So we got a 2010 Chevrolet Tahoe LTZ

As part of the “Tahoe Adventure Weekend,” where we hung out at the Le Meridien Al Aqah till last Sunday morning, we were each sent home to Dubai with a 2010 Chevrolet Tahoe to try out. I had picked the LTZ 4×4 model, and ended up keeping it right till this Thursday.

Launched in 2007, even after three years, the Tahoe looks ruggedly handsome, better-looking than the latest bulbous Japanese SUVs.

The Tahoe has built street-cred over the years as the vehicle of choice for the FBI, Secret Service, SWAT and a whole bunch of other TV cops. In the UAE, a handful of high-profile tour companies use it as their vehicle of choice for desert safaris, modified base models of course.

Our unmodifed LTZ has a “FlexFuel” badge, meaning this Tahoe can also run on the E85 ethanol-petrol mixture, a supposedly greener choice of fuel found in the United States — useful if you ever take a long road trip and mistakenly end up in Wichita, Kansas.

For off-road enthusiasts, there is the Z71 model, but the LTZ is the nicer vehicle for daily city driving. Woody trim, covered cup-holders, leather and a navigation system all give it an air of premium positioning. The dash is hard-plastic, but the door sills are trimmed in soft-touch materials.

Rear passengers get to play with rear a/c controls as well as an optional rear DVD player with an overhead screen and wireless headsets.

The front seats are wide and leathery, like sofas rather than racing buckets, with a surprise ventilation feature too, that we discovered a day after we returned to Dubai. Shame about the limited passenger room due to the dealer-installed fire extinguisher.

Rear legroom is adequate, but more like that of a midsize SUV than a fullsizer. The rear bench has an armrest and can split-fold, but cannot recline or slide back. It is also a good thing we kept the truck for four days, because we only found the button to fold-and-flip the second-row seat on the third day, needed to gain easy access to the cramped-but-useable third row. When the optional electric button is there, the manual levers do not seem to function, at least in our tester.

Even goofier is the fact that it took us until the fourth day to figure out that the third row can actually fold down and then hinge forward to create a useful load floor. It’s reasons like these that we refuse one-day test drives from some other manufacturers. However, in the Tahoe, it doesn’t look like it is possible to create one flat load floor from the powered tailgate till the front seats unless the removable last-row seats are taken out. Honest.

The Tahoe LTZ is a truck-based SUV, complete with a truck solid-axle rear suspension, truck column shifter, truck suspension and honking truck V8. As such, compromises were made in packaging, but its overall durability has already been proven by its actual truck siblings over many decades. We’ll explore this Tahoe more in the full review.