Chevy’s new Silverado Best in the Desert race truck looks killer

You know what’s cooler than one race truck? Two race trucks. Chevrolet agrees—that’s why they announced yesterday that the Silverado will be headed to the Laughlin Desert Classic in Nevada to make its off-road racing debut this weekend.

It joins its little brother, the Colorado ZR2, under the Chad Hall Racing banner. Recall that Hall Racing has served as the test-bed team for a bevvy of bolt-on parts now available to all Colorado ZR2 owners with the itch to take them racing.

Back to the big guy—Chevy says that the truck will be used for engineering development and validation. What, exactly, they’re validating has yet to be revealed, but perhaps Chevrolet is testing the waters for a higher-performance version of the truck? Hard to say, but it would be neat to see Chevrolet explore a response to the Raptor.

The Silverado race truck started life as an LT Trail Boss with a 6.2-liter V-8 and 10-speed automatic transmission. To get the behemoth race-ready, Chevy added long-travel suspension, front and rear jounce shocks, and their party piece—a set of prototype high-capacity Multimatic Dynamic Suspensions Spool Valve (DSSV) shocks.

There are other prototype parts here, too, including the front and rear jounce shocks and rear shock skids. Skid plates also cover vital underbody bits like the steering gear, transfer case, rear differential, and front underbody.

The truck will compete in the 1200 Stock class, which limits mechanical changes to suspension, underbody, and installation of race-safety equipment. It looks the business, and we’re excited that Chevy is pressing more of its products into motorsports duty.

Now, about that production application…