Bison vs. Blizzard: 2020 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 Bison Reviewed

The 2020 Chevrolet ZR2 Bison arrived just in time for the Pacific Northwest's first blizzard of the year. So we did what anyone else would do. We packed up and headed to the mountains for a particularly cold and dangerous episode of Driving Sports TV. In recent years, truck companies have started offering special trims designed to cater to off-road enthusiasts. Toyota, of course, has the Tacoma TRD Pro, Ford has their Raptor, and even Jeep has thrown their hat into the ring with the new Gladiator. We of course have reviews on all of these, so please check them out after you watch this video. All of these trucks are capable and fun in their own ways, but none of them really made me say, you know what, I gotta get me one of those. That is, until I drove the 2020 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 Bison. Seriously, I'm just as surprised as you are. Later in this video, I'm going to make some questionable decisions with the Bison in some pretty crazy weather, but first, let's get to know this rig a little bit better. Built in partnership with American Expedition Vehicles out of Missoula, Montana, the Bison brings more overlanding capability to the already very capable Colorado ZR2. Like its cousin, the Bison has a stance that is 3.5 inches wider and 2 inches higher than a standard Colorado. It also comes with 31-inch all-terrain tires, locking differentials, and adaptive suspension. The Bison addition adds functional rock sliders, modified front bumper with room for an aftermarket winch, not wench, winch, special rear bumper with rescue attachments, 5 steel skid plates to protect the underbody vitals, cast iron control arms, AEV wheels, wheel flares, and special front grille. The model we're looking at today is equipped with a Duramax 2.8 liter turbo diesel. It is a $3,500 option. This engine pumps out 186 horsepower and a whopping 369 pound-feet of torque. It's connected to a six-speed automatic transmission and dual-range all-wheel drive with a 3.42 rear axle. EPA rates this setup at 22 miles to the gallon on the highway and 18 around town. Combined with the 21-gallon fuel tank, you can get a total range of more than 450 miles on a single fill-up. Prices you see it here, $53,345 US dollars, including destination. In the back is a short box with a damped gate. It's also protected by a standard spray-in liner. Handy hooks are integrated for tying down loads. Maximum payload capacity is 1,162 pounds, or about 2,000 potatoes. The special Bison bumper also protects the back of the bed in rough conditions. The second row, the crew cab, is large enough for an adult measuring 6'1". Passengers get DC power and a complete set of USB sockets. There are a couple cargo configurations back here. Fold down the backs to protect the seats. This also provides a flat surface for cargo. Or fold them up for taller objects. Up front, the interior is very much like any other high-end Colorado, with the addition of AEV weather mats and embroidered leather seats. A grown adult has plenty of headroom, and six-way power adjustments give the driver plenty of position options. It is a little surprising to find that a key is still required. Push buttons haven't yet been embraced by the truck-buying population, it seems, though the vehicle does have remote start on the key fob. Wireless charging is standard on this model, but it is a little annoying that the pad is just a little too small to fit my iPhone 11 Pro in a slimline case. This isn't a big phone by today's standards. After fussing with it, I was able to get it to charge, but there's no way it's staying in that position. Of course, the Bison does have USB sockets, and once plugged in, Apple CarPlay takes over from the built-in system. I can even use Siri hands-free. Find the nearest Starbucks. The nearest one I found is Starbucks on 120th Avenue Northeast in Kirkland. The steering wheel has nicely integrated controls, with heating and stereo controllers where paddle shifters might normally be. Chevrolet's 8-inch infotainment touchscreen system is loaded with all the features you would need, and a few extras. Teen Driver is a nice tool for managing your kid's use of the vehicle. Of course, it also supports XM radio you can pay extra to get navigation, but our vehicle didn't come with it. The main gauge cluster comes with a small informational display that can show a number of options, including setup, info, phone, direction, off-road data, and a lot more. A trailer brake controller is included, but with a maximum towing capacity of only 5,000 pounds, you probably won't be towing large loads. Because this has a dual-range gearbox, you can drive with the rear wheels only for best economy. However, on a day like today, two-wheel drive doesn't do much good. One thing I really like about Chevy trucks is the option to switch into auto all-wheel drive. With traditional old-school four-wheel drive, both front and rear axles spin at the same rate. When taking turns on firm surfaces, this causes skipping, or binding, in the wheels. The auto mode engages a clutch pack in the middle, much like an SUV's all-wheel drive setup, to allow both the front and back to spin at different rates. This is better for mixed surfaces, or when you want the safety of all-wheel drive, but you're not certain about the road conditions. Chevy recommends not using auto all-wheel drive when driving exclusively off-road. In those conditions, use either 4 high or 4 low. Switching between modes is as easy as switching a dial, but you will have to switch to neutral to engage into 4 low. Once into this mode, you can engage both front and rear lockers. The ZR2 added a special off-road mode, and of course, it's on this one as well. This changes the anti-lock brakes, traction and stability control systems, throttle input and transmission shifting points to increase performance in specific conditions. It also removes the speed limitation of the rear locker. Normally, that would shut off automatically at 25 mph. Of course, it also has hill descent control. This is enabled with a simple switch, and managed with the plus and minus buttons on the transmission controller. The ZR2 series is the first use of Multimatic Dynamic Suspension in a production off-road vehicle. These replace traditional shock pistons with spool valves. In these, the shock adjusts automatically based on the force applied. While just driving down the road, they're relatively soft. But under heavy load, they firm up. The spool valve technology allows engineers to better fine-tune the shocks, and the result is more consistent than a traditional adjustable design. Stock tires are 31-inch Goodyear Wrangler Duratec All-Terrains. AEV says you can step up to a 33-inch under there, but based on internet comments, you're not going to do it without some fuss. You will have to do a little trimming or add an aftermarket lift kit if you really want to go that route. Before we head to the mountains, let's compare reaction times between the auto all-wheel drive and the standard 4-high. First, let's look at auto. You can see how power is concentrated in the front in these particular conditions, whereas in 4-high, power is more evenly distributed. This rig is, of course, loaded with features, and earlier in the video, we discussed all of the different types of things that you can enable, but the question is, when do you use those? I mean, you don't just turn them all on at once, right? Well, today we're going to go take this up into the mountains, and we're going to go up to our hill climb area, or at least we're going to try to get there. The problem is, yeah, it's been snowing for four days straight, so as we go further up the mountain, I expect that it'll become more and more challenging. So can we even get to our hill climb? I have no idea. But along the way, we'll enable certain features to see how well this bison deals with challenging situations, specifically when dealing with snow. One thing I really like about the Colorado is that it offers not just 4-low and 4-high, it also has an all-wheel drive mode. That means that you can switch it on the fly from two-wheel drive to four-wheel drive, and it won't chatter that outside wheel as you're turning. It drives like an SUV, an all-wheel drive SUV, and so it's a much more approachable and useful all-wheel drive setup for people who are just like, you know, you're driving around town, you get a little snow, you're like, ah, it's a little icy out, I think I'll go ahead and switch into all-wheel drive mode. The Bison comes standard with 31-inch Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac tires, and though they aren't the best all-terrain tire on the market, I actually find them pretty good. I've been driving around town in ice and snow for the last few days, and I've found them to provide plenty of grip. Of course, you know, a proper snow tire does better, but if you wanted to roll on these all season, you could totally do that. Will they provide enough grip as the snow gets deeper and deeper? Probably not. At that point, you need either chains or super specialized tires, but we're going to give it a real try anyway. So we're going into this first section here, and I can see that this is already like six inches of snow. I'm going to go ahead and switch into four low. But before I even head out there, what I'm going to do is I'm going to air down the tires a little bit. We'll try to get down to, uh, we're going to take it down from 36, 37 psi all the way down to 20. Yep, and the pressures here are actually going down. It's now telling me that I'm at 28 up here, which is nice. Okay, so we're 26 all around. I think we're going to go ahead and give that a try. And mostly it is just, I don't expect this is going to be that extreme, so I can always lower them more if I need to later, but I think this is a good start. What I'm going to do here though, is I'm going to change up settings. I'm going to go from four high to four low, put it into neutral so it can shift into low. And that's it. I'm not going to touch the diff locks yet. I'm not going to touch off-road mode. This is just four low. And it helps to put it in gear. Let's go ahead and hit it. Oh, that's pretty nice. Oh, it's lovely out here. There's also, of course, always the opportunity to have a fallen tree cut our track short. You just don't know what you're going to see out here. And that's the first marker passed. We've entered the forest road. Next we got to get to the power lines. And speaking of potential hazards, you always have to kind of consider worst case scenarios. Even though I'm pretty experienced, I'm going to an area that I've been to many times and I've driven in the snow quite a lot. I still bring with me a shovel, traction boards, and a tow strap. Okay, and here we are at the power lines. There it is. Looks like we made that. That's checkpoint number two. Wow, it's snowing really heavy. Mountain weather is really funny because it'll go from a lot of snow to no snow to sun to snow even to rain if it's warm enough. It's just really kind of, you don't know what you're going to get because of the way the winds work in here, the systems can change very quickly. So again, it comes down to that level of preparation. Always be over prepared when you're heading into the mountains. Got a tree down there. Now the Bison is designed for overlanding. It's designed to get you from point A to point B. If Mount Everest, it was in between. So I expect it can get us there. Unlike the Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro, this one doesn't have like specialized crawl modes or you know, get out of jail, free car buttons. So you know, it's all on me as a driver. It's pretty straightforward, the features that are in this rig. The snow is piling up. Nice. That's tackling this road no problem. It's getting deeper and deeper as I go up and not only is the snow getting deeper and it's not all just soft snow. There's actually like large chunks of ice from previous buildups and thaws. Okay. So before we get to the next checkpoint, I'm going to, oh, I had to slow down for that branch and now we're stuck on the hill. Oh boy. Can we get out of this? Let's see. So I'm at just a nine degree tilt. Not a big deal, but it is covered in soft snow that does have ice under it. So I'm going to go ahead and put it in drive. Okay. We're just digging a hole for ourselves. So let's go ahead and put it, we'll go ahead and lock the rear differential and we'll see what that does for us. Okay. Not enough. And I'm actually starting to slide backwards. Okay. This is, that was a huge problem. Don't really want to start sliding backwards on a hill. Okay. So I'm going to turn on all my lockers and I'm going to put on off-road mode. Lots of ice right there. Whoa. Okay. That is slippery. Wow. Okay. This is looking more hazardous. It is super slick out there. We've definitely had a thaw and free cycle. Okay. So we're going to pull out all the guns on this one already. We're going to go off-road mode. Drive let's just go into low. Let's see if I can just crawl forward. No. Okay. I'm going to go backwards just a little bit. Hopefully we don't slide sliding again. Just to get a little grip here. Okay. Don't want that momentum crashing me back. This could be a very scary trip. Okay. And I'm starting to slide again. Gun it. I did not know this was going to be this icy here. Okay. This is problematic. Okay. What I'm going to do is reverse a little bit, get into some of the thicker stuff, and I'm going to try to ease in real slow. The problem is, oh boy, this was not supposed to be the demo. So if I crawl back just a little bit and get a little bit less of the steep, so it's not quite as steep, and I just ease us back, this is going to improve things. Okay. We're sliding now. Oop. Okay. It's not going like planned. That's a cliff, by the way. If I have to go all the way down this hill and then try it again, I will. Okay. Let's see. Nope. This is very, very icy. I think that if we can get past this, it should be a little bit better because the snow won't be as much of a freeze-thaw situation. So it shouldn't be as icy. Let's just go ahead and turn lockers off. Turn off that front locker. I'm going to turn off-road mode on. Okay. Let me explain what off-road mode does. What it does is allows more wheel spin, but I'm feeling like here I'm getting a little too much wheel spin, which is causing it to slide, which is a problem, of course. And a little slide is okay, but you don't want an uncontrollable slide because this is, you know, this is two tons down the side of a hill. That's not fun. I think we can get this. Okay. Is this better? No. Lock front and rear. Four low. Nope. Still not good. Okay. Let's try to back down safely and we'll have another attempt at it. Let's try this. Get a little momentum. This is where momentum is key. Okay. We got momentum. Let's see if we can ride this all the way to the top. So I have off-road mode on. I'm in four low. I have front and rear diffs locked and I am just gunning it up this hill because I do not want to go down it in reverse. I would like to go down it forward where I can see what's going on. Yes. Woo. Ha ha. Made it. Oh. Okay. Ha ha ha. Did not expect it to be that challenging. That's a situation where, oh wow, this is like two feet of snow now. That was a situation where it would have been really good to have chains on these tires because then it would give me more grip on that ice. After a short break for snacks, I headed up to the final stage. Thankfully, the snow here has better grip, even though it is deeper. Like I said before, conditions can change very rapidly in the mountains. Ha ha ha. Okay, so we're almost up at the trail road. We're just killing it, man. This is great. Okay, let's see. I think we need to, oh boy. Trail road does not exist. We're going to have to make the road. Ha ha ha. This is going to be interesting. Check it out. Yeah, so our road is right here. There's no road, but the snow is pretty soft. So I think we're going to give that a try. Why not? This may be the dumbest thing I've ever tried. At least I got seat warmers. Okay, let's do this. So I'm going to go and drive. I have diffs locked. I'm in off-road mode in low range. There's really nothing else I can do. Let's give it a try. Oh, huh. Nope, nope, nope. Okay. Apparently we can't do everything. Now can we get unstuck is the question. Okay, we have a new plan. We're not going to make a road. We're just going to try to get out of this situation that I've gotten myself in. Oh boy. Okay, I feel like I'm just slipping now. I feel like I've compressed the snow under the tires. So now we're just rolling. Now I could do this, but that's not going to do anything because I'm just slipping on ice. So, time to break out the traction boards. Traction boards are available in a variety of lengths. These are definitely on the short side because I don't always have a lot of room in the cab for my reviews. I'll include a link in the description field if you want to get a set for yourself. To use them, first shovel out the excessive snow from under the tire. While doing this, I can see that where I chose to go, there was a lot more large chunks of ice than I had really expected. Jam the board under the tire best you can. It's really important that you get the nibs under the tire so it has something to grab onto. Since I had wedged the vehicle counter to any actual traction road, I wasn't too sure on the best positioning of the boards. Watching this after the fact, I probably should have put them behind the front wheels to start and rolled backwards. But it's always much easier to figure these things out after the fact. With the boards not working here, I decided to go old school and just pull out a shovel. With a shovel and enough time, you can always get a rig out. Granted, you might be digging all the way down to bare earth, but hey, it's an option. Having made some headway with the shovel, I decided to give the boards another try, this time rolling backwards and still remove more snow from behind the front wheels. The bison still wouldn't budge. Something other than grip was the problem here. At this point, I focused on digging out under the front with an attempt to roll forward with the boards one more time. So I have traction boards, I've dug out the snow, and I got the ice out from under the engine, which is, I think, what was really holding us up. Let's see if we got progress. Gotta go really slow on those traction boards. With the ice so hard, I was having real issues getting the boards under the tires. So I finally decided to just attempt some power maneuvers. Swing jack! Luckily, this has underbody armor, because I'm probably scraping on some ice or rocks or something at this point. I still feel like I'm just, like, very close. Okay, we must be high-centered. Let's go check this out. Oh, that's lots of dirt. Okay. Back to digging. With the wheels now churning up some dirt, I finally had enough grip. If I could just get enough momentum to get myself out of the hole I had literally dug myself into. Yes! I knew I could do it. So we clearly are not going up to the rock trail hill climb. Instead, we are going to back down the mountain, because, yeah, we're not getting up there. That's not happening. Though the vehicle had finally been released from the clutches of the snow, there was one more challenge to face before we were free and clear. And that is the forest climb down the mountain, where I almost fell off the cliff earlier. Though this time, at least I'll be facing it head-on. Okay, though the upper section was nice and fairly easy to traverse, this section is going to be dicier. And that is because of what you saw when we first came up. It is super slick. So for this, I'm going to put it into 4-low. I don't want a lot of wheel spin, so I'm actually... And there I'm just sliding. That's sketchy AF. Let's kind of put our wheels more on the snow. See if that gives us a little bit more control here. Just as an experiment before we get going too fast. I'm going to put it into low. I have push buttons here to control going up and down in my speed. And I'm going to crawl at an amazingly slow pace. Because this is a very long, steep hill. And I do not want to slide all the way down. I am in no hurry. I'm not even registering on the speedo. Now this is the first section where the ice is insanely slippery. Let me check the temperature. Yeah, it's at 29. So... I mean, if this was like 15 degrees, it probably wouldn't be a big deal. But right now, it's probably kind of close to melting point. And there's the first slide. I have full brakes on. ABS engaged. Still sliding. But this is an okay speed. I can deal with this speed. I'm not panicking yet. When you're going in reverse, you panic a little quicker, if you know what I mean. And the trickier thing is... See how I'm jogging left and right here? The ice is kind of having its way with me. And I'm flying down like a bobsled. But I don't have any control of my bearings quite so much. I mean, I can steer. But steering on ice? I might end up in the ditch, which I just did. But I think we're okay here because it's not too bad. Back on the track. And I've disabled the front locker so that I have ABS active again. That's kind of important on a steep hill like this. Because ABS will brake individual wheels. Whereas if I just slam the brakes on without ABS, it just locks all four. So this way I should be more controlled. It should also help keep the yaw centered here. Actually, I want to go to four high because I just realized my traction control is off. And I want traction control on for this. Let's use tech, right? Let's use the tech we got. Four high, so we have traction control on. I should have had that on this whole time. So right now I'm using all the aids. I'm in four high because that is what you need to do to be able to get traction control and ABS all functional. And on a hill like this, I think that's kind of critical so that you're maintaining a straight track and not skewing quite so much. Okay. Yes, I could probably just gun it down here. But I don't know what's down at the bottom. There could be a Jeep stuck. I don't know. So it's always good to maintain a controlled descent because you never know what you're going to see around that bottom corner. There could be a downed tree. I don't know. So right now I'm just creeping along at five miles per hour. This is kind of not quite as steep here, so I can go a little quicker. Whew. I think we're almost in the clear. That was an eventful day. Hey. That's kind of the thing. When you get these vehicles that are so much more capable, is that when you do get into problems, the problems get bigger too. Now the thing that's nice is that this has a big toolbox in order to help get you out of hairy situations. But you need to know how to use them. And even me, I have not driven this particular vehicle all that much off-road. So I'm sure there's some things that I could have done better, but it's still kind of a learning experience. But I wanted to kind of share with you some of the basics, tools you can use for getting unstuck. And if that tool is a shovel, that tool is a shovel, you know? And that also goes to show that at the end of the day, all of these cool techie toys are good and helpful. But if you don't have a shovel, you don't have a toe strap, you might as well not venture into the woods. Was there something I could have done better in this situation? Or should I have done something in a different order? Leave a comment, subscribe, all that stuff. We have a lot more videos coming up, and you won't want to miss them. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching. I'm going to go get myself a mocha. I feel like I deserve it now, right? We'll see you next time.