The Chevrolet Suburban has long been an icon for the large body-on-frame SUV segment in offering one of the largest interior spaces you can buy. From its redesign a couple of years ago, the new Suburban shares the welcomed improvements of its corporate twins in the GMC Yukon XL and Cadillac Escalade ESV. With its longer wheelbase and vast accommodations, the Suburban offers up a plethora of configurations that end with the top-level High Country trim, which elevates its premium interior to that of near-luxury levels with a price tag that backs such.
Getting into the High Country trim of the new Suburban affords a vehicle that’s somewhat an undercover luxury SUV even though it proudly wears the Chevrolet bowtie. Even the unique Silver Sage Metallic exterior color that looks like a lavish green captivates onlookers in looking at the complete package that sports bronze grille trim accents and 22-inch sterling silver painted wheels. In all its large and in-charge glory, there’s a lot to digest under the squared-up sheet metal of the new Suburban High Country.
While the Chevrolet Tahoe and its long-wheelbase Suburban twin start with modest equipment and a base 5.3-liter V8 with 355 horsepower in base trim forms, there’s a long stretch of an added equipment list when you move to the top High Country trim level. You have a total of six trim levels to sift through, landing you at a point where the High Country trim blurs the lines between the GMC Yukon Denali XL in sharing a lot of the same equipment, starting with its standard tried and true 6.2-liter V8 engine that produces a healthy 420 horsepower and 460 lb-ft of torque. There’s also an optional 277hp/460 lb-ft torque 3.0-liter turbo Diesel engine available for all trims except the Z71. The 6.2-liter V8 in the Suburban High Country feels at home, and coupled with the 10-speed automatic transmission and a four-wheel-drive system with a 2-speed transfer case with an Automatic four-wheel-drive setting, the Suburban is sure-footed and predictable. That predictability is a nice dose of immediate power that’s mostly consistent in delivery and gets the large SUV from 0 to 60 mph in just 6.5 seconds. Even the braking performance of the Suburban is assured, with the ability to stop from 60 mph in about 122 feet.
On the road, the Suburban High Country handles surprisingly well for its size, and you feel as if you’re driving something much smaller, which is a good thing. Maneuvering the large SUV in tight spaces may be somewhat intimidating, but using the push-and-pull button arrangement for shifting the transmission along with the High Country trim’s standard 360-degree surround-view camera system helps you put the long wheelbase Suburban where it needs to go. Overall, there’s a welcomed ease of drivability in the Suburban High Country despite its size.
The ride quality is also very good, where the use of magnetic dampers seems to proactively mitigate road imperfections while the typically expected body jiggles and movements are kept to a minimum, giving you the best-riding Suburban ever. Part of the reworking of the chassis for better ride quality is thanks to a new independent rear suspension setup for the recent redesign of the Suburban and its corporate twins. While the Suburban doesn’t have air suspension, its coil springs, coupled with the adaptive magnetic dampers, do an exceptional job of keeping the Suburban firmly planted without unwanted body motions yet retains a smooth ride, even with the large 22-inch wheels and all-season Bridgestone Alenza AS 02 tires.
One area that large SUVs just can’t excel in is their fuel economy. However, the Chevrolet Suburban High Country seems to slightly best its EPA estimates of 14 mpg city, 18 mpg city, and 16 mpg combined in the real world from my test over the past week. I often would see as high as 18.8 mpg on the highway, keeping the vehicle at the posted speed limit on our flat Florida road surfaces. There is a cylinder deactivation feature that is hardly noticeable, along with a start-stop function that is rather smart in deciding when to shut down the engine at a stop, mostly based on the usage of the air conditioner. In town, I would average around 16.4 mpg. The large 28-gallon fuel tank full of regular unleaded gives you a decent highway cruising range of just over 500 miles.
A welcoming aspect that many will appreciate in the new Chevrolet Suburban High Country is its simplicity, where there aren’t many outlandish frills other than having a Google-based 10.2-inch infotainment touchscreen setup that proves to be mostly user-friendly after a very short learning curve. The system proves to be very responsive to inputs and nicely integrates wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. I did notice the system crashed a couple of times, causing a hard restart of the infotainment screen, requiring over a minute to reboot and reestablish connection with my iPhone. Otherwise, the Google voice prompts have a wide range of functions, and I enjoyed that the wireless smartphone charging pad has active cooling to prevent your phone from overheating and potentially stopping charging. Thanks, General Motors!
The seating areas, as you can imagine, are vast and have you hardly ever wanting additional space for any of the three rows of seats. The front seats have heating and ventilation with a luxury appeal from its accent stitching and “High Country” headrest embroidering. The second-row captain’s chairs have a good amount of adjustability to move forward or back and recline manually. The third-row seating fits three adults without issue and has good legroom, while the rear cargo space behind them is about as large as you can find on the current market for a large SUV.
The color head-up display is large with configurable information. There’s a nice level of luxury throughout, with plentiful soft-touch surfaces and the expected accented stitching on the dashboard and trim areas that border the subtle wood trim. In a nutshell, some would have a hard time deciding on the GMC Yukon Denali XL or a Suburban High Country, there’s just so much that’s the same, only slightly positioned differently where the infotainment screen resides.
At the forefront of being just as safe as any other large SUV on the market, the Suburban High County gets all of the expected active safety features, such as blind-spot monitors, lane departure warning/lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning/emergency braking, rear pedestrian alert system, and a 360-degree surround-view camera system that can be viewed when driving at speed. The special part of the new Suburban High Country is the availability of GM’s Super Cruise semi-autonomous driving system, which came equipped on my test vehicle and proves again to be among the best types of hands-free driving systems around. I tested the Super Cruise system several times and was surprised by its smoothness and proactive measures to automatically switch lanes to navigate traffic, in addition to serving up take-over warnings when entering confusing construction zones.
The new Chevrolet Suburban starts at $57,200 before any fees or options, which gets you one of the largest SUVs you can buy, along with the aspects of its proven drivetrain and ability to tow up to 8,300 pounds. Moving all the way up to the Suburban High Country trim and adding on most available options puts you at my test vehicle’s price of $91,105, which includes a destination charge of $1,895. Such a price is quite a bit to digest, but as I said previously, the lines are certainly blurred when comparing the GMC Yukon Denali XL and Caddy Escalade ESV.
