Say you’ve got your eye on a great big, brand new Chevrolet Tahoe RST with the perennially excellent 6.2-liter V8 engine. You have fully developed fantasies of cruising down the main street of your town, waving at people as they bask in the reflected glow of your exhaust burble and shiny paint, but there’s one thing wrong. You’re 13 hp and 7 lb-ft shy of respectability, and those people’s waves are turning into jeers. Fantasy ruined.
Or maybe it’s not, because at the North American International Auto Show today, Chevrolet announced a special Tahoe RST Performance Edition which will, coincidentally, have exactly 13 more hp and 7 more lb-ft of torque than the regular, hum-drum RST. That makes for a total of 433 hp and 467 lb-ft for those of you playing at home. It gets that power from freer-flowing intake and exhaust systems, so it’ll sound better, too.
Now that your fantasy world is back on track from being nearly shattered by the cold, harsh light of reality, you’ll be able to win the stoplight drags with a borderline sprightly manufacturer-claimed 0-60 time of 5.78 seconds (when the manufacturer includes hundredths of a second, you know things are serious). Then you’ll be able to carry on to a surely harrowing top speed of 124 mph — that’s 12 mph better than the non-Perf RST.
But it’s not just the power barn that gets an upgrade on the Performance Edition. No, it also borrows some bits from the Pursuit package (read: cop car) Tahoe, namely in the suspension, with new springs, dampers and sway bars keeping things under control. The ride height drops by 0.4 inches up front and 0.8 inches out back, the same as the cop Tahoe, which should help the handling and make it easier for shorter drivers and passengers (or perps) to get into.
Braking comes courtesy of some big red Brembo calipers up front and brake rotors that are 25-percent larger than the normal RST’s. This gives the uber-Tahoe a claimed 60-0 stopping distance of 133 feet, less than the length of two blue whales (Southern hemisphere population, natch), and that’s not terrible.
If you want to live your dreams of being the baddest Tahoe owner in town, you’ll have to pay an additional $8,525 over the cost of a normal Tahoe RST for the privilege. Production is set to kick off later this year.