Driving the Hugely, Ridiculously Equipped 2020 Chevrolet-AEV Colorado ZR2 Bison

If all of those extras aren’t enough for your 2020 Chevrolet-AEV Colorado ZR2 Bison, then you’ll be pleased that you’ve arrived here at the third paragraph. The truck you’re looking at has been outfitted by AEV with even more of its goodies, including (deep breath): unique wheels and fender flares, light brackets, an intake snorkel, a transmission skid-plate, more bars on the bumpers, premium-leather seats, and a vertical spare-tire mount. From the Chevrolet Performance aftermarket department, this particular Colorado gets a suspension-leveling kit (which increases front ground clearance) and tie-rod reinforcement sleeves. But wait, as the late-night mail-order TV ads say, there’s more: A bunch o’ lights from Baja Designs (controlled by a nicely integrated AEV switch panel), 4:10 axle gears, a Warn winch, 35-inch BFG tires, custom green paint, and more AEV logos than we’ve ever seen in one place.

We had a fair bit of trouble figuring out exactly how much all this stuff cost. AEV actually built this 2020 Chevrolet-AEV Colorado ZR2 Bison truck from a ZR2 without the Bison package; since the company makes most of the Bison gear, it figured it was best to fit it in-house. With the $12,325 custom-color paint job factored in, AEV put an MSRP on this truck of $92,031. Yowza! When company reps realized the price had us choking up our coffee, they back-pedaled a bit, telling us that prices were still being set and that the extra pieces would bring the price of a diesel-powered ZR2 Bison from $53,445 up to $80,000 or so. We’ll reiterate “yowza,” but with a period instead of an exclamation point.

Not that you’d ever want to buy a 2020 Chevrolet-AEV Colorado ZR2 Bison exactly like this one. AEV built it to show off the possibilities for building a turn-key off-roader, and not everything (necessarily) goes together. A winch is, obviously, a great thing to have for those rare obstacles the ZR2 can’t power itself over (and/or to rescue other off-roaders with less ability or sense than you have). A snorkel is useful for high-speed off-roading, as it grabs air from above the dusty wake of vehicles ahead of you. (It’s really meant for dust, not water fording.) The spare tire mount pretty much rendered the rearview mirror redundant, but if there’s one thing we know about off-roading, it’s that you can’t have enough spare tires. Leather seats? Yes, please. And as for the custom paint, well, we still think the Colorado looks best in red.

We split our time with the 2020 Chevrolet-AEV Colorado ZR2 Bison with our colleagues at MotorTrend, and while they went for the high-speed off-roading bits, we took the slow stuff. With its grabby BFG tires and lower gears in the axles—not to mention 369 lb-ft of obliging torque from the four-cylinder diesel engine—the AEV Bison walked up our steep, deeply-rutted test-hill exerting no more effort than it did pulling into our driveway. We didn’t even bother to lock the axles. Normally we steer carefully around ruts, but in the Colorado, we didn’t even bother. The truck barely noticed them. Descents were just as easy, whether we used the hill-descent function or just shifted the automatic transmission into lower gear.

Christian Seabaugh from the MotorTrend team took the AEV Bison out for a little desert running, and he was less impressed. In his opinion, the higher weight (both sprung and unsprung) and increased ground clearance un-did most of the DSSV shocks’ ability to even out the 2020 Chevrolet-AEV Colorado ZR2 Bison’s high-speed off-road ride. “At any speed north of 15 mph, AEV’s Bison was hopelessly see-sawing back and forth on its axles,” he wrote. The off-road ride quality was terrible at stock tire pressures, and only marginally better with the tires aired down. Dropping air pressure is standard operating procedure for this kind of off-roading, but as Seabaugh pointed out, there’s no need to do so in the off-the-shelf ZR2 Bison.

On-road, Seabaugh and I agreed: The street ride is exceptionally comfortable, a fact that is true of both the regular ZR2 and ZR2 Bison. The tires made the steering feel a little more wishy-washy. What really stood out to both of us was how much all of the added jewelry weighed down the truck and dragged down the engine. With the final-drive gears swapped from 3.42:1 to 4.10:1, we expected that we might have to cruise a little slower on the freeway (turns out we didn’t), but those gears should have helped acceleration, and neither of us expected this 2020 Chevrolet-AEV Colorado ZR2 Bison to feel so sluggish—after all, diesels are supposed to shrug off weight. The 2.8 Duramax isn’t exactly the Usain Bolt of truck engines, but all that AEV gear made it feel more like Artie Lange.

To be fair to AEV, and as noted previously, anyone who knows their off-roading stuff would most likely pick and choose from this equipment and add only the bits required to meet their individual needs. And there is an advantage to going with AEV above other companies: Not only is the equipment well-made, but also your friendly neighborhood Chevrolet dealer can install it. This means you can finance the mods with the rest of the truck, and you are less likely to get arguments about the parts or their installation impacting warranty coverage. (Legally, aftermarket parts generally should not affect your warranty, but that won’t necessarily stop a dealer or manufacturer from putting up a fight.)