Trucks are long past functioning as mere workhorses, utilitarian brutes you’d only want to drive or live with if your days are spent dragging huge trailers or hauling stuff in the pickup bed. These days, full-size truck buyers needn’t choose between capability, a commanding view of the road, and luxury-car-grade accommodations.
Sure, the most luxurious versions of the trucks sold today give up some ultimate capability to more modestly equipped rigs—after all, adding panoramic sunroofs, adjustable suspensions, and other niceties cuts into payload and towing maximums, which are calculated off a truck’s GVWR—but the average half-ton truck of today can easily out-muscle yesterday’s three-quarter-ton pickups. Go ahead, spring for that luxurious pickup—if you can afford it. Even mainstream full-size trucks today carry luxury car price tags; opting for the best truck from each manufacturer? That’ll cost you truly big bucks. If you have the means, here are the nicest, must luxurious full-size, half-ton trucks sold by every player in the game:
2024 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 High Country
Within the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 lineup, the High Country isn’t the most expensive truck you can drive away from a bow-tie dealership, but it’s a close second behind the off-road-focused ZR2. The High Country is, of course, the most overtly luxurious Silverado, trading the ZR2’s hardcore hardware for cowboy Cadillac finery.
Chevrolet has morphed the High Country’s more street-focused flashiness from standard fare to optional goods, meaning out of the box, the truck gets more rugged-looking 20-inch wheels and beefier tires than it used to. The 22-inch rollers sold with previous High Country models are still available as part of the truck’s Premium packages, however. Chevy also has democratized the High Country’s engine choices, making it so you can pick from the 1500 lineup’s 5.3-liter V-8 and 3.0-liter turbodiesel I-6 in addition to the mightiest 420-hp 6.2-liter V-8. Pricing starts at the lowest amount of any truck on this list, though partly that’s because so much is optional (where most of the other trucks are mono-spec, fully loaded rigs), at just $68,195; but go ham with those options and more powerful engine choices, and you can quickly spin the High Country’s MSRP into, well, higher country.
- Price: $68,195
- Engines: 5.3L 355-hp/383 lb-ft V-8; 6.2L 420-hp/460 lb-ft V-8; 3.0L 305-hp/495 lb-ft turbodiesel I-6
- Max towing capacity: 9,500 lb
2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV First Edition RST
If your head is stuck in the early 2000s, then wheel size is as much a factor in a truck’s bling factor as its price tag, and by that measure, the Silverado EV First Edition RST is definitely a luxury item: Its wheels are a massive 24 inches in diameter. We’re leaning on this unconventional metric of luxury because, well, other than those rims and the all-electric Chevy’s launch edition pricing ($96,495!), not much else about the truck is overtly luxurious. It’s simply the most expensive way to buy a new Silverado EV.
Take the cabin, for example, which has huge, crisp displays, a panoramic sunroof, and GM’s Super Cruise hands-free driving assistant included—but also plenty of hard plastics and vinyl seats. As we found in our first drive of the electric Chevy pickup, the cabin isn’t quite a highlight. But anyone can appreciate the clever midgate, which has been remastered here since dying with the Chevrolet Avalanche pickup years ago; it allows you to fold down the wall between the pickup bed and the interior, opening up an even longer cargo floor atop the folded seatbacks. And with 440 miles of range, the First Edition RST goes farther than any other electric pickup offered today (besides, of course, the mechanically similar GMC Sierra EV). In the world of EVs, range is luxury, and the Chevy has plenty of it.
- Price: $96,495
- Motors: 1 front permanent-magnet electric motor, 1 rear permanent-magnet electric motor; 754-hp/785 lb-ft comb
- Max towing capacity: 10,000 lb
