High-Performance 2006 Trucks And SUVs

Smoke, rubber, gas, and gosh! These are the four food groups for the performance-minded automotive enthusiast. You can easily identify the fellas that subsist on such a diet. They're big, brash, and bear badass tats. Wait, that's our staffer Harley Camilleri. He's our poster boy for the "Yawn...it only has 300 horses" set. As Truckin's resident horsepower hound, we unleashed him for our track day evaluation of four high-perf trucks and SUVs on the 2006 market: the Chevrolet Silverado Dale Earnhardt Intimidator SS, the 2006 Chevrolet SSR, the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8, and the Range Rover Sport Supercharged.

Not that Harley had all the fun. Dan Ward, Brandan Gillogly, and I took some seat time on these vehicles for daily commutes, mountain runs, a rush to San Diego-whatever each of us could do to put the vehicles through their paces. The finish line for the eval was at the California Motor Speedway in Fontana, California, where we got some hard numbers during hard driving on the quarter-mile strip. Read on for our take on what the Intimidator, SSR, Grand Cherokee SRT8, and Range Rover Sport had to offer.