Colorado

Make
Chevrolet
Segment
Sports Car

Got a set of GM wheels you want tuned? Lingenfelter Performance Engineering has been at it for nearly half a century now, making a name for itself by tuning everything from Camaros and Corvettes to Cadillacs and Suburbans. And now it's turned its attention to one of Chevy's hardest of hardcore off-road pickups.

Lingenfelter's take on the Chevy Colorado ZR2 starts right where it should: under the hood. That's where it's installed an Edelbrock supercharger on the 3.6-liter V6 engine, boosting output by 35 percent from 308 horsepower to about 416.

That may not be quite as much as you'd get in, say, a full-size Ford F-150 Raptor, what with its 450 hp... but it's not far off. More to the point, it's a heck of a lot more than you'd find more directly comparable mid-size off-road pickups like the Ford Ranger Raptor or Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro.

What's more is that the enhancement can be applied to any version of the Colorado (or its twin GMC Canyon) packing the LGZ engine, from the base model to the Z71. A sufficiently motivated owner could even have their Colorado ZR2 Bison, enhanced by American Expedition Vehicles, tuned to the same level.

In the factory's top ZR2 model, though, Lingenfelter has wisely avoided messing with the off-road equipment. So the Multimatic DSSV suspension and those giant knobby tires remain in place, detracting nothing from the ZR2's rock-crawling, dune-jumping prowess.

"When we did the kit… we wanted to enhance the truck in a way where it didn't just make horsepower, but it was usable power so they could do things like towing, and to add equipment like bigger tires," Lingenfelter COO Mark Rapson told Muscle Cars & Trucks, which promise more details (including pricing and availability) to follow in due course.