Holden Colorado Z71 gives the bird

Thursday, 13 February 2020

Holden New Zealand currently has an entertaining promotion for its Colorado ute.

After a Thailand jungle experience, we decided to take the Colorado Z71 on a Kiwi bush experience.

It recently asked its staff and consultants to come up with various fun ways to make the most of the vehicle, and the company then used the results to create the promotion, which is entitled 100 Ways with Colorado.

It's all light-hearted stuff, which explains the likes of suggestion #46: use the Colorado's heated seats to keep takeaway pizzas warm.

Now we've got another suggestion - #101: give it the bird. Eh? No, not that sort of giving it the bird. We're talking about handing over a real bird – in this case delivering a young kiwi chick to an environmental organisation so it can release it into isolated North Island bush.

The Colorado Z71 is equally at home in the bush or more urban environments.

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There's a bit of background to all of this: late last year Stuff was part of a media contingent that travelled to Thailand – which is where our Colorado is built – to take part in what was dubbed the Colorado Jungle Drive Experience.

The point of the exercise was so General Motors Thailand could showcase the Colorado's skills via some tough off-roading. So we duly bush-bashed our way through jungle country in the country's far north, particularly up a massive escarpment called Pha Tud Hill.

One of the Colorado models in the Thai event was a facelifted version of the top-spec Z71, which we discovered boasted a new black grille, black wheel arch fender flares, underbody protection, factory-fitted tub liner, and one of those neat soft-drop tailgates.

This Z71 has now arrived in New Zealand and is on sale for an unchanged price of $51,490. And since Thailand is Thailand and New Zealand is New Zealand, we decided to take it on our own Aotearoa Jungle Drive Experience.

But where? There's plenty of rugged bush country in the central North Island, and in the midst of it all there's Experience Purangi, a 13,500ha conservation estate administered by an organisation called the East Taranaki Environment Trust. Thanks to years of work controlling predators, the area is now a safe haven for our native bird the kiwi – which is why its population out there is growing at better than 10 per cent a year and is estimated to have now passed 4500 birds.

And we were offered the opportunity to drive the Colorado Z71 there.

All we needed to do was first travel to the National Kiwi Hatchery at Rotorua, pick up a three-month old kiwi chick that had earlier hatched from an egg recovered from Experience Purangi, and deliver it to Experience Purangi.

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When the chick hatched, a piece of his egg was stuck to his back, so staff named him Raphael after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character. Raphael was gently placed into his special carry box, belted into the back seat of the Z71, and we headed off on the four-hour drive to the Taranaki bush.

One means of keeping the chick's stress levels low during the journey was to have the air conditioning on its coldest setting. Possibly because the Colorado is built in hot and humid Thailand, in the Z71 the cold setting is really cold. But other than that the trip was comfortable if a bit bouncy in an unladen ute sort of way.

We'd been instructed to drive smoothly, with no hard cornering or harsh braking, and it's when you're trying to drive as smoothly as possible that you realise that the surfaces of New Zealand's roads really aren't very good.

After his ride in the Colorado, Raphael is introduced to his new home.

But we got there, with Raphael the kiwi chick still in good spirits - if there is such a thing. Now all that was needed to be done was to transport him up into the heavy bush, and let him go.

The Z71 couldn't get us all the way, because the plan was to release the Kiwi at the top of a track called the Zig-Zag, which had corners so tight that they couldn't be easily negotiated by the ute.

So with time of the essence, the box was carted up the track aboard farm machinery, then carried the final distance on foot, and after the bird was shown off to a trio of trampers lucky enough to be passing by, he was released into a specially-prepared burrow.

Job done. Colorado had given Experience Purangi the bird.

So what will happen now? We were told Raphael will probably never be seen again – he'll simply begin his life as a kiwi in a conservation estate that will hopefully allow him to live to a grand old age of as much as 50 years.

And the Z71 will continue its career as a popular member of the Colorado range, which in itself is easily New Zealand's biggest-selling Holden model. Last year it was the fourth most popular ute behind the Ford Ranger, Toyota Hilux and Mitsubishi Triton, and so far this year the facelift has allowed it to jump to third via a sales rate of almost 12 units a day.

The Z71 isn't the biggest-selling Colorado – that title goes to the LTZ – but it is the most luxurious. It's a ute with urban cred thanks to handsome exterior looks that include a 'sailplane' sports bar and side rails, and high interior specification. Fancy that – a ute with leather upholstery, heated front seats, and full connectivity including navigation.

Addition of the soft-drop tailgate is a boon, too. It uses a gas-operated strut to gently lower the tailgate, so there's now no need to hang on to the thing to stop it from dropping with a thud.

Nothing has changed with the Colorado's engine and transmission mix. The engine continues to be GM's Duramax 2.8-litre turbo diesel which produces a solid 147kW of power and 500Nm of torque, and the transmission remains a six-speed automatic.

All that meant the Z71 had the goods to take Raphael the kiwi to his final destination if time hadn't been so important. In fact following the delivery we gave the ute a solid workout anyway, using its 4x4 system and other on-board controls such as downhill control to have some fun bashing through the eastern Taranaki bush.

It completed the task easily – a job well done by a ute designed to be equally at home in both the urban and rural environments.