Chevrolet just buried the engine an entire generation of pickup buyers grew up with
Two iconic V8s are dead. Chevrolet just announced the most powerful naturally aspirated pickup in its class — and a new 6.6 closely related to the Corvette LS6.
Chevrolet is preparing a new generation of the Silverado 1500 — and this is not just a facelift. Almost everything under the hood is changing, and names that defined the American pickup market for a quarter of a century are vanishing from the lineup. This is not a refresh. This is the end of an era.
The 2027 Silverado 1500 range has been trimmed down to seven trims: Work Truck, Custom, Custom Trail Boss, Silverado, Trail Boss, ZR2 and High Country. The familiar LT is gone — its slot is now filled by a trim with a short, confident name: Silverado. And every Silverado 4WD now comes standard with the Z71 package: skid plates, off-road suspension and hill descent control. What used to be a paid option is now baked in.
But the real bombshell is under the hood. Chevrolet is burying two cult engines at once: the naturally aspirated 5.3 and 6.2-liter V8s. The 5.3-liter V8 had been in the Silverado since 1999 — for an entire generation of buyers, it was “the” engine. It’s gone. In their place come new naturally aspirated 5.7 and 6.6-liter V8s, built on a refreshed Small Block architecture — in other words, direct relatives of the just-announced 6.7-liter Corvette LS6.
The numbers are still under wraps, but Chevrolet has gone loud: the 6.6-liter V8 will be the most powerful naturally aspirated engine in the full-size pickup class. For perspective — the current 6.2 makes 420 hp and 624 Nm. Its Corvette LS6 cousin produces 535 hp and 705 Nm. The new Silverado will land somewhere between those two figures. Suddenly, this is a very different conversation.
Chevrolet isn’t touching the diesel. The 3.0-liter inline-six Duramax stays in the lineup: 305 hp, 671 Nm, around 9.4 L/100 km combined in rear-wheel-drive form. For people who actually tow and drive long distances, the diesel is still the calmest call — lower fuel use, torque in spades, predictable working logic. And the Silverado and GMC Sierra remain the only full-size pickups in North America where you can still buy a diesel.
The fourth engine — the entry-level turbocharged 2.7-liter TurboMax — also stays, but gets a new 10-speed automatic in place of the old 8-speed. A small recalibration that should noticeably bump up the base truck’s efficiency.
In Tarantas News’ view, Chevrolet is playing two boards at once. On one side, the new V8s are a direct hit on the Ford F-150 and Ram 1500, which have already put big gasoline engines back at the center of the conversation. On the other, keeping the Duramax matters strategically: against the rising tide of electric pickups and Toyota Tundra hybrids, it almost sounds defiant. But that’s exactly the stance: while rivals pivot to turbo-hybrids, Chevrolet is betting on a big naturally aspirated V8 and a diesel. The old school is coming back.
The 2027 Silverado 1500 doesn’t exist for the Russian market in any meaningful volume — price, taxes, dimensions and fuel use see to that. But in the niche of big American trucks, demand is steady, and a Silverado 4WD with the Z71 package as standard sits a lot more naturally on rough roads than the city-slicker luxury configurations.
Chevrolet isn’t throwing a revolution for a slick press release. It’s hitting precisely where pickup buyers actually look: power, torque, off-road readiness and a clear difference between trims. Sales start at the end of 2026. The wait isn’t long.