The Most Luxurious & Smartest Pickup...Ever? 2022 GMC Sierra Denali Ultimate In-Depth Review

Hi folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. The Denali nameplate for GMC was really one of the first to bring together the idea of luxury and pickup trucks and for the longest time Denali was really the best but over the last you know half a decade it really fell behind the competition and that's something that GM is looking to fix with this. That's the 2022 GMC Sierra Denali Ultimate and we're here to find out well is it really the ultimate GMC? Let's take a look. The standard powertrain here in this Denali Ultimate is the 6.2 liter V8. It's making 420 horsepower, 460 pound-feet of torque and that is sent through a 10-speed automatic and for those who want it you can also get that 3 liter diesel under the hood of this truck. Let's look at all the features on this truck and as the name suggests this is the ultimate so everything has been included. Starting at the back you get that multi-flex tailgate. Moving forward a standard carbon pro bed that is a carbon fiber bed. Now it's standard for 22 at least here in Canada. 2023 it'll become an option. We do have a nice set of running boards here. If you hit that kick switch button too they actually come behind the cab of the truck so then I'm able to access things in the bed. Like I said all the features are here on this truck. Now as we roll forward you can't help but notice those 22 inch wheels. Big set of wheels with that kind of beautiful painted pocket look. It's really really nice and that's the other thing that truly sets this truck apart is the way it looks. You get a whole unique front end, unique grill. They really went for the sort of wide look here so the grill has been more incorporated into the headlights. Another thing they talked about was going for a technical look. Now personally I think that's a gorgeous pickup truck but now I want to hear from you. Go below and let me know what you think. Did GMC nail the styling on this new Ultimate? So folks here we are driving in the Denali Ultimate and we went over everything on the exterior of the truck but truly it's the interior of this truck that makes it special and this is really what's brand new. Now before we dive into that dad let's just go over what's not new and that is basically the driving experience. We have the same 6.2 VA, same 10 speed so why don't you first of all just tell us how you've been driving today on this truck. We've been driving all over rural Ontario on our way up to Tobermory so yeah let the people know how's it drive. It's a beautiful driving truck. It's quiet, the power is outstanding, transmission works well but then these are not new things so this is a known quantity and in a lot of ways that's good because they're not fighting that battle where everything is new and everybody is suspect over what they like or don't like. The flaw in this truck in the Denali specifically has been that the interior got dated. The other guys saw them as the target and they did a really good job and over the last you'd say at least three or four years maybe even five Denali simply lost ground. The name was still important, people still thought it meant a lot but then you climbed into the truck and you went on paying how much for this? Yeah and you know what it wasn't that different either. That was another thing with this generation GMC has really gone there so this Denali very much differentiated from the rest of the Sierra lineup here with the GMC and now yeah I mean just looking at it dad the thing that always really offended me and I don't use that word lightly but it really did offend me was that big slab of black plastic down the center of the Denali. It wasn't even nice looking black plastic so it just looked so cheap and that's gone. Everything here is now gorgeous. We have beautiful wood in front of me, nice knurled metal, we have the piano black, the largest stop start button I've ever seen but it's pretty nice too all chromed out like that. We got the huge green right in front of the driver and here in the center so and I should also say it's more of a horizontal layout. They've really stretched it kind of wide like this gives the truck this big wide kind of spacious feeling too. Yeah well it is spacious I mean I gotta point out you're looking at the two of us I mean look at this yeah okay I mean I can barely slap him. He's so far over on the other side of the truck so you're getting the room you're paying for that however the funny thing that I was thinking when Steve was earlier going here start thinking about what you're going to say and I thought you know what back in the day when my dad used to have a shop truck my mom had an Oldsmobile Cutlass the main reason being is because she didn't want to ride in the truck it was too uncomfortable it was just very very few creature comforts and I can't picture anybody man or woman complaining today that I don't want to ride in that truck yeah I mean this thing is a luxury experience and and at almost a hundred thousand dollars it better damn well be yeah absolutely yeah we're getting things like 16-way power seats up here which also massage you we have a custom Bose sound system that only goes into this Denali and really dad we harp on this a lot too it's about details you can get the overall feeling but did you nail the details and and some of the details here are really nice this wood actually has an inlay of a topographical map of the Denali State Park in Alaska that's pretty cool you'll also see these inlays where it gives you the coordinates of the State Park too those are neat I even noticed that on on something like the switch over there for your lights there's even these little kind of um indents into the switch to give it this sort of mechanical industrial feel those are little things that GMC didn't have to do you probably wouldn't even notice what the switch for your lights looks like but they did it they really went into those tiny little details sure you know but to your point and and the the the example I like to use the difference between a watch and a watch we all know that every watch tells time but not every watch costs ten thousand dollars in other words not every watch is a Rolex some are just Timex despite the fact that they both do the same job so therefore why are you paying all that extra money detail detail detail detail and I think this time around they got it yeah I think so too they nailed it here we also had a chance today to hook up a trailer to this Denali now it was a 3,500 pound little box trailer but it really gave us a good sense for the new technologies here and actually the first one isn't even new dad it's called transparent trailer it's been around on GM trucks now for you know a little bit but we got the chance to use it again today and I think it's a brilliant system it eliminates the need to have those little stick on aftermarket mirrors so if you have a trailer that you can't see behind well all of a sudden you can see behind it it's just a smart bit of technology I don't besides paying for it of course I don't see any downsides there do you well I'm going to throw this in so we don't get sued the highway traffic deck has not changed you still got to be able to see down the sides of your trailer with your but to Steve's point if you can literally see through the trailer so you can see the guy following behind you giving you the finger because he thinks you're going too slow um yeah it's a great safety feature and the thing I've been behind the wheel a few times but not uh for at least a year and the thing I realized today when I looked at it is just how good these cameras are now yeah there's no distortion between the two stitched together images they're right there bang on yeah amazing so much so that you I would actually feel comfortable backing up watching that image uh in the early days those were always so distorted that you know if there was something behind you it was good for that but to try to actually decide where it was but that's that's gone away they've they've done a really really good job with the thing so I also had the chance just by myself to try out super cruise with that same trailer and you can see me driving across the city right here and now folks we are super cruising and we do have a trailer behind our Sierra that's about 3500 pounds back there and we've been running here for you know quite a while now good 20 minutes half hour and I gotta say it's worked seamless I think the key with trailering is once you add that weight back there and especially that wind resistance you're always correcting for that trailer right you're always paying attention to what's going on behind you and that just makes the driving experience a little more fatiguing because you're just paying attention to one more thing and this just means you don't have to now I find my eyes constantly scanning my mirrors that's crucial you still want to pay attention you have to pay attention in fact the Sierra will make sure I pay attention if my eyes go off the road for too long it's actually going to disengage super cruise so there's quite a few safety features here another safety feature I really appreciate is that once the trailer is hooked up the following distances actually become larger makes total sense you're gonna have more distance needed to stop so you better not follow too closely and the truck's gonna take care of that for you too now I think if I was in super heavy traffic I'd still probably want to drive myself but out here cruising on a mostly clear highway I got no problem using this this system's been great so far well folks that concludes our day with this Denali now this is honestly such a nice truck especially thanks to that updated interior last gen it was really bad and this gen it's really good now of course I want to hear from you so go below into the comments let me know what you think of this Denali ultimate while you're down there don't forget to hit like hit subscribe hit join to become a member and then come right back here to Truck King to see what we are testing next because you never know what it's gonna be see ya