US four-cylinder pickups, 1984–2026.

The four-cylinder pickup came back bigger

Imagine returning to a sandwich shop and finding the children's portion offered in a builder's bucket. That is roughly what happened to the four-cylinder pickup. It dwindled to 2 names in this list in 2013, then returned wearing a Silverado badge. The small engine had not merely come back. It had moved upstairs.

Two trucks kept the light on

Frontier and Tacoma are the two names in the 2013–14 low point. Neither name conceals a queue of rebadged half-tons. They are the familiar smaller pickups, carrying on while the four-cylinder choice elsewhere in this list ran out.

The comeback did not squeeze the old small trucks back into their parking spaces. It brought four-cylinder engines into half-tons. The engine had packed lightly; the rest of the vehicle had brought the furniture.

Which pickups brought four cylinders back?

The 2026 lineup here spans 8 pickup families: Toyota Tacoma, Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Ford Ranger, GMC Sierra 1500, Ford Maverick, Hyundai Santa Cruz. That is quite a spread for an engine once associated with buying the smallest truck and declining everything on the options sheet.

Colorado and Canyon rejoin this list in 2015. The larger surprise arrives in 2019: Silverado 1500 and Sierra 1500, alongside the returning Ranger. A four-cylinder engine under a half-ton bonnet is a different proposition from a small pickup reluctantly making do. Cylinder count no longer tells you how much truck surrounds it.

A turbocharger explains the return

The turbocharged four lets the engine take on work previously associated with more cylinders. Chevrolet's 2.7-litre engine is the useful example here, because it puts the argument inside a full-size pickup rather than a smaller substitute.

That does not make four cylinders a promise of low running costs, or turn every version into the same towing vehicle. Engine size, gearing and the particular truck still matter. A smaller number on the engine description does not shrink the parking space. The half-ton remains a half-ton-sized problem outside the supermarket.

Nor is this simply the old compact lineup restored. Maverick and Santa Cruz sit beside the larger trucks in the modern list. Four cylinders now describe several different answers to what a pickup ought to be, not one bargain specification at the bottom of the brochure.

Four-cylinder pickups in every model year

The useful reversal is not that small engines survived. It is that they stopped being confined to the small end of this list. The children's portion returned. They just issued it a larger bucket.

Sources

• EPA and DOE fuel-economy datasets — model years, cylinders and truck classifications.
• CarAPI — US trim specifications; family grouping combines the reviewed Silverado and Sierra drive-mode spellings.
• Chevrolet's 2019 truck engines — the 2.7-litre turbo engine in the Silverado range.

Explore

Compare the cheap pickup's disappearing entry point, turbocharging across the wider lineup, or pickups that kept a clutch pedal. Search four-cylinder pickup versions since 2013. See which pickups still fit below 5,300 mm. See hybrid and electric pickup history.