When Bruce arrived to replace our faithful previous-gen black Chevy SS Ute last February, I somehow had a premonition about its success after my first drive in the car. Er, again — bakkie!

Every single aspect is improved. The look, firstly — complemented in this case by that beautiful burned orange hue. Look, make no bones about it — the missus hates it. But then, sometimes, you know, the girls just don’t understand. And let’s leave that one right there!

But the boys? To a man, we all love it.

Getting back onto the subject, that styling is brilliant — so good looked at from the front; you’d never believe it was a bakkie. But walk around the back and you smile to yourself — what a bonus…

Slip into the cabin and suddenly this year, there’s no more limitation in there. Not only is the cabin cavernous from a passenger and driver perspective, but the advances via a flat cab back and all those goodie gatherers make for a supremely live-able place for two.

It’s sumptuous enough in there and it has it all. Well almost all — there are one or two of the oddest accessories missing — like an outside temperature reading. And while there’s navigation in it, there isn’t a disc to run it. C’mon, GM…

Then you fire it up and the gruff tone of that Corvette V8 takes over. Nobody ever said that the good old Mouse was sophisticated, but man, that 6.2-litre V8 is capable.

0-100 is quick enough to scare the living daylights out of an M3 or C63 from the lights and bet your bottom dollar the there’s nearly nothing out there to hold a candle to Bruce when you’re cruising the freeway. And you know, it isn’t even that bad on fuel in the end.

But the best thing about Bruce is the way he makes you feel when you drive him.

We carry on and on about how few carmakers ever consider that so vital aspect that BMW seems to have taped — the manner in which a car cossets its driver, keeps him or her comfortable no matter what he or she is doing – whether that in this case be taking the pig to market or reeling off 2-minute 10-second laps around Kyalami.

And this Chevy does that as well as a BMW does — cosseting the driver, I mean…!

There are other aspects about Bruce — like the ‘no worry’ thing. It’s just a 320 grand tool at the end of the day, so to leave it at the airport and even to drive it when it’s a bit dirty — or to let your hair down and burn those tyres a little (sorry, GM — the celebrations got a bit carried away!) is cool after all.

All of that was something I thought we were alone in thinking until late, late one evening in a well-oiled discussion with some of my best motoring scribe pals in a bar at the trendiest hotel in Milan when we were all discussing what whose favourite car was and I thought I was taking a chance — in that environment especially — to put this car forward.

There was an eerie silence (well, in our corner anyway) before that was briefly discussed and consensus reached.

And that even shocked me…

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