we love in this hot or hotter weather but has never been included in a pick-up truck until now.

The automated Comfort Closing Window feature drops the window slightly when the front doors are opened, to ease the closing of the heavy doors, and then rolls back up when the doors are shut. Additionally, it has a less common safety feature - on top of the lane departure warning, forward collision alert, and rear vision camera - that is the Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) which alerts the driver of any abnormal tyre pressure.

Naza Quest's annual sales target of 1,300 units for the new Colorado might seem conservative considering the strong product that it has now put out in a robust market segment, but the earlier models only sold about 3,000 units since its launch in 2012, placing their target somewhere between optimistic and realistic.