Chevrolet got it wrong. We don’t want facelift after facelift for the Silverado. We want another muscle truck like they used to make in the 1990s. And because we know GM won’t approve such a thing in the health and safety era, we have to praise this Chevy Silverado Stepside 632 SS rendering instead.
Everybody knows about the GMC Syclone, a high-performance version of the GMC Sonoma pickup truck, and the Typhoon SUV that followed. Its highlight was a turbocharged 4.3-liter Vortec V6 that made 280 horsepower and could outrun a Ferrari.
On the downside, the Syclone couldn’t tow and had a modest payload rating. But another reason why this wasn’t the king of muscle trucks for very long has to do with displacement. Because there’s no replacement for that, Chevrolet took its new truck at the time and stuffed it with a 454 cubic-inch V8, a 7.4-liter. The Chevy 454 SS was born, offering 255 horsepower for not a lot of money.
Even though the muscle truck era produced some beloved nameplates, Detroit is reluctant to bring any of them back, even in limited numbers. We’ve seen enthusiasts create their own versions, but there’s nothing quite like this digital “build” by rendering artist Oscar Vargas aka wb.artist20.
“Originally I was going for just a single cab Stepside then I remembered I had a 632 3D motor in my files so I had to use it on this,” the artist states in his Instagram post.
The heart of this project is perhaps the most impressive crate engine ever produced, the ZZ632/1000. This is the largest and most powerful big-block Chevy offers, a 10.35-liter behemoth. Usually reserved for dragsters and race cars, it runs on 93-octane fuel and is rated at 1,004 horsepower.
The trick truck look
If this was available in the 1990s, Chevrolet would definitely have deployed it in the muscle car war it had with Ford and Dodge.
Beyond the Hellcat-killing engine, Oscar fills this Silverado with digital goodness, echoing the era of smaller, lighter 2-door models and also reminding us of his Tahoe SS and GMC Yugon GT rendering wb.artist20 did a while back. Similar wheels, similar monster brakes with vented and cross-drilled rotors, a giant hood with air induction, you name it.
Somewhere in the 1950s, Americans really fell in love with their trucks. We got amazing designs, rich in chrome details, and in the following decade, the so-called “trick trucks” continued this tradition with funky names and limited cosmetic packages: Jeep Honcho, Dodge Dude, Dodge Warlock, The Beau James, and the GMC Gentleman Jim.
This rendering also pays tribute to one of Chevy’s most famous features, the Stepside bed. Normal truck beds are slab-sided, meaning they’re flat on the outside with wheel wells that are inside the vehicle. It’s cheaper to make them this way and it also maximizes payload.
As the name implies, the Stepside has steps… on the side of the bed, next to the cab. This adds a certain style, which goes hand in hand with nostalgia. Of course, the design is not exclusive to Chevy and can be found under different names with various manufacturers. Ford called it the Flareside and Jeep used Sportside or Thriftside.
