When Billy Durant approached Louis Chevrolet about designing a new automobile, Chevrolet was a famous race car driver whose exploits in the Indianapolis 500 were legendary. The year was 1911 and Durant, who could see the writing on the wall for his horse-drawn buggy business, figured who better to design an all-new, high-performance vehicle than a successful driver. Chevrolet, a company that was founded by racers and has produced some of the best high-performance vehicles ever to hit the pavement, has once again gone where no other manufacturer has dared to venture. With truck sales making up nearly 50 percent of their sales volume each year, Chevy wanted to create a Flagship vehicle for their pickup line. It had to be a totally new idea in pickups. But what was to be the angle? Luckily, someone at Chevy figured that since the Corvette holds that title for the autos, maybe the new truck should be equally as high performance. With that, the new Chevrolet Silverado Coolside II was born.