Ann Arbor - If sport-utilities can dress up as luxury cars (the GMC Yukon Denali, for instance), why can't a pickup truck do the same? Why, indeed, asks GMC, which has outfitted its light-duty Sierra pickup with luxury bits to create the Sierra C3.
Outside, the C3 wears body-colored trim, seventeen-inch wheels, and a version of the Yukon Denali's front fascia. Inside, there's two-tone leather, wood, and nearly every option under the sun.
What's most interesting about the C3 is under the skin: the Denali's 6.0-liter OHV V-8, producing 325 horsepower and 370 pound-feet of torque, and permanent all-wheel drive, which forgoes off-road pretension in favor of on-road traction.
We expected the C3 to be a muscle truck like the Ford SVT F-150 Lightning, but the C3 is more of an executive express. The cabin is luxurious, with front captain's chairs that rival first-class seats on a Boeing 747. (The rear bench seat is still coach class, however.) It's also satisfyingly quick, lunging from 0 to 60 mph in 8.3 seconds, which is very respectable for a 5000-pound truck. More important, the all-wheel-drive system keeps this high-powered pickup from becoming a handful.... Read full article