The 2013 GMC Sierra 1500 Work Truck

A perennial favorite of GMC fans, the 2013 version of the full-size Sierra 1500 pick-up retains the wide, spacious interior and smooth, yet gunning handling fans know and love.

Of course, the real benefit of getting a GMC Sierra Work Truck is clear as soon as you drive it out of the city and onto hole-ridden backroads and mountain highways overlaid with ice and snow. Responsive and efficient shifting combines with mean engine throttle for excellent acceleration when you need it most.

Regular Cab

The base Work Truck specification is offered in each of three available cab settings: regular, extended or crew cab. In the regular-cab Sierra Work Truck, owners can enjoy standard stability and traction control plus curtain airbags for side impact protection. A choice of rear-wheel or four-wheel drive is offered for every configuration.

The two-door Sierra 1500 Work Truck seats up to six passengers, perhaps most comfortably in the crew cab version given the extra space. GMC’s navigation system and Bluetooth technology are both optional in all versions of the entry-level Work Truck.

Even the base Work Truck Sierra gets impressive powertrain performance, with a 4.3-liter V6 powerplant hooked up to the standard four-speed automatic transmission. It also churns out decent fuel economy for a full-size truck, reaching 20 miles per gallon on the highway, per EPA figures.

Extended Cab

You can get a 4.3-liter V6 in your long-box work truck, but mainly the long-box is offered with the flex-fueling V8 upgrade, and a more efficient six-speed automatic transmission with optional shifting. You could get the V8 without the new tranny, but the back box will be a foot-and-a-half shorter and you’ll have less displacement versus the V8, though still more than the V6.

The extended cab edition’s optimized V8 powerplant actually gets a tad better gas mileage than its regular-cab V6 cousin, likely due to GM’s addition of “flex-fuel” technology. With a larger displacement of 5.3 liters, the extended cab’s horsepower is the biggest and baddest of all versions of the Work Truck, outputting about 352 horsepower and 335 pound-feet of torque at 4k rpm.

Crew Cab

What about the crew cab edition of the Work Trucks? There are just two crew-boxed Work Trucks, distinguished mainly by drive type. Each is equipped with a flex-fuel V8 under the hood. The four-wheel drive type beats the 2WD with a larger trailering capacity of 9,400 lbs. Both crew cab options have the shorter 5.8-ft bed, compared to the regular and extended versions, available with either a 6.6 or an eight-footer.

As the Sierra’s most austere trim, the 1500 Work Truck delivers for those who don’t need anything fancy-just a solid workhorse that can do the job.