I Drove A 20 Year-Old Chevy Avalanche That Someone Traded In To A Dealership. It Was Phenomenal

“It’s a compelling machine. It rides so well. It’s incredibly versatile,” I say to the camera filming my first-ever drive in a Chevy Avalanche — a 20-year-old vehicle that I’d been admiring since I was just a young teenager. I was never really sure what to make of the truck, with its odd “sail pillar” buttressing the back of the cab to the bedsides; with its blankets of gray plastic cladding adorning much of the exterior; with its peculiar proportions. It always seemed a bit … weird; but now, after having driven an Avalanche that someone traded in to Galpin, I get it. In fact, I more than “get it.” I adore it.

Automakers these days are really leaning into “whiz-bang” storage features — I’m talking about fun things like the Rivian R1T’s pass-through storage bin below the bed, the Honda Ridgeline’s dual-mode tailgate and under-bed storage, the Rambox, the Hyundai Ioniq 5’s drawer-style glovebox, the Ford F-150 Lightning’s huge frunk, the Fisker Ocean’s under-seat gloveboxes, the Bollinger’s…everything, and on and on. People love it when their vehicle can offer utility in a fun way, and this is something that automakers have known for many decades – just look at the Powell’s fishing rod holders in its bedsides or Chrysler’s legendary Stow ‘n Go seating.

But in the pantheon of automobile history, a few vehicles stand out among the rest — vehicles with so much versatility, they could almost act as multiple vehicles in one. And, without a doubt, one of the automobiles in that pantheon is the Chevy Avalanche.

It was an outside-the-box idea during a time when GM was throwing the kitchen sink at the car market. And I do mean kitchen sink; there was the Pontiac Aztek, a spacious little adventure SUV that many consider the ugliest car of all time; there was the Cadillac CTS-V, which made more power than that held by all the car-gods combined; there was the Chevy HHR, a Chrysler PT-Cruiser competitor; there was the Chevy SSR, a weird convertible pickup-car; there was the GMC Envoy XUV, an SUV whose roof could slide in such a way to turn the vehicle into a pickup truck; there was the Hummer H2, a real-life Tonka truck. I can go on and on, but the point is this: The 2000s was an unbelievably creative era for GM, and I’d argue that the Avalanche was the most creative vehicle that came out of it.

This brings me to the 2004 model that I had the pleasure of piloting a few weeks ago. Someone had traded it in to Galpin Premier, which sells Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, and other luxury cars. I like to think that someone had the ultimate midlife crisis and brought in this old 150,000 mile Avalanche and traded it for a 700+ horsepower Aston Martin DBS, though I’ll never know. What I do know is that this “someone” took excellent care of their Avalanche, because the thing looked great!

This Trade-In Was Gorgeous

The paint looked good, the dashboard was only slightly cracked (a miracle in California, especially for a GM product), and aside from the driver’s seat having a little tear, the interior looked borderline mint!

It’s still a 2000s GM interior, though, so it’s all hard plastics and really chunky, almost Tonka Truck-ish styling, but it all seemed to work, and I can appreciate all the physical switches now that we’ve entered an era where screens have replaced glovebox latches and headlight dials.

The Sail Pillars

Anyway, let’s get into what makes an Avalanche special. First, there’s the body design, which blends the bed/box with the cab. Typically, a pickup truck has a separate box/bed, with a gap between it and the cab; the Avalanche has no such gap, as it’s all integrated into a single piece. This necessitates some kind of buttress to prevent the bed from wanting to twist or bend as loads enter the truck via the rear wheels (or the rear hitch, when towing); those buttresses are called Sail Pillars or Sail Panels. That’s these triangular-looking, plastic-covered bits connecting the back of the cab to the bedsides:

Yes, that plastic isn’t just there for looks, it’s actually covering metal, which is there to stiffen up the single-piece body (which it’s worth noting, sits on a separate ladder frame).

The Bedside Storage Bins

Just aft of each sail pillar is a storage bin, which is exactly the same concept as the “Ram Box” that the Ram brand has been advertising since the 2009 model year. The Avalanche beat Ram to the punch by seven years.

Speaking of “punch,” there was a punch (of sorts) in this traded-in Avalanche’s right rear storage box. Have a look:

Fireball!

The driver’s side bin had more … useful stuff inside, such as a trailer hitch and trailer tow wiring. The screenshot above shows me digging through that bin, and also shows an interesting-looking triangular piece. It turns out that’s a “tie-down triangle,” and it seemed to me to be made out of some beefy, heavy metal:

The Midgate: An Invention From The Heavens

But as cool as the sail pillar and those bedside bins are, the Avalanche’s main party trick is the…

Midgate! You’ll see in our video at the top of this post that every time I say “midgate” the word pops up, and is joined by an angelic sound. Because, you see, the midgate is an almost divine invention, created not by General Motors engineers but by the car-gods themselves. It is a device meant to turn an “SUV” into a pickup truck:

At least, that’s how Chevy marketed it. I think that’s a bit much; yes, the Avalanche shared its chassis (including the nice-riding coil-sprung suspension) with the Chevy Suburban, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s an SUV and truck all-in-one; I might say it’s a crew cab and a regular cab all-in-one.

Because that’s essentially what the Midgate does: It turns a five-passenger, 5-foot-bed pickup into a two-passenger eight-foot-bed pickup. This all happens via a few simple steps. First, you fold the rear seat bottoms forward so they stand upright against the two front seats, and then you fold the seatbacks flat. From there, you turn a rotary lock/knob on each side of the truck. You can see that knob on the left side of this screenshot:

After that, you twist the latch at the center of the crossbar that spans the cab between the C-pillars:

This unlatches the front section of the bed, which folds flat:

Removing the glass is as simple as undoing two latches in the headliner, and pushing against a spring-loaded stopper that prevents the glass from quickly falling forward as soon as those latches have been undone:

That center crossbar also unlatches when you twist the center handle, and if you remove the three tonneau-cover panels (which are numbered, and unbelievably satisfying to unlatch; I strongly recommend that everyone try to unlatch an Avalanche’s tonneau cover panels because the latches are that good), you end up with a humongous opening. And driving around with the whole rear part of your cab open is badass:

Of course, the Midgate isn’t there for badassery, it’s there for utility. I decided to put that utility to the test via a junkyard run. I wrote about this junkyard-run a few weeks ago, and while the main takeaway was that it’s unbelievable how much easier it is to wrench on California cars than Michigan cars, the secondary takeaway was how useful the Avalanche is.

The axle isn’t that long, but I had the tonneau cover panels in the truck, so I couldn’t turn the Dana 30 diagonally, meaning it did have to jut a bit into the cab.

Lifting the 200-ish pound axle from my junkyard wheelbarrow into the bed of the truck was horrible, and my back hurt for hours afterward. The process was not aided by the Avalanche’s rubber floor liner, which Chevy marketed as a nice bit of bed protection, but which in reality is an annoying feature that prevents things from sliding, forcing you to have to lift.

Here I am on the highway, realizing that if I hit the brakes hard enough – or heaven forbid, get into a crash – that 200-pound axle will be careening directly for the back of my seat, probably killing me. This is a downside of the Midgate. Tying down your load is always a good idea, but it becomes even more important when there’s no front section of bed and back section of cab between you and that load.

I Regret Not Buying The Truck

I’m fairly sure I could have scored this Avalanche for a song, but I reasoned that I don’t need another vehicle. My fleet is already out of hand. Plus, the truck wasn’t perfect; the right rear window regular was clearly failing if the cardboard shoved between the glass and the seal is any indication:

The air conditioning compressor’s belt wasn’t even connected; it just dangled down against the truck’s front sway bar:

And that 4L60-E four-speed automatic transmission made a bit of a clunk every now and then, and given that transmission’s reputation, I’m sure I’d be rebuilding (or, more likely replacing) it very soon.

Still, those are minor quibbles. I can get a rebuilt 4L60E for nothing, I can swap a belt in my sleep, I can fix a window regulator with a junkyard one for pennies, and sure, the front suspension was a bit sloppy, but swapping out ball joints and tie rod ends isn’t rocket science.

I should have bought this truck. That 5.3-liter V8 under hood was perfection. It was smooth, and powerful, and parts availability is among the best on earth:

The ride quality from that Chevy Suburban-derived coil-sprung five-link rear axle was excellent, and above all, the truck just had soul. It’s just a weird and wacky machine that’s legitimately comfortable, useful, and dirt cheap. A good one can be had for under $5,000. I could have had an excellent tow vehicle (it can tug over 7500 pounds) for probably half of that.

Anyway, after my little junkyard expedition, I headed to a gas station, added back the two gallons I’d burned driving 30 or so miles, and then had to quickly run to a Super Bowl party at my girlfriend’s parents house. Unfortunately, my hands were covered in axle oil, and I had no place to wash my hands other than a spigot. I also had no soap, so…

It didn’t work.

After unsuccessfully trying to avoid getting grease on my girlfriend’s Lexus RX’s interior, I greeted my her parents with absolutely filthy hands and tried my best to keep my focus on the Super Bowl … and avoid allowing my mind to daydream about the incredible truck I’d just driven.

The Avalanche is that special of a truck.