The new vehicle pipeline has dried up for HSV

If you want a Chevrolet Silverado 2500 pick-up, converted locally to right-hand drive by HSV, you’ll need to be quick on the draw.

The popular 332kW/1234Nm truck has almost sold out, and there won’t be a direct replacement in the works for quite some time.

The plant at Clayton re-engineered around 1200 of the 6.6-litre turbodiesel leviathans, with work starting in June 2018. Now there are only around 100 in the dealer pool around the country, split between the off-road targeted Midnight Edition and the more bitumen-oriented Custom Sport.

The reason the pipeline of vehicles from the US has dried up is because this current generation of Silverado 2500 is on run-out. Now that the factory has no Camaro 2SS or Colorado Sportscat models to offer, its focus switches to the 6.2-litre V8 petrol-powered Silverado 1500.

This 313kW V8 model is offered in a single LTZ specification and boasts a 4500kg maximum braked towing capacity. The first batch of right-hook vehicles are set to be sent to dealers from Melbourne imminently.

HSV stopped production of the reengineered 2SS Camaro earlier in the year, and GM’s closure of its Thai plant (effectively killing the Australian Colorado) means the Sportscat dual-cab has also been axed from the local line-up.

Before COVID-19 threw a huge viral spanner in the works, HSV was set to rebrand as General Motors Specialty Vehicles (GMSV), thus broadening its scope within the GM empire.

Now plans have had to be put on hold, for the short term at least, and there will, as a result, be a significant delay until the next-gen Silverado 2500 starts shipping from plants in Mexico and the USA for an Australian clientele.

For the short term at least, the Clayton plant will be concentrating on Silverado 1500 utes on one side of the building and RAM 1500 and 2500 trucks on the other. There are exciting plans afoot for HSV that could well propel the business into a very different sphere. The future will be branded GMSV. The present, it seems, is petrol-powered V8 trucks.