Sam Krahn 
If there’s any country that loves their pickup trucks as much as America, it’s Australia. Just check out the insane HSV Maloo R8 LSA, a part car-part truck ute with a 577 hp LSA V8. That vehicle was made by Holden Special Vehicles (HSV), a skunkworks tuning firm that puts out some wild vehicles General Motors won’t. And even though Holden is on its deathbed in Australia, HSV isn’t done making cool cars and trucks. Case in point: a new report by Australia’s WhichCar claims they will be getting a supercharged Chevy Silverado pickup truck through HSV, with around 500 kW. That translates to 670 hp, close to Ram Rebel TRX territory.
According to the report, HSV is considering supercharging the Silverado’s 6.2 liter L87 V8 for a special edition truck. In the United States, GM have refrained from giving us a performance oriented full-size pickup. Few aftermarket solutions currently exist for GM’s full-size trucks when it comes to performance upgrades in America, but there are companies like Whipple that have created solutions.
Currently, HSV is the reason Australia gets the Chevy Silverado. The trucks are shipped to Australia in left hand drive configuration, and HSV converts them to right hand drive. During this, the engine has to be pulled out in the switch to a right hand drive model. HSV figured it’s a good time to supercharge it. WhichCar reached out to HSV about the project, but the answer was, “no comment.”
Yet, a supposed source inside HSV told the Australian outlet there was demand for the truck, and an announcement is in the works. Furthermore, it’ll be more than just a power bump and have suspension changes too. Even though there’s no word on if these modifications will go down the off-road or on-road route, we would guess it’ll be fairly road biased because Australia only gets the Silverado in LTZ trim.
Although this sounds like great news to us Americans, please remain seated. HSV works with GM products, but is in fact an independent company. Even if HSV makes the truck, GM isn’t a part of the project officially. Because of that, we have almost no chance of getting it the states. Looks like we may be about to have some new forbidden fruit.
As we have previously reported, a supercharged Chevy Silverado with an LT4 V8 engine has been under proposal, but GM planners have yet to approve such a project.
