It was February of 2023 and I was in the process of moving to California to start a new business and a new life. After having received an invitation from Chevrolet to drive its then-new Colorado, I decided to stop by San Diego to see what Chevy’s all-new mid-size truck was all about. Fast forward over three years later, and I still haven’t written that review. That all changes right now, because someone drove their 2025 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 to Galpin Ford (The Autopian’s sister company) and traded it in for a Ford Bronco Sport. Let’s see if I can understand why.
Early 2023 was a lot for me. I was moving from Detroit, where I had lived for a decade, to California to start The Autopian, and all the while, I was starting a relationship with a West Side-girl I’d met at Pebble Beach the prior August — a West Side-girl who would become my wife and mother of my child. With so many moving parts, I was only able to squeeze one article out of my Chevy Colorado press event — an article about the truck’s touchscreen headlight switch. “I’ll publish a full review soon,” I wrote. But here were are 3.5 years later; I’m thrilled to finally right this wrong.
This beautiful 2025 Chevy Colorado ZR2 review-unit comes courtesy of a Galpin customer who traded the truck in for a 2026 Ford Bronco Sport. Autopian video manager Griffin Riley filmed my impressions of the truck in our latest Trade-In Tuesday YouTube video:
I actually still have the notes from my unpublished evaluation back in February of 2023. Check it out:
In those notes, I wrote “a little buzzy” in reference to the 2.7-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine.
I also mention turbo lag, good-but-not-great shifting from the eight-speed automatic, decent ride/handling and pleasant steering. “Not fast,” I wrote about the truck’s acceleration, noting a “wave of torque” and some high-rev downshifts. In addition, my notes criticize the packaging, saying “Seats very good on a short drive, good forward visibility, [but] not great cargo packaging in the cab.” That packaging criticism specifically notes the center console and under-rear-bench storage area.
Otherwise, I write that the truck looks nice inside and out.
Later, when I drove a higher-spec truck, I mention hard plastics, road noise, and a high floor.
Fast forward three years later, and while driving this trade-in I mention many of the same qualms. As you can see in the video, I criticize the packaging up front, noting the short center console…
…the absolutely laughable door pockets…
…and the skinny center tunnel whose limited space is wasted by the shifter:
While I don’t discuss the under-rear-bench storage since I didn’t look back there during my short drive, it appears that my 2023-self wasn’t completely full of it, because Chevy Colorado customers on Reddit have been complaining about that very thing.
Another thing I mention in my review of the 2025 trade-in is that the engine feels a bit harsh. “At idle you can kinda feel some vibration through the steering wheel. This is not your grandpa’s straight six…when you rev it, it’s not exactly silky smooth.” This aligns with my old note about the 2.7-liter being “buzzy,” something that I recorded back in 2023 to show you all:
It’s an odd-sounding truck! Almost vacuum cleaner-like.
Speaking of that engine and its sound, I have a few notes from my 2023 discussion with the engine’s Assistant Chief Engineer, Kevin Luchanski.
Here I note that there are three variants of the 2.7-liter offered in the Colorado — Turbo, Turbo Plus, and Turbo High-Output. The Turbo engine makes 237 horepower and 260 lb-ft of torque, while the Turbo-Plus and Turbo High-Output make 310 horsepower and 390 and 430 lb-ft of torque, respectively.
Obviously, this many years after having written these notes, they’re hard to parse, but I get the impression that Chevrolet learned from the Silverado that shares this engine, and tried to mask the 4-cylinder sound. “Silverado Lessons Learned — smoothness, sound — ‘Kinda sounded like a 4 cylinder in a truck,’” I wrote, quoting Luchanski.
In the notes above, I wrote down that Luchanski said these 2.7s are actually “really robust,” with changes made a few year after its 2018 launch to crank that durability up even further, as this is GM’s truck line, and expectations are high. I recall him claiming GM has been beating thee motors up, and they seem to be able to take it. I wrote down “forged steel crank, forged steel main caps” and “electric [water pump].” I could write a whole story about active thermal management and everything that an electric water pump enables, but suffice it to say: I’m a fan.
“Sounds like a big 4 cylinder, almost like a diesel, ” he told me, before noting how much lighter the motor is than the outgoing V6, and how it makes diesel-like amounts of torque.
This next note seems to suggest GM had a strategy to get oil up to temperature quickly to help deal with unwanted engine noise:
What’s more important than my chickenscratch is the fact that Luchanski actually showed us hardware, which was epic:
Here’s some NVH foam for the fuel rail — something that gets removed on the WT “Work Truck” trims: 
Here’s the cylinder head and a fancy electronic coolant valve:
Here’s the deck:
Here you can see the NVH foam that normally goes over the high pressure fuel pump; this is removed on the base truck: 
Here’s the classic gas-engine-cutaway shot, showing the cam, valvetrain, and cylinder:
I remembered three years ago that Luchanski and I broke away from the rest of the group so he could show me the custom wooden crate GM had built to transport the motor:
Anyway, back to modern-day: Another area where my modern self agrees with my 2023 self is in regards to interior plastics. They are indeed hard, but as I note, as long as they’re durable I’m cool with it:
While driving the trade-in around the San Fernando Valley, I mention a little bit of acceleration-lag when I pressed the pedal down, and I call the vehicle “not particularly fast,” because it’s just not. 310 horsepower going to 3.42:1 axles and 33-inch tires to propel almost 5,000 pounds isn’t going to lead to earth-shattering quickness, though the eight-speed automatic does a good job helping pull off a zero to 60 mph time of around 7 seconds, per Motor Trend. Seven seconds ain’t bad, and that’s how I’d characterize the Colorado ZR2’s motor; it ain’t bad. But it’s also not great.
While discussing in the video why I think someone traded this truck in for a Ford Bronco Sport, I mention the size — especially the height, just as I did in my old notes. “It’s really high,” I say in the Trade-In Tuesday clip. “That’s the big thing. It’s I can lower my seat, but I mean, at a certain point, there’s a floor there.”
The truck just feels like it’s towering above most cars out here in the streets of Van Nuys. Porsche 911s, Ford Fiestas, VW Jettas — they’re all somewhere at an altitude I can barely see from the Colorado’s lofty cabin. It’s a big-ass truck, and in the traffic of LA, this is a bit cumbersome.
The Colorado’s height is officially listed at over 80-inches, which is F-450 territory. In truth, per Redditors who own the ZR2, this figure likely accounts for the tall antenna on the base truck, with one owner saying the truck is closer to 75″. This is full-size truck territory, and when combined with the length and width of the truck, it just feels a bit nervy in heavy traffic.
The other factor that I suspect played into the previous owner’s decision to trade the truck in is efficiency — namely, the lack of it. Just look at these fuel economy numbers:
Seventeen miles per gallon when a gallon of fuel is $6/gallon is absolute madness. And the fact that this poor fuel economy is coming from a 2.7-liter four-cylinder that only makes 310 horsepower… it’s a bit sad. As is the real-world fuel economy, which, per my trip computer, dips to about 16 MPG:
Obviously, it’s a heavy, big truck with big all-terrain tires being shoved around by a small motor, so this isn’t that surprising, but it just underscores how I feel about the motor. It ain’t bad, but it also ain’t good.
The on-road ride falls into that same category. It’s a bit bouncy, but soft at the same time. It and the somewhat clumsy handling are definitely tolerable, but compared to a Bronco Sport, it’s definitely a compromise.
If you factor in price — this 9,000 mile 2025 Colorado is for sale at Galpin for about $47,000, while you can buy a Bronco Sport for $34,000 all day — the trade-in makes even more sense. In the current economy, trading down to get $10,000 in your pocket, 50% fuel savings at the pump, a better on-road ride, and more maneuverability makes a lot of sense. 
With that said, I bet it was still a hard thing to do.
The Colorado ZR2 Is A Beast
Back in 2019, when I reviewed the Jeep Gladiator, I said that, in terms of low-speed off-road capability, it was “at the top of the pack.” Shortly after publishing that, I wanted to retract it, because, though the Gladiator features a solid front axle that flexes like crazy, the advantages of that articulation are almost entirely canceled out by the truck’s less-than-optimal dimensions. You’ll see what I mean in this video of TFL Truck trying to drag the big Gladiator’s belly and big rear bumper through the Rubicon Trail:
That’s not to say the Gladiator isn’t among the top-dogs when it comes to off-road trucks, but I don’t know that it’s better than the Colorado ZR2. The ZR2’s superpower is its 25 degree breakover angle. Though the Gladiator’s approach angle is five degrees higher, and its departure angle is actually a degree higher, it’s the Colorado’s 4 degree higher breakover angle that, to me, is the bigger deal given that the big belly is clearly the limiting factor offroad.
The reality is that the 5-inch-shorter (6-inch-shorter-wheelbase) ZR2 wins in the most important area — geometry — and this more than makes up for whatever articulation disadvantage it has when compared to the Jeep. Here’s a Motor Trend comparison test coming to what I would have guessed to be the right conclusion:
The ZR2 is an extremely cool truck. It looks awesome, it’s got locking front and rear diffs, a Multimatic DSSV shock system that does well at high speeds, plenty of skid plates (minus the fuel tank unless you buy the Bison) — I myself love it, and if I had to choose a mid-size pickup right now, it would probably be between it and the Ford Ranger Raptor. And I say this as someone who was on the engineering team for the Gladiator.
So yeah, even though there are great reasons to trade it in for a much less capable but still fun Bronco Sport (fuel economy, price, maneuverability, ride), I’d have had a hard time doing it on cool factor alone.
The post 17 MPG From A 4-Cylinder: Someone Traded In A Beautiful Chevy Colorado ZR2 For A Ford Bronco Sport And I Get Why appeared first on The Autopian.
