Car and Driver looks at the Silverado 1500 Duramax

If you appreciate the high torque and even higher levels of efficiency in a diesel engine in your conventional full-size pickup, then GM is your friend. Ram and Ford dropped their diesel options for this truck category, while GM improved theirs. Car and Driver looked at the “Last Diesel Standing,” as they call it, and Chevrolet of Spring Valley gives you the highlights.

Chevrolet’s 3.0-liter Duramax turbodiesel inline-6 is standard on the ZR-2 off-road warrior and available on almost everything else from the Custom Trail Boss through LT, LTZ, RTS, and the High Country. The upgrades came in the 2023 model year when GM added new fuel injectors, new pistons with a redesigned combustion bowl, and retuned the turbocharger compressor. The result increased horsepower from 277 hp to 305 and raised torque from 460 lb-ft to 495 lb-ft. That torque peak is the highest of all engines in the Silverado 1500 line.

Car and Driver notes that this greater power comes with lower noise. We may think of loud semi-trucks when it comes to diesel engine noise, but anyone who has ever heard, or rather not heard, Audi’s Le Mans race cars as they whooshed by with hardly a sound can relate. The publication pointed out that the engine “…is significantly quieter than its braggadocious 6.2-liter gas counterpart, recording 41 decibels at idle and 71 decibels at wide-open throttle. We drove both a Trail Boss and a ZR2 (our test numbers are for the latter), and in both cases, their aggressive all-terrain tires made more noise than the engine.”

Of course, greater power also brings better acceleration, with the publication recording a ZR-2 0-60 time of 6.8 seconds, which is 0.3 seconds better than the 2020 Silverado LTZ they tested with its Duramax despite the ZR-2’s additional 145 pounds and Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires. The 2024 truck went on to complete the quarter mile in 15.3 seconds at 89 mpg, which was also a little better than the LTZ. They found the real advantage in passing times, such as 30-to-50-mph top-gear passing, which dropped to 3.6 seconds from 4.2. Not surprisingly, for a diesel, the fuel economy tops the other engines in the lineup with an EPA-rated city/highway/combined rating as high as 23 / 29 / 26 on 4×2 trucks and 23 / 27 / 24 on 4×4. More off-road-focused models with bigger tires have lower ratings but still beat their gas-powered counterparts.

On models where the Duramax is an upgrade, the costs range from $2,590 over the TurboMax 2.7-liter inline-4 to $795 more than the 5.3-liter V8. “In both cases, we would opine, money well spent,” says Car and Driver.

Car and Driver is obviously a fan of the Silverado with this engine. Perhaps you will be as well. The one way to find out is to visit Chevrolet of Spring Valley and test one from our inventory yourself.