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Water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The new Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD’s grille will cast a shadow over a significant percentage of the rest. A testament to brutalism, the Silverado 2500HD looks like a standard Silverado went in for some aggressive celebrity dentistry. It’s bold. It’s garish. It’s brilliant.
This grille is fit for purpose. The Big Three truck game is about oneupmanship. The primary playing field is appearance. Truck owners aren’t racing at stoplights. They aren’t rolling into the parking lot and prattling on about respective payload statistics. The goal for a standard Silverado is to look more robust than a Ram or an F150.
That presents a problem for the 2500HD version of the Silverado. How do you make it look bigger and more badass than the already biggered and biggered 1500 Silverado? Some buyers need the expanded torque and towing capacity. A significant percentage want that bigger truck that comes with two options, an American V8 and an even larger displacement American V8. As importantly, they want the truck to look like what it is.
Hood vents and character lines can only accomplish so much. The only real way to project even more masculinity is through the grille. Factor in that Ford and Ram face similar issues styling their heavy duty trucks. The result in that segment is a grille off. Chevrolet just threw down an industrially inspired, borderline cartoonish gauntlet to its competitors.
If nothing else, the Silverado 2500HD grille recasts the media cycle. This past week has been a PR nightmare for GM. The company needed something to change the narrative. We all know social media and, consequently, the press gets distracted by large, shiny objects. Bam! Here’s a literal and figurative one. Unleash the flood of Chevrolet related blog posts that have nothing to do with plants closing.
