Up Front I'm normally a veggie-burger type of guy, but after driving the new '07 Chevy Silverado pickup truck for a few miles, I pulled into a Burger King (BKC) and did something I hadn't done in years: chowed down on a Double Whopper. The new Silverado -- especially with the big crew cab, 20-in. machined aluminum wheels, and powerful V8 engine my test truck came with -- has that effect on a person. It's a real meat-eater's vehicle.

General Motors (GM) pulled out all the stops to make its new flagship pickup truck a winner with everyone from weekenders and suburban dads to plumbers, building contractors, and other traditional truck owners. The Silverado comes in more configurations than Anna Nicole Smith, with three choices of cab [regular, extended, and crew], bed length [5.8 ft., 6.5 ft., and 8 ft.], and trim level [Work, LT, and LTZ], as well as five suspension systems and seven engines [counting flex-fuel versions that can run on an 85% ethanol/15% gasoline mix].

There are even two styles of interior to choose from, a functional traditional truck cabin and a fancy one reminiscent of a luxury SUV. Heavy-duty versions of the Silverado will start hitting showrooms in February.

The new Silverado matches or surpasses its main rivals -- the Ford F-150 [see BusinessWeek.com, 4/19/06, "America's Favorite Pickup Truck"] and the Dodge Ram -- in just about every respect, from fuel economy to features and options to plain old versatility. For instance, if you're on a budget and just want a basic pickup, you can just go with the regular cab, two-wheel drive, and the basic Z83 suspension.

If off-roading is your thing, go with the Z71 suspension and the off-roading package [$275], which includes extra under-body protection, a stabilizer bar, and an extra big air cleaner. If you want to tow a boat or trailer, go with NHT suspension [which includes special tires and heavy duty rear springs] and the maximum trailering package [$1,260], which includes a 6.0 liter, 367-horsepower V8 engine, a heavy-duty rear axle and cooling system, and raises the maximum towing capacity to a segment-leading 10,500 lbs.

The various versions of the '07 Silverado cost the same, or only marginally more, than the models they replace. The entry level, two-wheel-drive Silverado with a regular cab and the smallest available engine -- a 4.3 liter, 195-horsepower V6 [not available until April] -- starts at just $18,760. At the other end of the spectrum, the four-door, four-wheel drive, crew cab LTZ with the powerful 6.0 liter V8 starts at $40,250, and can easily top $45,000 if you load it up.

Options include a navigation system [$2,250], a rear-seat entertainment system [$1,295], 20-in. wheels [$1,295], a power sunroof [$685], rear parking assist, side curtain airbags and adjustable pedals [$715], and XM satellite radio [a bargain, and a definite must, at only $199].

So far, the '07 Silverado's average buyer, at 47, is only a year older than the average F-150 buyer, but significantly older than buyers of the Dodge Ram [44] and Nissan (NSANY) Titan [41] [see BusinessWeek.com, 4/12/06, "Nissan's Bulked-Up Family Truck"], according to the Power Information Network.

Only 14.6% of Silverado buyers are women, which is low even by full-size pickup truck standards. The comparable figure is 16.2% for the F-150, 19.1% for the Ram and 20.8% for the Titan. [Like Business Week, J.D. Power and the Power Information Network are units of the McGraw-Hill Companies.]

Winning in the full-size pickup market is crucial to GM because it's a huge source of profits. The Silverado's sales fell 11.7% last year, to 636,069 units sold, and trailed the F-150, with 796,039 units sold in 2006. But it's still GM's top-selling model of any type by a wide margin.

However, it's unclear how well the new Silverado [and its sister model, the GMC Sierra] will sell. Compared to 2005, Chevy's full-size pickup sales jumped 92%, to 58,653, in October, the month the new Silverado hit dealerships, and 23%, to 50,140, in November -- but then fell 16.6%, to 59,142, in December. GM said the weakness in December was expected and due largely to the fact that dealers were still selling the last '06 Silverados in their inventories, but investors were still rattled.

The big question now is how the new Chevy will do against Toyota's (TM) redesigned, made-in-Texas Tundra, which is just now hitting the market. Further out, another question is what Ford (F) and DaimlerChrysler (DCX) will come up with if they introduce redesigned F-150s and Dodges Rams for the 2009 model year, as expected.

Behind the Wheel It's hard not to be impressed from the moment you slip behind the wheel of the new Silverado. As in other full-size pickups, you're sitting way up high, which gives you a feeling of safety. The interior also feels more spacious than in the previous Silverado. The dashboard is lower and pushed farther forward than in the earlier version. The windshield is raked at a relatively sharp 57 degrees, improving visibility.

The leather-upholstered luxury interior in the LT is refined without sacrificing the ruggedness you want in a full-size pickup. The big handles and controls are designed to be easy to use, even if you're wearing gloves. The bucket-style front seats are spacious and comfortable and offer lots of legroom if you push them back. Unless you're tall, you will need the optional adjustable pedals to be able to reach the accelerator and brakes.

The bench seats in the back are comfortable and offer plenty of leg, shoulder, and head room. They also fold up in a 60/40 pattern, creating a large interior hauling space for dogs or bulky objects you don't want to put in the rear bed. The rear doors are big, and open wide for easy access.

The Silverado's ride is much smoother and less truck-like than the F-150's. The power-assisted rack-and-pinion steering is sharp, and you don't have to strain at all to maneuver the truck into a parking space. The Z85 suspension system on my test truck [designed to combine good handling and towing capacity] ate up the bumps and potholes on the backroads around my rural Pennsylvania home.

At one point, I put a small garbage can full of dog food in the back and drove eight miles over hilly highways and rough backroads. When I got home, the can not only hadn't tipped over, it had remained in exactly the same spot where I had put it in -- remarkable in a truck with a slick metal bed with no liner.

The Silverado is also an excellent highway cruiser. At 70 mph, the cabin is as quiet as a luxury SUV's. Even with only one person in the cab and no weight in the bed, the ride is smooth and almost free of the bounciness you often get in big pickup trucks when they aren't loaded with cargo. It isn't exactly a hotrod, but my test truck lumbered from 0 to 60 in 8.8 seconds, which is respectable for a full-size pickup with a crew cab that weighs nearly 5,400 lbs.

The Silverado is also relatively fuel efficient for such a big vehicle. With a crew cab and 5.3 liter V8, it's rated to get 16 mpg in the city and 20 on the highway, and all of the gasoline engines use inexpensive regular unleaded. In a stretch of 221 miles of mixed driving I got 14.8 mpg.

However, my guess is that you could get significantly better mileage than I did if you tried. That's because the "Active Fuel Management" system switches from eight- to four-cylinder power when you're cruising, and there's an instant mileage display in the trip computer that tells you which mode the engine is in. So you can alter your driving habits -- as most people end up doing in a hybrid vehicle -- to raise your average mileage by keeping the engine in four-cylinder mode as much as possible.

Among the Silverado's other appeals are the numerous luxury and convenience features. GM's OnStar telematics system with a year of free service comes standard on all versions of the truck, including the base model. On my test truck, both the interior and exterior rearview mirrors had an auto-dimming feature.

The optional "EZ Lift" tailgate [$95] is something I never would have considered paying extra for -- until I tried it. It makes opening the closing the rear gate almost as effortless as opening the glovebox. Another seemingly superfluous feature I ended up really liking is the remote starting system that allows you to start the truck and warm up the cabin [or cool if off in summer] from inside a store or restaurant [the doors stay locked automatically, so no one can make off with the truck before you get there].

I do have a few nits to pick about the Silverado. The new two-tier glovebox isn't a great idea. A single big glovebox that could hold a lot of stuff would be more practical. You would also expect a bedliner to be standard on the higher-end versions of the truck, but my test truck, which listed for a relatively steep $40,974, didn't have one. The bed was already showing scratches even though the truck barely had 2,000 miles on it.

Though easy to steer, the Silverado's 47.2-ft. steering radius [two feet more than a crew cab F-150] makes it a bit hard to maneuver in tight spots. Pulling out of my little country post office in the Silverado, I actually had to back up to avoid clipping the picket fence in front of the house across the street, something I don't remember ever having to do before in other trucks. Another negative is that you can't get the Silverado with a manual transmission and the standard four-speed automatic is a bit choppy. It makes you wonder why GM didn't go with a more refined six-speed transmission.

Buy It or Bag It? The Silverado is now the benchmark among domestic full-size pickups. Pickup truck buyers tend to be very brand-loyal, but even traditional Ford of Dodge buyers should check this truck out. Unless you're looking for some very specific feature like the Dodge Ram's living-room-size Mega Cab [see BusinessWeek.com, 3/22/06, "Dodge's Living Room on Wheels"]. The new Silverado is very tough competition for the F-150 and Dodge Ram in terms of its ride, interior quality, versatility, and towing capacity. Its bigger, more-aggressive-looking grill also makes its exterior styling much more distinctive than the previous model's.

I would also suggest test-driving it against Japanese models, such as the new Toyota Tundra and the Nissan Titan. Recent J.D. Power research shows that nearly half of all buyers of domestic pickups never seriously consider buying a foreign model, while one-third of all import buyers never seriously consider buying a domestic.

But Toyota and Nissan have dramatically improved the ruggedness of their trucks and Americanized their styling, while GM has done a lot to improve the quality and durability of the Silverado. So many of the old reasons for avoiding one or the other are disappearing.

Keep in mind that you may end up spending more on a Silverado than you expected to. Though the '07 Silverado's list prices are highly competitive, the Power Information Network estimates that its average selling price is $34,192, way above the average for the Dodge Ram 1500 [$26,430], the Ford F150 [$27,400,] and the Nissan Titan [$28,537].

However, I suspect that means that once shoppers get into the showrooms and see all the features they can get on the new Silverado, they will sharpen their pencils and figure out a way to come up with the money for the extras they didn't know they wanted until they tried them.

Click here to see more of the 2007 Chevy Silverado.