2011 GMC Sierra HD 2500 Denali 4x4 Diesel - Car and Driver
sports-car fans spend more time watching horsepower counts, acceleration times, and top speeds. But heavy-duty truck enthusiasts live and die by numbers, perhaps more than any other segment of the automotive sphere. To that end, the 2011 GMC Sierra Heavy Duty —along with its Chevrolet Silverado twin—sees a couple of its key numbers swell to 6635 and 21,700. Those are the highest payload and trailer-weight capacities of the GM HD trucks. Indeed, a thoroughly overhauled Duramax turbo-diesel V-8 supplies the first pair of staggering numbers: 397 and 765. Those are the 6. 6-liter engine’s respective hp and torque counts, the former peaking at 3000 rpm and the latter at 1600. Those... 7, as in stopwatch ticks to 60 mph and through the quarter-mile, the latter feat occurring at 89 mph. What we have here is a 7560-pound truck that’s quicker than the first Chevy Camaro we ever tested and capable of hauling most of one in the bed or towing four behind it on a trailer. Credit for this quickness is also due to the six-speed Allison automatic transmission, which keeps the Duramax spinning at the absolute peak of its prodigious power band while shifting with relative smoothness. (In contrast, the hard-shifting automatic in our long-term Ram 2500 changes gears as though it were trying to rip itself apart. Source: www.caranddriver.com
