2006 Chevy Trailblazer SS
Saturday, January 14th, 2006
As a child of the muscle car age, I’m indelibly sensitized to the rumbling power pulses of a good ol’ American V8 engine — the bigger the better.
The rational me recognizes this as a syndrome, rooted in an automotive era that emphasized big displacement eights as the domestic auto industry worked hard to make torque junkies of us all.
The campaign certainly worked on me. And like hearing the voice of an old lover, the sound of one of those engines rekindles old emotions.
The Chevy TrailBlazer SS has just such an engine. Light it up, stab the throttle a couple times, and there’s that commanding baritone: Whooma! Whooma! Whooma!
My my my.
Now, you might observe that there’s another V8 option in the TrailBlazer inventory, the 5.3-liter edition.
But that one doesn’t sound like this one, nor does it deliver like this one. The 5.3-liter engine generates 300 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque, which sounds pretty potent — until you hitch it to about 2.5 tons of SUV.
That’s when you need real muscle, and that’s what the 6.0-liter provides: 395 horsepower, 400 pound-feet.
Sound like a Corvette engine? Yes it does, and it’s the key distinguishing feature of the TrailBlazer SS.
There’s lots of precedent for the Chevy SS tradition, dating to the days of my torque-addicted youth.
The initials stand for Super Sport, and the script first appeared on a handful of Chevrolet Impala coupes back in 1961. There were several V8 engine options– no six-cylinders, please– but the real zinger was the new 360-horsepower 6.7-liter 409.
Though there have been hiccups and hiatuses over the years, the SS tradition has persisted and is experiencing something of a renaissance at Chevrolet.
There are eight SS models in the 2006 Chevy lineup, and the notion of high performance has been expanded beyond the eight-cylinder class. But the TrailBlazer SS is clearly the big kahuna.
Perspective: This is certainly not the first hot rod pickup or SUV to emerge from Detroit.
Chevy offered a 454 SS pickup in the early ’90s, a tire-shredder in the most extravagant SS tradition, capable of spinning its rear wheels until air showed through the tread.
The same could be said for the recently discontinued Ford Lightning and the current Dodge Ram SRT-10. And if the new Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 isn’t quite a tire-shredder — as with my test subject, that trait is inhibited by mass and four-wheel drive — it marches to the same beat.
The commonality among all these trucks is go-power, at the expense of utility.
Despite all their muscle — in fact, probably because of it — super-truck towing capabilities and load ratings tend to be generally lower than more conventional editions of the same vehicles.
That’s where the TrailBlazer SS differs. Its load ratings are consistent with the other V8-powered versions of this same vehicle (besides the TrailBlazer, there’s also the GMC Envoy and Buick Rainier), as is its towing capacity, a robust 6,700 pounds.
And of course the extra muscle equals plenty of hustle. The TrailBlazer SS rumbles to 60 m.p.h. in 5.5 seconds and covers a quarter-mile in just about 14 seconds. Pretty spry for a vehicle that weighs in north of 4,800 pounds.
Consistent with the SS formula, there’s more than muscle to this package. A little more starch in the suspension, to sharpen responses, though not enough to render ride quality unpleasant, and a little more grip.
Aside from that basso profundo exhaust note, 20-inch polished aluminum alloy wheels, three very modest SS badges, and a few other minor trim details, the TrailBlazer SS is hard to distinguish from one of its less muscular cousins, until you check the window sticker.
The base price for a rear-drive SS, not including the $710 destination charge, is $32,890, a sum that would put you in a top-of-the-line long-wheelbase TrailBlazer EXT with four-wheel drive.
If you go for a loaded SS with four-wheel drive, like my test vehicle, you’re looking at $39,175.
That’s a tougher number to digest, for sure.
And while we’re discussing digestion, I have to say I find the whole notion of high-performance sport-utility vehicles very tough to swallow.
The idea of trying to achieve brisk acceleration and athletic reflexes in vehicles such as this is like getting ready to run the 400-meter high hurdles by putting on cowboy boots and strapping about 50 pounds of rocks in your backpack.
If your prime objective is speed and agility, there are all kinds of cars that will do a better job, delivering distinctly better fuel economy and a distinctly higher fun-to-drive factor.
That said, even at top dollar the TrailBlazer SS stands out among the muscle SUVs, primarily because its bag of tricks is more comprehensive than the more overtly macho machines, making it far more useful as an everyday proposition.
Unlike others, Chevy product planners haven’t forgotten the utility part of the sport-utility equation.
So if you must have one of these illogical brutes, get one the one that has function, as well as ferocity. As little as I like to admit it, in this day and age, man does not live by whooma alone.
Written by Tony Swan.
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