2021 Chevrolet Tahoe & GMC Yukon Review and Off-Road Test

In this episode, we test the off-road capability of the big, burly 2021 Chevy Tahoe and its cousin the GMC Yukon. Can these behemoths tame the trail? We have a full review right now. There are some vehicle segments where anything less simply won't do. If you need a truck, you don't buy a convertible Mustang. And if you regularly need to move large loads, but need the comfort and seating of an SUV, you're going to want something like this, the 2021 Chevrolet Tahoe. The model we're testing today is the High Country. Prices you see it here with extra options, $81,345 including destination. Based on a full-size truck chassis, the new Tahoe and its cousins, the Suburban and the GMC Yukon, are designed to pull up to 8,300 pounds when equipped with an optional tow package. The specific Tahoe we're looking at today has four-wheel drive and a V8. It can pull up to 8,100 pounds. Payload is also quite good at up to 1,616 pounds. If you regularly move heavy objects that fit into the generous 122.9 cubic foot cargo area, or you need a third row that doesn't torture occupants, a vehicle like the Tahoe is something to consider. Even with all three rows up, it still boasts up to 25.5 cubic feet of storage. Of course, this being a luxury trim, folding the seats down and up is as easy as hitting a button. Now, let's talk about the engine. Under the hood is an updated 6.2-liter V8 that now puts out up to 420 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque. The engine features direct injection as well as cylinder deactivation to help with economy. EPA rates this at up to 14 miles to the gallon in the city and 19 on the highway. A 10-speed automatic transmission is standard. Our test car also came with full-time four-wheel drive along with a dual-range gearbox. Now let's climb on in and check out the interior. The second row here is actually really nice. I have touchscreen displays that I can access my multimedia. I have multiple inputs down here. I have two HDMIs, two USB-Cs. I also have three levels of seat warmer as well as my own air con. It's really, really nice and especially with this massive panorama sunroof, it just lets in the light. I really like it here. Now, I don't think I want to go back there though because, you know, I never fit back there. Okay, let's go ahead and try it. Leg room is an issue, but surprisingly, my head is not hitting. This really isn't that bad. Moving to the front, we really haven't even scraped the surface on all the features in this high country. Okay, let's power it on. Oh, that engine sounds great. I have a nice combination analog and digital cluster here and then over here, I have a really nice, large color display and it is a touchscreen, of course. Chevy has really been stepping up their interiors and this is actually quite nice, yet it still looks like a Chevy and I'm not saying that in a bad way, it's just they've done a good job of maintaining that Chevy rounded look. All these rounded corners, we have these wood inlays, also have this metal here and then this contrast stitching. This is a high-end vehicle and it has the high-end look that you expect on the inside. I also, of course, get a massive bin. I have wireless charging for my phone down here and this even supports wireless CarPlay, which is pretty cool, super easy to use. To set up wireless CarPlay, it's as simple as plugging in a cable down here, plugging it into your phone. It'll then ask your phone, do you want to enable wireless CarPlay? You just say yes and then you can unplug and you're golden. Seating position's quite good. I have three levels of heat on the back and bum or just the back. I also have ventilation. Yeah, this is nice and the funny thing is that this looks like the interior of a Chevy that I might have driven several years ago, but it's been amplified in a really nice way. Everything's been upgraded here. The materials, the design, the quality of the stitching, it all looks very nice. Acura moved their automatic controller for the transmission to the center and it has a bunch of buttons and I like that on the Acura because of the way that it works. This one, I pull for drive, pull for reverse and then I can hit plus and minus with these tiny little unevenly spaced buttons. Yeah, never, ever, ever going to use those. Transmission selector aside, this does have the benefit of having four high and four low in addition to an auto all-wheel drive, which means you can keep it in four-wheel drive even when you're driving on pavement. If you've ever driven an old truck, you know you can't really do that. It has to be in two-wheel drive. Got lots of cup holders here, here, got one down there, over there, back there, back there. Yep, cup holder city. If you like all these features but you want a large SUV that looks a little bit tougher, you could always opt for its cousin, the GMC Yukon Denali. How similar are these two? It's the exact same vehicle. Yeah, no, like everything is exactly the same. That includes the little parking button, fold-out running boards, it's the same V8 engine, fold-down seats and even the power sliding console. Yes, the Tahoe High Country does this as well. It's controlled from the driver's seat so kids can't abuse it. The screens in the second row are the same. In fact, we showed you these earlier as part of the Yukon review. You probably didn't even notice. Both allow passengers to send directions to the driver, which they can accept or deny. The GMC Yukon is perhaps one of the laziest rebadges of 2021. It has the same rear-view mirror that doubles as a camera, blind-spot warning, heads-up display. In fact, it even has the same air suspension and drive mode settings on the exact same digital display. All they've really done here is add some extra chrome, change some minor details and call it good. Price is even basically the same at $83,795 for the GMC as you see it here. The only differences here that we can really tell based on the window stickers are that the GMC does have 14 speakers versus 10 speakers in the Chevy. And GMC also states it has an electronic limited slip differential, where the Tahoe lists a mechanical limited slip. We're not going to disassemble them to look. Later in this video, we will test out these two differentials in an off-road situation to see which is better. But for right now, let's jump back into the Tahoe. V8 engines may not be that popular anymore, but one segment where they still dominate is in the full-size SUV. It's kind of funny. Already the High Country costs $72,000 and change. However, this one has $10,000 in additional upgrades. Yeah, you're looking at over $82,000 for this vehicle. And what I find really weird is some of the stuff that doesn't even come on the $72,000 High Country. And that is things like the adaptive cruise control. A Toyota Corolla comes with adaptive cruise control, yet for some reason, Chevy can't see fit to put it as a standard feature on their $72,000 SUV. That said, let's try it out. Now, I do like that I have a big button here to adjust the gap, I set my cruise speed, and now it's pacing the vehicle in front of me. But will it turn with lane detect? Kinda? Nah, no. This has what would be referred to as the old-fashioned style of lane detect, where basically you can set it to either do a chime or it'll give you a little bit of a nudge back into the lane. But it doesn't do lane centering. Now I know I'm sounding a little bit like a broken record here, but there are several manufacturers that are now providing as an option, at least on their higher-end trims, the ability to do lane centering. Lane centering is just one of those nice tech things that uses existing hardware and then improved software to be able to track down the center of the lane. It really is a good feature for long road trips. The people who are going to buy a High Country are probably people who are going to be pulling a trailer or something where you need the big honkin' V8. You need that massive towing capability. And here, they kinda don't even offer all the features that I think should just be standard. That said, this thing just has so many features, it's going to be difficult to touch on all of them. Ideally, I would do a whole towing episode with this thing, but it's not really our show. But what I am going to do is focus on one of the features that is buried in the menus here, and that is off-road mode. But before we do that, let's test out all of the on-road features to see how this thing shapes up. There are a variety of different drive modes here. We've got normal, sport, off-road, and tow hauling. Going through them on the freeway there, we were on normal. Now that we're on the twisty side roads, I can put it into sport, and it hunkers down a little bit because this is equipped with the adaptive air suspension. It will read the road and respond accordingly. Switch it to normal. Oh yeah, there's more rolling there. And then we'll go sport. Okay, firms it up just a little bit. Okay, that is a noticeable difference. That's what you're looking for in those different drive modes when you have adaptive suspension like that. But it doesn't really, you know, make it sporty. This is just way too large of a vehicle to ever be considered sporty, but it is definitely confident on these side roads. One thing I really like on the Chevy vehicles these days is when they do offer a high and low gear, they typically also offer an auto four-wheel drive mode, which basically allows you to be in four-wheel drive even when weather conditions are dry. In a normal four-wheel drive setup, you don't ever want to be in four-wheel drive on dry surfaces because you'll get a lot of binding in the left and right power distribution. So as you go around a corner, that outside wheel will skip. Auto basically removes that issue altogether. I think over the next few years, we'll see auto four-wheel drive kind of trickle down to more vehicles. Let's drive zero to 60 here. I'm going to go ahead and switch the vehicle into sport mode, and that's all I'm going to do. Three, two, one, go. Mercy! And 60, 6.05 seconds. That's quick enough. Oh yeah, that's quick enough. Let's head into the woods and see how this thing handles in the pavement. You know, I'm going to miss having that big tree in the way. We got that chopped down with our last Jeep expedition up here. Weather is looking, you know, there's a little snow on the side of the road, but not a lot. I think this is going to be pretty easy to get up to our rock climb today. I'm going to have to be really careful today because I'm rolling on massive 22-inch wheels. So I have a little bit of sidewall, but not a lot. And though the air suspension should adapt for these rough surfaces, it can only do so much. Now that I'm heading into the gravel roads, I'm going to go ahead and switch this to auto four-wheel drive, which I can do on the fly. That way it'll shift power around as necessary. But as things start to get more challenging, we're going to leave it in auto four-wheel drive and just see how far we can take that system. The air suspension is doing a good job of cushioning all of these rough surfaces inside the cabin here. Right now we're in normal drive mode. Oh, okay, we got branches down, waterfall, let's, uh, I think we're going to go ahead and switch this into off-road mode and see if that can smooth things out even more. Oh, the vehicle is now raising up. Nice. Default ground clearance on this vehicle is eight inches. With the airless suspension, it can go up as high as 10. Yeah, more than a 4Runner. That should be plenty to get us over any of the obstacles we need to today. The sheer size and the length of the wheelbase are going to be the real problems. As a use case, I could see somebody who owns like a working farm or a ranch owning one of these, absolutely. They might need to go out to the North 40 to check things out and it might be a dirt road. So this actually does have some practical application, the test that we're going to do today, because I've seen some of those ranch roads and they ain't great. This lower section here is going to give me a much better indication with what I'm dealing with. Will I have trouble in the main course? I will soon find out. The vehicle is currently in off-road, which gets it slightly elevated. I do have it in auto four-wheel drive, so we might see some power shuffling around the system. Man, this suspension is actually really smooth. I'm just keeping the throttle on. Smooth we go, three miles per hour. And it makes it up with no issue whatsoever. Great. Now I'm really looking forward to this next part. Okay, let's try the big Tahoe up the rock line. Now, what am I going to do for setup? I'm already in off-road mode. I'll put it into drive. That's basically all I can do. I have no rear locking differential, which I don't think I'd really need on this anyway. And off-road mode has already brought me up in height. But I'm going to keep it in auto four-wheel drive, and we'll see what that does on the climb. We'll then do the climb again, at least the lower part, with four low, so you can see what the difference looks like. Okay, let's do it. Now you might have noticed that these are very shiny 22-inch wheels on this thing. I don't really want to scratch them, so I'm going to try to be extra careful here. Crawling along at one, two miles per hour. Oh man, this thing is so huge. I know it's not a Suburban, but still, you know, it's big. This should be the first real obstacle, where we take traction off these two wheels, and we'll see how that auto four-wheel drive shuffles power around. Does it need any thinking, or does it just do it? Oh, it needs to do some thinking. Interesting. I want to do that again now, and I want to do it in four high, see what that looks like, and then we'll do it in four low, to see what that looks like. In drive, we'll do four high, it's in four high. I don't need to shift to neutral for four high. It just does it automatically. So the exact same thing, all I've done is switch into four high. Let's see what it looks like in terms of difference. I can hear wheel braking, pushing power around. Okay, now let's do it one more time in four low. I'm expecting this to look a lot different on the outside. I have no idea from the inside here. Okay, oh, I have to go to neutral for four low. Shift into neutral. Is it shifting? Okay, all collision things have turned off, so I must be, yeah, it says up there four low. Okay, we hit drive, and now, oh, throttle's a lot smoother because, of course, the gears. Huh, interesting. I'm actually having a harder time. Huh. Well, that's interesting. Here you can see the difference in how the auto four-wheel drive and four low handle loss of traction. We did this test several times, and in all cases, the four auto setting was more capable than the four low setting in pushing power where it was needed. The Tahoe does have a mechanical limited slip differential, but in these very specific conditions with a loss of traction on an incline, we just don't see it really helping. Now let's see that exact same position with the GMC Yukon. We asked GMC about this, and they said that their E-differential can act like a locker, giving more capability in off-road situations compared to the Tahoe. And here, we can see that even in four low, the GMC manages to pull itself free. Now we'll finish the course in the Chevy Tahoe. Clear the stick. Anything else? The course looks pretty good. I'm a little concerned where there's a lot more wear right up there. I think the approach angle is going to be an issue, so we'll keep an eye on that. Just checking the course. I think we'll be okay. Got one more party trick to show you, though. We'll do it right up here. So I'm proceeding on in four low. One thing I do like about four low is even though it struggled back there because all the traction aids were turned off, is that the smooth throttle really gives me a more progressive feel. Now there's no locking differential here, which would have helped us back there, but it is what it is. Now I'm really concerned about my nose placement here. Let's put the nose in the ditch and see how this is lining up in terms of scraping. You know, I think the metal will be fine, but I'm a little concerned about the plastic under there. Yeah, I could get scratched, but I just don't want to, so I'm going to do one more thing. One more party trick this vehicle has is when it is in four low, you can actually hit the button down here and raise it even higher for maximum ground clearance. That gives us the full 10 inches of clearance, which should help us with that front nose. Let's go ahead and drive through it and see how close we get. Great. Of course, for over $80,000, this does have hill descent control, and we're going to try that next. Just got to get this turned around, get that wheel binding from all the turning. That is natural in four low and four high. Now let's see what hill descent control looks like. Ideally, we will go at about one mile per hour, and I can adjust it using cruise control or some other switch. I haven't done it in this before, so I don't really know what my options are. Where is that button? Oh, there it is. Hill descent control on. Nothing's getting adjusted by hitting those buttons, so I'm just going to let go and see how we go. Oh, hill descent control set to one mile per hour. One, two. Oh, I can manually change it with the cruise control selection. Nice. Oh, and that's going to just give us a nice, smooth roll down, and it even slows even more when it detects that I'm cresting. Perfect. Love it. I'm going to stop there and think. Yeah. Feel that wheel braking. Now, the neat thing about hill descent control is it will use all the brakes independently, whereas if you're putting your foot on the brake, it'll, of course, apply all four brakes at the same time. This reduces slip in steep inclines. If you're looking for a very large V8-powered SUV because you got stuff you want to haul or places you want to go, or heck, you could probably even just live in this thing if you wanted to, the Tahoe is actually quite nice. There's just a couple issues, and that is they really charge a lot for some extras that I think should be included on the vehicle. Also, depreciation's always an issue with these type of vehicles. You're not going to get all the features that this one has, and you're not going to get that great-looking exterior because this one is all new for 2021, but there's definitely something to consider if you're shopping for one. If you're going to buy it and then drive it until the end of its days, great. Do it. So, now that we've finished the hill climb, I am noticing that the leveling system shows a lock next to it, and when I hit level, it says the leveling system is unavailable. Hopefully, the leveling system comes back and joins us again soon. Otherwise, this thing's going to be walking around on stilts for the rest of its life. Did I overheat it? I don't feel like I really did that much. If you were working on a farm and you needed to go out and inspect a location and you were driving one of these, that would not be that unusual. Oh, hey, look at that. I complained enough, and it clears the error. I now have my leveling system available. Yes, it has now gone back to normal. If you own air suspension on a car, do you ever get it where it just says, no, I don't want to go back to normal until later? Is that like some kind of overheat? Well, let me know. Share it in the comments below because I like to educate myself. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching. 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