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8 speed, Automatic
Turbocharged Gas I4
Four Wheel Drive, Rear Wheel Drive
Photo: Ron Sessions
The Chevrolet Colorado competes in the Midsize Pickup market segment. According to data collected from verified new-vehicle buyers for the JD Power 2023 Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study, 83 percent of new Midsize Pickup buyers are male (vs. 61 percent for the industry), and the median age of a new Midsize Pickup buyer is 58 years (vs. 56).
As part of the APEAL Study, owners rated Midsize Pickups in 10 primary categories. Listed below in descending order, you'll find their preferences, from their most favorite thing about the vehicle to their least favorite:
Photo: Ron Sessions
In the sections that follow, our independent expert analyzes a 2023 Chevrolet Colorado 4WD Trail Boss Crew Cab equipped with the following options:
The test vehicle's price was $41,195, including the $1,495 destination charge.
Photo: Ron Sessions
The 2023 Colorado features a tidy, no-nonsense interior built around two large high-resolution digital displays: an 11.3-inch infotainment touchscreen at the dash center and a driver-configurable 8-inch gauge panel that grows to 11 inches for the range-topping ZR2.
The 2-inch suspension lift of the Trail Boss test vehicle wasn't much of a climb getting in, even though Chevy did not equip the truck with running boards. The front bucket seats offer adult-rated comfort and support for daily use, with coverings varying from durable-looking cloth in lower trims, such as the Trail Boss test vehicle, to synthetic Evotex for higher trims and the option of leather in the Z71. The front passenger seat has manual controls, but a power-adjustable driver seat is available for higher trims. Heated and ventilated front seats and a heated steering wheel are also available for higher trims.
Standard in all but the base Work Truck, a redesigned center console moves the transmission shifter to the right, making room for the drive-mode control wheel and electric parking brake control. Ahead of the shifter is an open tray for small items, which also houses the optional wireless phone charger. The console offers a pair of cupholders and a deep storage bin under the padded center armrest with a damped lid.
The rear seat barely accommodated my 6-foot, 2-inch frame, and the seatback was too vertical for long-distance comfort. Back-seat passengers, however, get heating and air-conditioning vents. Up-level trims have a handy fold-down center armrest because no adult wants to sit in the center position. The rear seat has a 60/40 split, and there's a fair amount of storage underneath the bottom cushions.
Material quality is plasticky, but uplevel trims have some wrapped trim with contrasting stitching that slightly dresses things up. The Trail Boss is, after all, a value-priced truck with a lot of content for the money. That said, the driver-side interior door pull was already coming loose in a truck with less than 1,000 miles showing on the odometer.
A/C controls are dirt-simple rotary dials and hard buttons with both the base single-mode system and the dual-zone climate control in uplevel trims.
Most switchgear is utilitarian and easy to work with. However, the headlamp controls now operate via the center touchscreen and are a bit wonky. If you always leave the headlamps in automatic mode, there's little to complain about, but if you want to turn on the running/parking lamps for effect, they'll stay on after you switch off the ignition, and a warning chime will start bonging. Once you switch off the truck ignition, the only way to turn off the lights is to switch the ignition back on, turn to the center screen, select "vehicle," choose "lighting," then pick "lighting mode" to access the "switch" to turn them off, instead of just flicking an instrument panel stalk and being done with it.
Luckily, a prominent Back button on the center screen returns you to something more interesting, such as music or navigation. The power window lockout control is also on the center screen, but that's not something with which many of us regularly interact.
Photo: Ron Sessions
For the 2023 model year, the Colorado upgrades its infotainment and camera technologies. Elements include:
Additionally, the infotainment screen features a new Off-Road Performance display for monitoring key metrics in different driving situations. The Terrain screen shows real-time information such as vehicle roll, pitch, and tire pressure; the Overlanding screen details altitude and GPS coordinates; and the Baja display shows transfer-case status, wheel slip, and g-force readings.
In addition to the standard reversing camera, as many as 10 driver-selected camera views are available. The standard Hitch Guidance and Hitch View modes help the driver line up the trailer and hitch coupler. An optional under-body camera view on ZR2 and Z71 trims can help the driver negotiate off-road obstacles.
The infotainment touchscreen has generously sized tiles for interacting with the system, along with easy-to-use shortcut tabs, such as a Home button, along the left and bottom edges of the screen. Chevrolet kept the analog rotary volume knob alongside the screen, but tuning requires tapping small onscreen arrows, which can be challenging to do successfully on even the smoothest road surfaces.
The new wireless charger is large enough to handle today's phones, such as my Samsung Galaxy S21.
Making calls using the standard voice command feature was a hit-or-miss situation. Sometimes, it executed the request correctly, and other times, it did not. That situation improved when I activated Android Auto, which had no problem using its voice-control feature to make calls to people in my phone's contact list and finding and navigating to points of interest without providing address data and using simple language. Android Auto also streamed music from my phone's Pandora account with good fidelity.
Photo: Ron Sessions
Dynamically, the 2023 Colorado is a much-improved truck. For starters, power is up significantly over the prior year's offerings without a proportionate decrease in fuel economy.
A 2.7-liter 4-cylinder turbo engine powers all 2023 Colorado pickups. It is available in three levels of tune. In Work Truck and LT iterations, the standard engine makes 237 hp and 259 pound-feet of torque. Those values increase to 310 hp and 390 pound-feet of torque for the 2.7-liter Turbo Plus in the Trail Boss and Z71 trims. This version of the engine is also optional for the Work Truck and LT. The ZR2's engine also has a rating of 310 hp, but in its standard 2.7-liter Turbo High Output format, torque increases to 430 pound-feet.
All 2023 Colorado turbo power plants offer pleasing performance and good throttle response with healthy low- and midrange torque. Each engine teams with a quick-shifting 8-speed automatic transmission.
With the base 237-hp engine, towing capacity maxes out at 3,500 pounds. However, the maximum tow rating increases to an impressive 7,700 pounds when you equip the Colorado with either of the 310-hp versions of the 2.7-liter 4-cylinder turbo.
The Colorado drives smaller than it looks, courtesy of a rigid frame, nicely weighted rack-and-pinion steering, and confidence-inspiring 4-wheel disc brakes with a light touch and quick-responding electronic booster.
The wider stance aided stability in the Trail Boss test truck, while the raised suspension added 1.5 inches of front-wheel travel and an extra inch at the rear. Even with its conventional hydraulic twin-tube shocks, the Trail Boss handled residential speed bumps so well that I wondered if Chevrolet had somehow substituted the Multimatic DSSV dampers from the purpose-built ZR2 in the test truck.
Photo: Ron Sessions
In addition to seven airbags, the 2023 Colorado gets an expanded suite of safety features and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Standard Chevy Safety Assist elements include:
Optional features available with the Colorado include the following:
Chevrolet did not equip the Trail Boss test truck with any optional safety features or ADAS, but all standard features functioned as expected. An uncommon feature in competitive vehicles, the following-distance indicator provided a helpful (and sobering) reminder of how often a second or two separated me from the previous vehicle moving at in-town speeds during the routine commute or trip to the store.
Initially, the Buckle to Drive feature surprised me when I wanted to move the truck a few feet for a different photo angle without buckling the seat belt, and the shifter wouldn't shift out of Park. Not as confounding as the seat belt interlock systems of the early 1970s, Chevrolet's well-intentioned Buckle to Drive feature times out 20 seconds after starting the engine anyway, and for those drivers annoyed with it, you can turn the system off in vehicle settings.
Photo: Ron Sessions
The 2023 Chevrolet Colorado has a single bed choice, measuring 61.7 inches long and 58.2 inches wide. There are 45.5 inches between the wheelhouses at floor level, so a 4x8 sheet of plywood won't lay flat on the cargo floor. The total cargo volume in the bed is 41.9 cubic feet.
An optional Stowflex storage compartment inside the tailgate adds a small amount of hidden, easily accessible stowage space for small items such as jumper cables and work gloves.
Additional hidden storage is available under the rear-seat bottom cushions.
The 2023 Chevrolet Colorado offers competitive fuel mileage with most compact and midsize pickup trucks, except for the much more fuel-efficient Ford Maverick Hybrid. Combined city/highway EPA estimates for the 2023 Colorado Work Truck and LT are 22 mpg for 2WD models and 21 for 4WD. The 4WD-only Z71 and Trail Boss get a 19-mpg rating, and the ZR2 achieves an 18-mpg estimate.
Based on the 19-mpg observed average fuel economy of the Trail Boss test truck and its 21.4-gallon fuel tank, its maximum cruising range is approximately 406 miles.
As of the posting of this review, neither the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) nor the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) had released crash-test or safety ratings for the 2023 Chevrolet Colorado.
Base prices range from $29,200 for a 2WD Colorado Work Truck to $47,195 for a 4WD Colorado ZR2. The additional destination charge is $1,495.
In the JD Power 2023 Initial Quality Study (IQS), the Ford Ranger and Jeep Gladiator rank highest in the Midsize Truck segment. The Ford Maverick is the next highest-ranked model.
In the 2023 APEAL Study, the Hyundai Santa Cruz ranks highest in the Midsize Pickup segment. The Nissan Frontier and the Ford Maverick are the next highest-ranked models.
Other competitors to the 2023 Colorado include the GMC Canyon, Honda Ridgeline, and Toyota Tacoma.
Photo: Ron Sessions
The 2023 Chevrolet Colorado offers solid improvements over the preceding version in performance, handling, off-road capability, infotainment, safety, and driver-assistive tech. Along with its GMC counterpart, the Canyon, the Colorado faces off against an improved Ford Ranger and Toyota Tacoma in a reinvigorated midsize pickup truck segment.
Ron Sessions is a seasoned vehicle evaluator with more than three decades of experience. He has penned hundreds of road tests for automotive and consumer websites, enthusiast magazines, newsletters, technical journals, and newspapers.
