Trans-Labrador Highway Truck Comparison

MotorTrend

10/4/2023

Watch the Motor Trend team put three trucks (Chevy ZR2

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 And this is the Trans-Lavender Highway

00:07 that we're gonna be going on.

00:08 And the Trans-Lavender Highway is cool

00:10 in that it's one of the last unpaved highways

00:13 in North America.

00:14 I don't know how many miles, it's several thousand.

00:17 It's basically cross country in the US,

00:18 from New York to LA.

00:19 - 3.5 liter twin turbo V6, has 450 horsepower,

00:25 and it just, it's a beast.

00:27 It just pulls strongly all the way to red line.

00:29 And it's 10 speed automatic transmission, it's great too.

00:31 It shifts really, really quickly.

00:33 It's almost seamless in the way it accelerates.

00:35 You just stomp on the gas,

00:36 and it'll pull all the way to its governed top speed

00:38 of about 100 miles an hour.

00:39 - The ZR2 was an all new truck from Chevy.

00:42 It's using an all new shock absorber

00:43 that was made for this truck, nobody else is using it.

00:46 It's got locking front and rear diffs.

00:48 Got this new eight speed transmission,

00:49 but love the tire rack.

00:51 You can get this thing, this is a two frame thing

00:52 that goes bolts in the bed of the truck

00:53 and puts the spare tire up there.

00:55 - And last is the power ride one.

00:57 It's a 6.4 Hemi V8 that it just gets you going

01:01 pretty quickly for, you know, this beast of a truck.

01:04 I mean, this is a 7,000 pound truck.

01:07 - This one has both front and rear locking diffs

01:09 so you can get yourself out of any trouble

01:10 you get yourself into.

01:11 We didn't have to use the winch,

01:12 but it's really nice and really reassuring

01:14 to have a 12,000 pound winch in the front of this bumper.

01:17 - The Transalabrador Highway has been calling to me

01:18 for a couple of years now.

01:20 - Exiting 2.5 miles on Rue de la Fond.

01:27 - When I got invited to this trip,

01:29 I didn't know what to expect.

01:31 - Next morning we come around,

01:34 we get a mile, you know, two kilometers maybe

01:37 down the road and we come around

01:39 and suddenly out of the trees appears this enormous dam.

01:42 And we're, you know, coming out the bottom of it.

01:44 We're not starting up the top.

01:45 It's just this immense wall of concrete

01:49 in the middle of the forest.

01:50 (upbeat music)

01:53 - I really like that the Ram is the manual transfer case.

02:03 In a day and age where everything's just a switch,

02:05 a button, it's just really cool to just reach down

02:09 and just shove it up and do four low

02:11 or all the way down to four high.

02:13 - Chevy Colorado CR2, I was drifting it left and right

02:16 the whole time and it was so easy to do.

02:18 And it gives you the confidence to not only do it once,

02:20 but do it many, many times.

02:22 The Raptor does its primary job

02:24 as being kind of a Baja truck, right?

02:25 It's an off-road, you know, desert racer.

02:27 (upbeat music)

02:30 - Boom. - Oh, you better drop.

02:35 - Come on. - Yeah.

02:36 - You should have put your initials.

02:38 - Oh, look at that.

02:38 Hers are way prettier than everybody else's.

02:40 - We have walkie talkies in the trucks

02:42 with us on these long road trips

02:43 talking about the truck that we're in

02:44 and the truck that we just drove last

02:46 and comparing them and what we like and don't like.

02:48 And we didn't spend that much time talking

02:50 about what we don't like about the Power Wagon.

02:53 It's just a good solid truck all the way through,

02:56 but it uses a lot of gas.

02:58 - There's apparently an actual road back here,

03:01 just access points to the individual towers.

03:03 (upbeat music)

03:06 - We'll have the next one, see if it's worth our time.

03:12 (upbeat music)

03:15 - We pulled off into a random trail and went exploring.

03:18 Our goal basically was to explore

03:19 and find our way back to the highway,

03:21 which we thought we could do.

03:22 It's just a lot of fun to just be able

03:24 to take these trucks out in the middle of nowhere

03:26 and just kind of find your own road.

03:28 (upbeat music)

03:30 - And this is where I think the Colorado

03:35 let me down a little bit.

03:36 Compared to the other two trucks here,

03:39 the driver's seat to me, it's hard,

03:41 both in the bottom and the back.

03:43 I feel like the seat cushion is a little too short.

03:45 I'd like a little more support under my legs.

03:47 And after hours and hours on the road,

03:49 those things really start to get at you.

03:52 - Well, what we've got here is the front right tire

03:57 on the Colorado, developed a slow leak yesterday.

04:00 - This is the bead right here along the wheel.

04:03 A rock essentially got wedged in the bead,

04:06 let air out of the tire.

04:07 So this is a V-lock wheel on the Ford Raptor.

04:09 This is an option, I think it's like 1700 bucks.

04:11 So basically notice these screws.

04:13 What happens is you put the tire on the wheel,

04:17 and then you put this part on top of it and bolt it on,

04:20 and it seats the bead of the tire on the wheel.

04:23 So nothing can get in there to make it go flat.

04:27 - Turns out, Timbits are a unit of measure.

04:29 We thought they were just donut holes,

04:31 but being foreigners, we had no idea

04:33 what we were getting ourselves into.

04:35 But we now know that you can use Timbits

04:37 to measure anything from distance to weight to volume.

04:41 You can literally do anything with them.

04:43 They're very versatile.

04:44 (upbeat music)

04:47 (upbeat music)

04:50 - I was in the Ram Power Wagon that day,

04:56 and the day we had the bad potholes,

04:58 and I'm really happy to be in it

05:00 because I was watching the Raptor in my rear view mirror,

05:03 get ass happy on every single bump.

05:06 - I'm moving left and right every time.

05:08 We almost lost the Timbits too.

05:10 (laughs)

05:12 - When I feel on the left side here, stay to the right.

05:14 - Yep, that one wasn't too bad.

05:16 Oh, that's a big one.

05:17 Big one on the right.

05:18 That big one's in the center.

05:21 - Scott was leading, he was calling on the walkie talkie.

05:25 The potholes, left and right, center, middle, minefields.

05:28 He was very, very enthusiastic

05:32 about what was happening in the road.

05:35 - I feel like I have a permanent curvature in my spine now

05:37 from sitting for 12 hours straight

05:38 for the last four days in a row.

05:41 - And we got four days left.

05:43 - Halfway along. - Halfway along.

05:45 - So we kept ourselves occupied for a few hours,

05:47 went and had brunch,

05:48 and did some little off-roading and whatnot.

05:51 (upbeat music)

05:59 (upbeat music)

06:02 - When we got down to the coast,

06:15 south of Port Hope Simpson,

06:17 icebergs out in the water in July,

06:20 still floating along out there.

06:22 It's just the power of surprise that this place has

06:26 and that the length of this journey

06:29 afforded us.

06:30 We saw everything from these deep, dense forests

06:32 to these rocky shores.

06:33 It was just, it's been everything I wanted it to be and more.

06:39 - It was a cool experience.

06:40 It was a very cool experience.

06:42 I wasn't expecting this.

06:43 I wasn't expecting it to be this fun

06:44 and this challenging, especially.

06:46 But it's beautiful and the Canadians,

06:49 they've treated us so well.

06:50 Everybody's so friendly here.

06:52 And yeah, I'm looking forward to come back again

06:53 to this part of the country.

06:55 - Dude, I love Canada.

06:56 It's a beautiful, beautiful country.

06:59 We've gone off on tons of random trails here in Canada.

07:02 And not only did we not see a person,

07:04 but there's no sign saying we couldn't be there.

07:06 It was just the sense of freedom

07:07 to go out and explore on your own.

07:09 It was really liberating.

07:10 And I just, I really appreciate it.

07:12 Definitely gonna come back.

07:13 - Man, this thing is a beast.

07:17 I think what I like the most about it's engine.

07:20 It's 6.4 liter V8 engine.

07:23 So the three things I like about Ram Power Wagon

07:25 are the locking diffs,

07:27 the BP manual transfer case,

07:29 and the disc-tanking sway bar.

07:31 We kept finding these side trails to go off of

07:33 and looking for fun places to get these situations,

07:36 to get the trucks into and really test them out.

07:38 And several times that day,

07:40 someone would say, "Well, Power Wagon can do it."

07:43 When the other trucks were moving around,

07:44 this thing was solid.

07:45 It was stuck to the ground.

07:47 It just powered through everything.

07:49 And it really surprised us in that.

07:50 But it didn't beat us up on the road either.

07:52 It was actually very confident and comfortable

07:55 to drive this whole distance.

07:57 (upbeat music)

08:00 (upbeat music)

08:02 (upbeat music)

08:05 (upbeat music)

08:08 (upbeat music)

08:10 (upbeat music)

Trans-Labrador Highway Truck Comparison

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