“That thing got a 350 in it?” is a question I’d often hear when driving my beloved 1989 Chevy K1500 — a truck I sometimes regret selling because it was, by far, the best truck I’ve ever owned. But with the new millennium, the beloved 350 left the Silverado and was replaced with another icon: the 5.3-liter small-block V8. This became the standard for the last quarter century, but now it’s gone and the 350 is back. Joining those cubic inches is a fresh new face, a new interior with a big passenger-side screen, and so much more. Let’s have a look at the new 2027 Chevrolet Silverado 1500.
Upon hearing that the 2027 Chevy Silverado is ditching the 5.3-liter and 6.2-liter V8, my first thought was “Wow, that 5.3-liter has been around a while!” And so my initial headline was “The 2027 Chevy Silverado Ditches Its 5.3L V8 After 27 Years.” But then I saw what that 5.3-liter is being replaced by — a 5.7-liter (350 cubic-inch) V8 — and I decided it was best to celebrate the return of the most iconic Chevy truck engine displacement than to lament the 5.3-liter’s passing.
To be sure, this is obviously not the same 350 as my GM400’s TBI 350, but it’s still a cool throwback that Chevrolet says on its press release “honors Chevy Small Block heritage.” The 350 is joined by a 6.6-liter replacing the 6.2-liter that’s been around for almost two decades. Sadly, we have no power or torque figures, but displacement for both motors is up by 0.4-liters, so things sounds promising. Chevy says about the two motors: “these next-generation V8s deliver improvements in power and torque giving customers more choice without compromise.”
The gigantic 2.7-liter turbocharged four-cylinder is sticking around (Chevy says it has been “enhanced”), though now it’s mated to a 10-speed auto instead of an 8-speed, and a 3.0-liter turbodiesel joins the fun, as well.
Chevy emphasizes that of its seven trims, three of them are lifted: the ZR2, the Trail Boss and Custom Trail Boss. (Random thought: If Chevy had six trims, would they say three are lifted or three are lowered? Food for thought…).
The ZR2 sits on 35s with a two-inch lift, a special “off-road hood,” standard lockers front and rear, and Multimatic DSSV dampers.
The Custom Trail Boss (a more budget friendly Trail Boss) and regular Trail Boss (shown above) has the same two-inch lift, but makes do with 34s.
I myself like the Work Truck trim, because the steelies look great. On the other end of the spectrum is the High Country, which is the flagship trim:
It’s got a gorgeous interior that matches the aggressive, angular exterior styling pretty much perfectly:
There’s a lot of screen happening in the cabin, with a 16.3-inch center display, a 12.2-inch gauge display, and an 11.5-inch screen for the passenger. How well will all of this screen-ification age? I don’t know. But as of right now, it looks great.
Really, overall the truck — built on the T1-2 platform that is a modified version of the outgoing truck’s T1 bones — looks nice. It’s not a huge departure from the outgoing machine stylistically or architecturally speaking, but it’s a nice update, and I’m really excited to learn more about how the new V8 motors perform in the Silverado 1500.
All Images: Chevy
Worst possible reality. Trucks are too damn big and I put part of that blame on the giant tire sizes.
I could be ok with it if they were on 15″ wheels because donut wheels are cool. But I doubt they will be anything less than 19″.
Current trucks use 18″ wheels for the base/offroad trims.
My Ram has 18’s, anything smaller won’t clear the brakes. You’d have to have tiny brakes to clear 15″ wheels.
Look for these giant trucks to be filling your rear-view mirror on the highway – and blocking your path on winding roads – soon! The styling on today’s pickups is the vehicular equivalent of roid rage.
It appears to still be an LT engine. So it will probably blow up. The LT is junk.
““That thing got a 350 in it?” is a question I’d often hear when driving my beloved 1989 Chevy K1500 — a truck I sometimes regret selling because it was, by far, the best truck I’ve ever owned.”
It’s funny how right around the time you got your ’89 Chevy K1500 I actually acquired a ’89 Chevy K1500 by sheer happenstance. Talk about coincidence, especially since Mark Tucker on this website also has a ’89 Chevy K1500. Rather a bit of a bevy of GMT400s… Yeah, GMTA and all that. (One could say…GMTA400, ba dum tss)
I’ve already mentioned this elsewhere on the Autopian in the past: what’s funny is how my fleet has the aforementioned K1500, which has a 350 (5.7 liter) V8, a Mercedes 300TD with a 3-liter inline five, a baywindow VW bus with a 1.6-liter flat four, and a Panhard Dyna Z with a 0.85-liter flat two where the K1500’s 5.7 liters is actually more than the rest of the fleet combined which is 5.45 liters…
Man…I’ve been happily reading engine sizes in metric for my entire life. I know that GM isn’t the first to use cubic inch displacement for branding post-2000 (FCA/Stellantis being a notable example with their Hemis), and I understand the nostalgia play. But does CID measurement really need to become a widespread thing again?
It won’t become a worldwide thing, but it’ll stay a thing in the US.
The only real Stellantis motor called by its displacement anymore is the SRT & BGE 392. I’ve spoken to more Viper owners (in person) then those that talk about the 5.7, Hellcat, or Demon engines by their displacements, since 345, 370, and 372 aren’t cool displacements to call out.
I’d like to see the internals of both engines.
Remember when you couldn’t walk into an auto parts store without seeing a crate 350 on the floor?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
I’d say the marketing department would say 3 lifted and 3 lowered and accounting would say add $1,500 to all 6 for customization
Is the 6.6-liter engine the new 402?
I have an f-250 with the 6.8 gasser that’s getting canned. People are calling for it in the F-150 and now GMC is coming out with the 6.7 and I can’t help but think this will push Ford into doing it.
The 6.8 is more than enough power for the f-250’s weight ratings. I can’t imagine the absolute balls on these trucks in a 1/2 ton. People are gonna be crashing when their ass’ slip out riding around with no weight in the bed. I love it, but at the same time, historically, these engines are insane in a regular trim truck.
This right here.
My 06 1500 rc/lb had the 4.8 and with an empty bed it would get a little bit wiggly on you. God forbid we get a little bit of rain in AZ, then the fun really starts.
Unloaded I can spin the rear wheels easily with the base Ecoboost, the 6.8 would be awesome and scary at the same time in a F150
I’d love to drop either a 6.2 Boss or a 6.8 Godzilla into my Excursion to replace the anemic 5.4. The 7.3 would just be overkill for me.
The interior looks great and it’s nice to say 350 again. It’s interesting that the front end looks like it’s already been in a wreck.
Pretty clean looking for a truck in the 2020s. No weird kickup in the rear doors and the cab seems to have taller windows. The proportions are not unlike the GMT400s. I would like a cleaner front end though.
Clean looking???!!!
Proportioned like a GMT400???!!!
I’ll have what you’re having as clearly I need my eyes fogged.
Yeah the grille is busy, but what’s wrong with the rest of it? Pretty simplistic design compared to say a Tundra, which looks like the designer got paid per body line.
I wonder if GM is still considering a phev variant. It’d probably come out for the midcycle refresh, so 2030-2031? Hopefully these new V8s don’t have the same issues as their current ones. Looking forward to a potential David Tracy deep dive on the 5.7/6.6.
The most off putting design element here (and on the Colorado) is putting the nameplate just below the belt line.
What you expected them to use suspenders?
What are you talking about?
LOL
I’d say the styling is a definite improvement on the last gen! Not that that’s hard to do, though…
I double take every time I hear the Silverado’s with the 4 cylinder.
Still styled by Seth MacFarlane, I see.
I sort of like the low headlights on these, especially the lifted trims. They look odd but are less likely to light up the interior of my car like an all-night convenience store when there’s one behind me at a stoplight.
I wouldn’t ever own an LT with AFM at this point. I do own an LS with over 200K and no concerns about it. LT AFM is pretty rough failure rate and extremely high cost. A freaking 5 year old Tahoe can need a $15K engine replacement. that is nuts.
I hope they reengineer this crap enough to eliminate those failures.
My coworker recently bought a used LT which had AFM missing from the factory, thanks to Covid. Smart move I thought.
Likely just missing the AFM controller. The lifters / oil passages / other hardware would still be in there just not used.
It was the same way on the 6th gen Camaro – the automatic transmission cars had AFM enabled, manual ones didn’t. But they still had the same lifters and hardware.
Who decided that these new trucks look appealing? Or “tough/rugged”? They just look ugly. The latest ugly truck designs haven’t improved with a few years of age. Every maker is designing trucks that look objectively worse than the previous generations except, perhaps, Dodge (they want me to call those “Rams” but that’s not going to happen).
Maybe I’m just getting too old as a lot of the brand new vehicle designs look like a complete mess to me, especially the front ends. Also, nearly every time a “refresh” comes, it looks worse than before but that’s been going on for decades so I’ll give that part a pass.
/yells at cloud.
We seem to be, post-covid, in an era of increasingly ugly car design.
Every refresh now looks worse.
It’s a nice looking truck. I’ve always kind of appreciated that the Silverado isn’t as in your face macho cringe until you add the off road packages that no one ever uses…and this is a nice evolution of the current design. That green is downright excellent as well, and props to GM for showing it off in the press photos.
That being said…with the abject disaster that is the L87 V8 in mind, do we REALLY trust GM to launch a pair of new V8s without significant teething issues? In the past I would’ve said something along the lines of “at least GM knows how to not fuck up a small block V8” but now I’m not so sure. Hell even the old 5.3 liter doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation.
Love it or hate it, if longevity is what you’re after the Turbomax is probably your best bet. They’ve proven to be ridiculously robust and are maybe the best all around engine GM currently makes. I’m not entirely sure WHY they make them, because they’re somehow not any more efficient (and oftentimes even worse if the blogs are to be believed) than the V8s in practice, which is an accomplishment only GM could manage.
But right now they’re almost certainly the safest bet if you plan on keeping your behemoth long enough to pay it off…although I’d imagine that the majority of Americans that buy half ton trucks never get that far before they get suckered in rolling what they owe into the latest and greatest truck every 2-3 years….
What a world where a turbo four with GR Corolla-level boost pressures hauling a 6,000 pound pickup is considered more reliable than the V8.
GM made a great engine, it just….doesn’t really accomplish any of the things it set out to do lol
The one where GM made their V8s unreliable.
N/A is no longer a guarantee of longevity. Nor is boost a sign of imminent death. The Turbodiesel has been proving that since the 70s.
So no, it’s ugly.
Now, we at work are in the market for a replacement work truck for our wheezing old 09′ F150 that we got every last ounce out of.
I want a single cab, 8 foot bed, fridge white, vinyl seats and mats truck. 1/2 or pref 3/4 ton. V8 and no stupid turbos, 2wd, simple and understressed.
Rules out Ram and Toyota. No single cabs in the half and Rams 3/4 is a 2008 design. Toyota powertrains, pains me to admit as a frequent Toyota owner, are unreliable.
Chevy? Good God they are ugly. And their powertrains? Can we trust it to go around 20 years with us? I don’t think so.
Thus we are once again back to Ford. The godzilla motor in the Superduty might be just the ticket.
Also, we need a 15 passenger van. The Express is tried and true but I need to look into the powertrains. If it’s any of the new stuff then I don’t think so.
We’ve hit peak McTruck.
It’ll look dope parked outside their McMansion.
5.6% of all 6.2 made since 2023 have failed in the field/on the road. Some are on their 3rd engine at less than 50,000 miles. This prevents any serious consideration from anyone with a 3 digit IQ
Did you miss the part where this has an entirely new engine, not the 6.2L?
Oh really? That’s good. I hope this new engine wasn’t designed by the same company that made the disaster that is the 6.2, or I’m not so sure I’d want to gamble on the reliability.
GM has built far too many successful engines, to completely discredit them after one engine. That’s like saying nobody should have ever bought another Porsche after the 996 IMS.
Northstar, the V-8,6,4? Let’s say more than 1. Shall we?
They bounced back with very successful engines after those.
Not only that, but the 6.2 was a really good engine until they added afm to it.
Most companies weren’t expecting to use the 996 as income generating machines. Unlike the 6.2 powered trucks.
Most companies aren’t expecting the 6.2 trucks to generate income either. They buy the 5.3L, not the Denali and High Country trucks.
Good news! Those are failing too!
LIFTERS – Screams the internet. Which has about a 1% failure rate.
Ford V-8 5.2 liter.
Enough said
“Dovie’andi se tovya sagain”
Truly approaching Ford Recall level crap.
I like the side profile, but the hood is still ~3+ inches too high. The top of the hood and the top of the bed and the bottom of the window sills should all be the same height to work visually, IMO. If they sectioned the hood (and bed rails, albeit to a lesser extent) down to the height of the window sills, this thing would have a chance to be handsome. But it snot.
Once again, the best-looking is the WT trim, not as overwrought as the fancier ones.
I feel like they finally fixed a lot of the clashing design cues from the outgoing model. It drove me kind of nuts to look at what the outgoing model was doing with sharp angles on the grill with sweeping lines on the fenders. At least to my eyes. I’m really curious to know if those steering wheel controls are gloss black real buttons or gloss black haptic buttons. I can deal with the former but they cannot possibly be that dumb for the latter. Right? Engines look promising so let’s hope they aren’t grenades like their current ones are.
you said. the new one looks better than the outgoing one? I could not dis agree more.
It’s not even close how much better this one looks over the outgoing one.
Both are ugly pickups.
Bro we get it, you think they’re ugly. Not everyone shares your view.