If you’re like me, you probably find it difficult to associate the notion of agility with something weighing well over 2 tons, but that’s exactly what GMC is pushing here.
GMC’s marketing troops insist that the Yukon XL Denali — curb weight 5,850 pounds — possesses “unsurpassed agility.”
When I first heard this pitch, delivered just before I climbed aboard for a day of back-road driving near this southern California seaside city, you can imagine the reaction — a barely-suppressed snort of derision.
Agile? Yeah, right. Agile like a bulldozer. Nimble, like an elephant. Who do these guys think they’re kidding?
Turns out that GMC’s suggestion, so absurd in the abstract, makes a certain amount of sense in the real world.
Having said that, though, I feel obligated to affix an asterisk. Like any other descriptor, agility is a relative term. Compared to another vehicle in this size class — the Ford Excursion — GMC’s posh pachyderm is in fact surprisingly quick. But compared to a good midsize family sedan — a Honda Accord, for example — the dynamic distinctions of the Yukon XL Denali become pretty much academic: It’s a brontosaur, just like the rest of them.
Still, as king-size sport-utilities go, this one has exceptionally good road manners, as well as lots of standard luxury features, and plenty of power.
But are we getting ahead of the story here? How many know what, exactly, a Yukon XL Denali is?
Well, why should you know? Although it’s been around for a couple of years, Denali hasn’t exactly become a household word in automotive circles, and the XL edition is new to GMC’s product inventory for 2001.
Here’s the short version. Renewed last year, the Yukon is GMC’s version of the Chevy Tahoe, a full-size sport-utility that competes with the Ford Expedition and, in 2001, the all-new Toyota Sequoia.
As part of the division’s effort to create a separate image for GMC, the General Motors brand brain trust settled on Yukon XL as the new name. Brilliant, huh? But if you think of XL as Xtra Large, it works well enough.
So how large is extra large in this case?
As you’d expect, the Yukon XL Denali shares the dimensions of the Suburban and the Yukon XL. It’s 20.4 inches longer than the Tahoe and the Yukon, 14.7 inches longer than the Expedition and 7.4 inches shorter than Ford’s behemoth Excursion.
In fact, the Suburban and Yukon XL actually got a tad smaller in their redesign for the 2000 model year, a decision that in hindsight looks like sheer genius, given the environmental polemics inspired by the introduction of the giant Excursion.
By the numbers
The Yukon XL Denali is a little heavier than the Suburban and Yukon XL, thanks to its heavy array of luxury features, but even so it’s lean and mean compared to the Excursion, whose curb weights approach an astonishing 4 tons.
Weight is the implacable and indefatigable enemy in all veh icle dynamics — going, stopping, changing directions — and when you add the extra ground clearance required for even modest off-road usefulness, you have a package that’s going to be more reluctant to do any of the above.
Which is why the XL Denali is such a nice surprise. Although herding this black-tie brute around sinuous sports-car back roads isn’t exactly an activity an owner would be likely to schedule under the heading of what-shall-we-do-for-fun-today, the XL Denali handles aggressive cornering, tight S-bends and repeated hard braking with far more composure than I expected.
Not to mention excellent ride quality, even on stretches of pavement patched to the point of resembling some sort of asphalt crazy quilt.
At this point, I hear someone saying, “So what? I’m never gonna drive this thing like a sports car, so all this alleged agility doesn’t have zip to do with me.”
I beg to differ. A vehicle’s ability to respond briskly to a driver’s commands i its index of performance for emergency avoidance maneuvers. It’s the small edge that can make the difference between a crash and a near-miss. You might never have occasion to exploit it, but it’s an active safety ace-in-the-hole that’s reassuring to have.
Sturdiness is a plus
There are several key elements in this vehicle’s excellent performance story.
First is its structure. All of GM’s full-size sport-utility vehicles ride on the GMT800 chassis, a platform that made its debut with the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks two years ago.
The sport-utility versions of this chassis differ from the pickups, of course; the rear portions of the frame rails are much more robust, to support the extra structure of the wagon-style body work. But be that as it may, this platform is arguably the the sturdiest in the big sport-utility business.
Advantage No. 2: power train. GM’s new family of Vortec V8 truck engines, in this case the Vortec 6000 with 320-horsepower and 365 foot-pounds of torque. This is an excellent truck engine: smooth, potent and responsive right from idle speeds. And it’s paired with one of GM’s excellent automatic transmissions.
To be fair, the Excursion offers two engine options with more grunt — a 6.8-liter V10 and a 7.3-liter turbodiesel V8 — but keep those curb weights in mind. Ford’s big bopper needs that extra thrust.
In any case, the XL Denali has enough suds to tow up to 8,400 pounds — 1,600 pounds less than a turbodiesel Excursion, but hefty enough for most of us.
Advantage three: brakes. Like the Excursion, the XL Denali has disc brakes at both ends, and ABS is standard equipment. But there’s a lot less vehicle to stop here than with a comparably equipped (for example, four-wheel-drive) Excursion and, more important, GM’s big sport-utility brake systems are vastly improved over the preceding generation.
Don’t expect sedan stopping distances here. All the vehicles in this class need far more road to stop than passenger cars. But the new GM truck brakes get the job done far better than their predecessors, with much better brake pedal feel, and much better fade resistance in repeated hard stops.
Four-wheel drive is standard equipment, and this too is a new system. Instead of a traditional part-time system, with a low-range gear set for low-speed creepy-crawly off-road stuff, the XL Denali has a new full-time all-wheel drive setup.
In normal operation, the system sends 38 percent of the engine’s power to the front wheels, 62 to the rear, and can vary the split when system sensors detect slippage at either end.
It’s totally transparent, as they say, always engaged, with no buttons to push or levers to throw. That is just the way we’ve told the industry we like it.
Keeping it simple
Inside, the XL Denali is about what you’d expect — a hedonistic Yukon XL, chockablock with luxury features.
I think GM could have been a little more adventurous with the dashboard design, which looks decidedly rectilinear compared to today’s organic shapes, and the seats could be a little more supportive, but if you’re looking for luxury with power and plenty of space for passengers (eight, in three roomy rows) and cargo, well, here you go.
Another asterisk is in order at this point.
As someone who favors light and nimble over big and ponderous, I have trouble seeing everyday virtue in these brute-utes.
They’re overweight, they’re thirsty, and unless serious towing is on your agenda, they don’t really make any sense.
But we’re living in an era of unparalleled self-indulgence. And the people who buy vehicles like this don’t seem to care much about whether they make sense or not.
So if you fall into that category, you might as well opt for the best of the bigs. And even though my impressions are based on preproduction hardware, it looks as though GMC’s king-size Denali desr es that distinction.
