Which pickup is the king of highway fuel efficiency? Can it be the 2016 GMC Canyon Duramax? It has a very good chance to beat the highway MPG record on our 98-mile loop due to its 2.8-liter four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine. It produces 181 horsepower @ 3,400 rpm and 369 lb-ft of torque @ 2,000 rpm. It’s mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission, so it has a good spread of gear ratios to run at 70 mph on the highway. This Canyon SLT is a crew cab with the short bed. The turbo-diesel is not available in an extended cab configuration. That is all good news. However, it also has to contend with with additional weight of the 4×4 system.
We run all highway MPG tests the same way. We use a “double-click” fill-up method. We let the fuel pump stop of its own, we wait 30 seconds, and then top off. We use the same truck stop and fuel pump. And we ran the 98-mile highway loop at 70 mph empty or with a trailer in 2WD mode. We return to the pump complete the same fill-up procedure and then calculate the MPGs.
The Canyon Duramax performed very well. It’s relatively quiet and stable at speed. The midsize truck surprised us with a record-breaking 31.3 MPG. This bested the result of the previous record holder, the 2016 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel HFE, which recorded an also impressive 28.8 MPG on the same loop.
Watch the video for all the details on this MPG test.
