In light of last Tuesday’s All-Star Game in San Diego, we’re going to show you how to drive like a Major League MVP. It’s surprisingly simple with no home runs required: you get a Chevrolet. The 2016 lineup from the famed American car company is sleek, sophisticated, and damn smart. We know this because we got to drive a 2016 Chevrolet Colorado to San Diego and it was awesome.
Monday night’s T-Mobile Home Run Derby was a smashing success with Miami Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton snatching victory from last year’s winner, Todd Frazier, with an astronomical 61 total home runs. Frazier may have been robbed a few homers from eager kids catching in the outfield, but he put on a great show.
Before Tuesday’s All-Star game, we went to FanFest, an enormous everything-baseball themed event at the San Diego Convention Center. In addition to a live auction offering up baseball history, autograph stations, booths selling official MLB merchandise (personalized if you want your own All-Star jersey), Chevrolet had mini-baseball camps (work on your pitch, your swing, even steal a base), and PlayStations, all set up for MLB The Show 16, turned us into Major Leaguers.
For the fourth consecutive year, the American League won the All-Star Game, earning them home field advantage come World Series time. It was also Red Sox-great David Ortiz’s last All-Star game. But it was Kansas City Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer who won this year’s Ted Williams Most Valuable Player Award presented by Chevrolet. He helped lead the American League to their 4-2 victory with an impressive home run in the bottom of the second inning and a RBI single in the third. His exciting 2-for-3 performance earned him a brand spanking new Chevrolet of his choice– after all Chevy is the official car of baseball– either a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro (celebrating it’s 50th anniversary) or a 2016 Chevrolet Colorado. He chose the Colorado Diesel Midnight Edition, suggesting it would be a gift for his father.
Well, Papa Hosmer got quite lucky as we now know firsthand. The Colorado is the twin cab midsize truck, already much beloved in 2015, earning the Motor Trend Truck of the Year. Even Cars.com said it was the best Pickup of the year. The 2016 Chevy Colorado has gotten better. Built in Wentzville, Missouri, the modern-looking Colorado looks equally at home on a work site or downtown city driving, purring along with a Duramax 2.8 liter turbo-diesel engine. The diesel engine offers pretty incredible gas mileage: 20 miles per gallon in the city and about 29 on the highway, ranking it as one of the most efficient trucks of its size. Seating up to five, the Colorado is a smooth, quiet ride with Bose speakers, back up camera, towing capacity of up to 7,700 pounds, oh, and USB charging outlets all over, even in the back seats to charge your devices because Chevy has thought of everything.
But, perhaps the best thing about the 2016 Chevy line isn’t restricted to Hosmer’s new Colorado. It’s the smart features included across the range of Chevrolet cars. They have Wi-Fi. That’s right: the cars have built-in Wi-Fi thanks to the OnStar 4G LTE capability, which means when you’re streaming music or navigation or podcasts–whatever it is, you’re not using data and you’re no longer at the mercy of cell towers. The Wi-Fi has a range of 50 feet around the car itself, so feel free to hand out the password if you’re feeling generous while stuck in traffic.
Chevy knows we’re in the information age, so they provide all the info you could want. The display on the dash offers a digital reading of your speed, trip tracking, miles until gas tank is empty, your current fuel economy, remaining oil life and pressure, the transmission fluid’s temperature, how the diesel exhaust fluid levels are doing, and even each individual tire’s pressure. With the press of a button, you get an instant look at the health of the car.
Starting this year, Chevrolet also included a system called Apple CarPlay, which turns your Chevy into a giant
iPhone on wheels, which is way better than that sounds. The cars offer intuitive, large touchscreen displays which will synch up with your phone, offering most apps (think Pandora, Audible, Podcasts, your music) at the touch of very large buttons, as well as visual voicemail and texts. Siri takes your commands so you never have to take your attention away from the road. All this and you’re not even destroying your data plan because you’ve got that Wi-Fi, baby.
Even without hooking up your iPhone (Android can link up with the cars, too), the MyLink home screen offers navigation, weather, traffic, even gas prices, through Sirius XM TravelLink/NavTraffic. Onstar, a consistent feature of Chevrolet cars, continues to offer you roadside assistance and the ability to remotely unlock the car, and even automatically summons help in the event of a collision.
Perhaps you’d like to take it a step further and have a Chevy that an All-Star player was actually in. Chevrolet is making that dream happen this year. Each of the 65 Silverados used in the Red Carpet Parade that ferried the players (we’re talking David Ortiz, Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, Salvador Perez, Mark Trumbo just to name a few) to the game at Petco Park have been authenticated and sent to various dealers around the country to be sold.
If you want a piece of Chevrolet and baseball history in your home, you can bid on the hood of the 50th
anniversary Camaro, autographed by each of the All-Stars. It is being auctioned off on MLB.com (closing date is July 24th) with all proceeds going to MLB-MLBPA Youth Foundation, a recent initiative that supports local youth baseball programs.
Chevrolet’s 2016 line is tough to beat, leading the industry with incredible smart technology like MyLink and Apple CarPlay, fuel efficiency, and sophisticated design. Chevrolet and Major League Baseball: a crowd-pleasing home run.
