Chevy Colorado Camping Guide: Trim, Short Bed and Value Off-Road

Here's the thing nobody tells you when you cross-shop a Chevy Colorado for camping: the current truck doesn't give you the usual decisions. There's one engine — a 2.7-liter turbo four across the whole range, no V6 and no hybrid — one bed, a single roughly 62-inch short bed, and it's crew cab only. So the long agonizing over cab and bed length that defines a Tacoma build simply doesn't happen here. The Colorado's camping decision is narrower and, honestly, easier: which trim.

That's the angle this guide leads with, because it's where the Colorado is genuinely different from its rivals. The Tacoma sells you on a hybrid that powers your camp and a long-bed option; the Ridgeline sells you a smooth unibody with a trunk in the bed. The Colorado sells you off-road capability per dollar — a body-on-frame truck where the only real question is how far off the pavement you intend to go, answered by the trim ladder from WT all the way up to the locker-equipped ZR2.

I shop on value, so everything here is built on Chevrolet's published specs and reviewer consensus, not a rig I'm pretending I wheeled. Two honest caveats up front: the Colorado has no big bed inverter like the Tacoma's, so you'll bring your own power, and that single short bed shapes every sleeping decision. Get those straight and the Colorado is one of the best-value camping trucks on sale. It also keeps things mechanically simple — one engine family means fewer variables to diagnose a long way from a dealer, which is exactly the kind of boring reliability a remote camper should genuinely value out where help is hours away. For the wider field, our camping-vehicle comparison sets the scene.

Because the cab and bed are fixed, the trim is where your money actually changes the truck for camping. The ladder climbs in off-road hardware, and the camping sweet spot depends entirely on how rough your access roads get.

• WT and LT: the value end — graded forest roads, established campgrounds and gravel. With all-terrain tires they get to most dispersed sites fine, and they leave the most budget for the camper build itself.
• Trail Boss: the smart middle. A factory lift, skid plates and a more capable setup for noticeably rougher two-tracks, without the range-topper price. For most campers this is the value pick that opens up real backcountry access.
• ZR2 (and ZR2 Bison): the trail king — front and rear locking differentials, a wider track and Multimatic DSSV dampers, with the Bison adding AEV steel armor. Overkill for campground duty, exactly right for genuinely remote, technical access.

The budget-wrench take: don't buy more truck than your roads need. A Trail Boss reaches 90% of the places a ZR2 does for meaningfully less money, and the saved cash buys a topper, a platform and a power station — the things that actually make you comfortable at camp. Capability you never use is the most expensive feature on any truck.

There's a tire footnote that matters more than the trim badge for a lot of campers. A WT or LT on a good set of all-terrain tires will out-perform a stock ZR2 on the kind of dirt-and-gravel access most dispersed sites sit on, because traction and ground clearance carry you further than fancy dampers on roads that aren't technical. The lockers and DSSV suspension on a ZR2 only start earning their premium when the terrain turns to rock, ledges and deep ruts. So be honest about where you actually camp: if it's forest service roads and established sites, the money is better spent on tires and the camper build than on a trim you bought for trails you'll never drive.

The single short bed makes the build refreshingly predictable, and the numbers are the ones to memorize. The Colorado's bed runs about 62 inches (5'2") long, roughly 57-58 inches wide at the floor and about 51 inches between the wheel wells, with around 21 inches of depth. That 62 inches is shorter than most adults are tall, so the geometry decides your sleeping setup before you spend a dollar.

You have three honest options to sleep flat in a 62-inch bed. Drop the tailgate and add a bed extender to reclaim the length; sleep on a slight diagonal, which a single camper can often live with; or build a platform that reclaims full rectangular width above the wheel wells — the upgrade that fixes the cramped 51-inch pinch and adds storage underneath. The platform is the budget-wrench favorite because it solves two problems with one build, and our DIY platform guide walks it through. Size the surface with our mattress-sizing guide, and remember the 21 inches of depth is your headroom budget under a topper — build low or you'll sit up into the cap.

The hidden upside of one bed length is that the whole aftermarket is dialed in for it. Where a two-bed truck forces you to check every accessory against your specific configuration, a current Colorado has exactly one bed, so toppers, bed racks, drawer kits and tonneau covers fit without the guesswork — and used parts off another Colorado bolt straight on. For a budget builder that's real money saved and a lot of returned-the-wrong-size frustration avoided. Plan the build once, buy to the one set of numbers above, and you're done; there's no long-bed-versus-short-bed fork to second-guess later.

The weather-protection choice is simpler on the Colorado than on a truck with two bed lengths, because there's only one bed to fit. A topper encloses the short bed into a dry, lockable room you sleep inside and build a platform under; it sizes to the one bed length, so ordering is easy, and it's the stealthiest, most weatherproof option. A rooftop tent on a bed rack gives an off-ground bed that frees the cramped bed floor for gear, at the cost of height, nightly setup and weight up high.

On a 62-inch bed the calculus tilts a little toward the rooftop tent for two people, because it sidesteps the short bed's length problem entirely — you sleep up top, full-length, and use the bed below as a garage. A solo camper is usually happier with a topper-and-platform build: lower, cheaper, warmer and lockable. Either way, match the rack and tent to the truck's ratings, and don't forget the short bed limits a hard-shell tent's footprint more than a long-bed truck would.

One more honest trade the budget buyer should weigh: a rooftop tent adds weight up high, which hurts the very off-road manners you bought a Colorado for, and it lives on the truck adding drag and height to your daily drive unless you pull it. A topper is the opposite — low, aerodynamic, and it doubles as secure dry storage the rest of the year you're not camping. For most Colorado owners who use the truck as a truck, the topper-and-platform build is the one that doesn't compromise the rest of the truck's life; the rooftop tent is the call when sleeping two comfortably outranks everything else.

This is where the Colorado is honestly behind the Tacoma, and a value buyer should hear it straight. Where the Tacoma's i-FORCE MAX hybrid carries a 2400-watt bed inverter that runs real camp gear off the truck, the Colorado's bed outlet, where equipped, is a modest 120-volt, ~400-watt socket — fine for charging and small electronics, nowhere near enough to run a fridge and a cooktop the way the Tacoma can.

That's not a dealbreaker; it's a budget line item. A portable power station gives the Colorado exactly the camp power the Tacoma builds in — run a fridge for days, charge everything, even a small induction burner — and it costs a fraction of the price difference to the hybrid Tacoma, with the bonus that you can carry it between vehicles and into the campsite. The budget-wrench math is simple: the Colorado plus a power station is often cheaper than a comparably-equipped hybrid rival and just as capable at camp. You just buy the battery separately.

There's a practical bonus to the bring-your-own approach the Tacoma's built-in inverter can't match: a power station is sized to your trips, not the factory's guess. Camp light and a small unit runs the fridge all weekend; camp heavy with an electric cooler, a CPAP and a heated blanket and you scale up to a bigger battery or add a folding solar panel to top it off through the day. You can also recharge it from the truck while driving, so it's full again at the next site. The built-in inverter is convenient, but it's fixed; the portable battery is the one you can grow as your camping does, and it follows you to the next truck you own.

The classic Colorado build is a platform over the wheel wells with a drawer system underneath — the same two-birds upgrade that flattens the bed and organizes the gear. A truck drawer system is written for exactly this vehicle, and it scales from a simple two-drawer build to a full galley with the kitchen on a slide.

Because the bed sits open to the world, weatherproofing the storage is the real job. A topper or sealed drawers keep gear dry and locked; an open bed leaves everything visible and exposed. The tailgate becomes a waist-height prep surface, and a slide-out kitchen drawer lets you cook standing at the back of the truck. The hard rule that never changes: never run a stove or any combustion inside an enclosed topper — the carbon-monoxide and fire risk is real. Cooking belongs at the open tailgate, with overflow gear on a roof rack so it doesn't crowd the sleeping deck.

The budget-wrench approach to the galley is to resist building a fixed kitchen and instead run a tote-based system: one bin holds the stove and cookware, another the food and a slim water jug, and both slide out onto the tailgate at meal time and stow under the platform the rest of the day. It's cheaper than a custom slide-out drawer, it comes out of the truck in seconds when you need the bed for hauling, and a wet or dirty bin doesn't contaminate a permanent build.

As the trips add up you learn exactly what you reach for, and only then is it worth committing to a proper drawer system — built around the kit you actually use, not the kit a catalog says you need. A label on each bin and a packing list taped inside the topper turn a 20-minute scramble into a five-minute load, which is the difference between a truck that gets used every free weekend and one that stays parked because packing it feels like a chore.

A topper-enclosed bed fogs exactly like a sealed SUV cabin — the separate sleeping space doesn't magically breathe better, which catches new truck campers out every time. Two people breathing overnight will fog the topper windows and dampen bedding if the space is sealed tight, and a damp bag is a cold bag.

The fix is deliberate airflow. Most toppers have sliding side windows plus a rear window, so crack windows on opposite sides for cross-flow and add a small USB fan to keep air moving; a roof vent, where fitted, exhausts the warm rising air well. Keep wet gear out of the sleeping zone, and in cold weather resist the urge to seal everything tight to trap heat — you wake up in a wet bag instead. Our explainer on managing condensation covers the physics and the fixes; a rooftop tent breathes far better through its mesh if you camp mostly in wet country.

Cold weather is where the discipline pays off, and it's where the Colorado's lack of a big inverter actually matters least. An enclosed topper holds heat reasonably well, and a properly rated bag plus a foam pad to block the cold radiating up off the steel bed floor carries most three-season nights with no powered heat at all. If you want warmth, a 12-volt electric blanket off your power station is the safe move — never a fuel heater inside the cap.

The instinct to seal everything tight to trap heat is the classic mistake: you wake up in a wet bag because the trapped moisture has nowhere to go. Crack the windows even when it's cold, because the damp from a sealed cap is colder than the air you let in — one of those lessons you learn once and never forget.

The three midsize trucks camp differently, and the Colorado's pitch is clear once you line them up. All three put you in the bed, not the cab, but the character and the spec that matters diverge.

Versus the Tacoma, the Colorado trades the hybrid's built-in power and the long-bed option for a lower price and, in ZR2 trim, arguably the most serious factory off-road hardware in the class — twin lockers and DSSV dampers the Tacoma matches only at its own top trims. If your camping is remote and your budget is real, the Colorado plus a power station is the value play. Versus the Ridgeline, it's a different animal entirely: the Ridgeline is a smooth, car-like unibody with a clever in-bed trunk and no low-range, best on pavement and graded roads; the Colorado is a body-on-frame truck built to leave them. Pick the Ridgeline for ride and convenience, the Colorado for capability and value.

The Colorado's distinct identity in this trio: the most off-road truck per dollar, with a predictable single short bed you build once and a trim ladder that lets you buy exactly the capability your roads demand and not a dollar more.

Picture a Trail Boss with a topper, a platform and a power station, because that's the value build most Colorado campers land on. The platform lives in the bed permanently and the drawers below hold the kitchen, tools and clothes, so getting camp-ready means loading food and the cooler and dropping a pad and bag on the deck. The truck is ready in minutes because the build never leaves it.

At the site, setup is almost nothing: open the topper's rear hatch, slide out the kitchen drawer at the tailgate, plug the fridge into the power station, and crack the side windows with a fan running. The bed is already a bed. Morning reverses just as fast — bag and pad stow, drawer slides shut, hatch closes and locks, and the Colorado drives away as a normal truck with the whole camp secured and dry inside. Plan the remote trips with our trip-planning guide, and round out the kit with our essentials checklist — on a Colorado the gear budget you saved on the truck is what makes camp comfortable.

What the routine really shows is the Colorado's whole thesis in miniature: it's a truck that gets you somewhere remote for less, then gets out of the way. There's no clever party trick to manage, no hybrid system to baby, just a capable body-on-frame chassis, one predictable bed you've built once, and the power and comfort you brought yourself. For a value buyer that simplicity is a feature, not a shortfall — fewer systems to break a long way from a dealer, and every dollar you didn't spend on a fancier truck sitting in the camper build that actually makes the nights good.

The Chevy Colorado is the value pick of the midsize camping trucks: one 2.7L turbo, one ~62-inch short bed and crew-cab-only simplicity, with a trim ladder from WT to the twin-locker ZR2 that lets you buy exactly the off-road capability your roads need. It has no big bed inverter, so you bring a power station — and the money you save still leaves you ahead.

Cut through it and the Colorado decision is two choices. Trim: match it to your access roads — WT/LT for graded roads, the Trail Boss as the value pick for real backcountry, the ZR2 only if your terrain genuinely demands lockers. Sleeping: the single short bed wants either a topper-and-platform build for one or a rooftop tent for two, since 62 inches won't lie an adult flat without help. Then it's the standard kit: drawers under the platform, a power station for camp power, real ventilation under the cap, and the kitchen at the open tailgate.

Do that and the Colorado becomes a go-anywhere basecamp that cost less to get there than its rivals. If you want built-in power, the Tacoma has it; if you want a smooth pavement cruiser with a trunk in the bed, the Ridgeline is your truck. If you want capability per dollar, this is the one. Our camping-vehicle comparison finishes the call.