1st Gen Colorado Buyer's Guide
1st Gen Canyon Buyer's Guide
GM 355 Series Truck Buyer's Guide
Your complete 1st Gen Colorado / Canyon Buyer's Guide!
The first generation trucks, built on the GMT 355 platform, wear an exterior design that is handsome and cohesive. Compared to the previous S10, this design is more angular with sharp creases, lacking the soft rounded look of the S10.
For the GMT355 trucks, the grilles are the main differentiating exterior feature. The Isuzu's Grille features a crosshatch design whereas the GMC has a professional-grade styled Grill like it's bigger brothers, and the Chevrolet Sports a single bar grill with the Bowtie emblem in the middle.
It was a strong design, with squared off wheel arches, strong character lines, nicely designed tail lights and headlights, attractive alloy wheels, and an overall muscular stance. The wheelbase 3in longer than the previous S10 it's 3 inch tire as well.
There's a wide variety of configuration choices available: regular cab and extended cab, and a crew cab with four full size front hinged doors. Regular and extended cabs get a six foot one inch long bed and Crew Cabs offer the five foot one inch long bed. GM gave these beds extra depth to give these 355 trucks an edged over similar length but shallower beds that other competitors offered.
Sometimes the exterior body panels look nice, but the frame is completely rusted and may make the vehicle unsafe to drive. After the headlights age, the lenses can become faded or hazy. You can get clear lenses by purchasing a headlight restoring kit or by buying replacement headlights. Finally, the tailgate handle may not function properly. This may be due to a spring in the handle that has been dislodged or the handle assembly being broken.
Developed on the the then new GMT355 platform, Isuzu was heavily involved in a big chunk of 355 development. They were responsible for the packaging, interior design and establishing quality and cost targets, technical specifications and the complete structure of these trucks.
The interior of the GMT 355 truck is kind of a mixed bag. The design, even when new, looked around 15 years old. Simply put, the designers fell short on producing a modern looking and feeling cabin. The dashboard was very generic and plain looking and lacked the high-quality feel of other offerings. Ergonomics on the other hand, we're pretty solid. All of the controls were laid out in a useful manner, with easy to use and understand rotary controls for the HVAC system, a radio with big button, and clear easy to read gauges.
When looking at the interior during your pre-purchase inspection, make sure that you check the HVAC controls ensure that the fan works on all levels 1 2 3 and 4. GM used a poorly designed connector and resistor system that generated lots of heat and poor contact between connectors causing the wires to melt and burn away. GM does make a replacement connector system which is part number pk15218254.
The 355 series trucks had a lot of different options available which made it very easy for a consumer to configure the pick up to their specifications. From choosing between the regular cab, extended cab, or crew cab to a 4-cylinder, 5 cylinder or 8-cylinder and the availability of rear wheel drive or 4x4 Centric models.