I test drove one a month or two ago and it felt about the same as my Liberty with the GDE hot tune. It is a much more refined motor than in the jeep and the transmission is vastly more awesome. It was decent for sure and I did about 10 miles including a 2 or so mile climb up a 7-10% grade and averaged ~28 mpg. I honestly thought it drove better than the EcoDiesel ram I test drove a few days prior. I would imagine it will be quite nice once a GDE tune comes out but I wont buy one until that happens.

The other problem, you will not find a deal on them. They are pretty rare still, or were a month ago, and they were only willing to take $500 off of a $41,000 truck with cloth seats since it was the only one around. I lol'd at the guy as I climbed into my loaded Lariat F150 that cost the same. It's a nice truck, but its sure as hell not worth $41,000 when you can get a nice 1/2 ton for that price.

It uses a GTB1752VKL turbo which is smaller than what GDE uses in their stage 2 turbo kit so it might be a bit limited power wise.

Yes they do have an egr (oops) you would think they learned.

Only until we get our hands on one.

Only time will tell the truth as to how well they hold up. It does concern me that they went from 18 to 10 head bolts, i.e. head gasket leaks which many on here have experienced. Of course like Seth and others have eluded to, getting rid of that motor killing EGR is a must....
I would never buy the first year run of a new truck until the manufacturer has had a chance to work most of the early problems (recalls) out of it...

Only time will tell the truth as to how well they hold up. It does concern me that they went from 18 to 10 head bolts, i.e. head gasket leaks which many on here have experienced. Of course like Seth and others have eluded to, getting rid of that motor killing EGR is a must....
I would never buy the first year run of a new truck until the manufacturer has had a chance to work most of the early problems (recalls) out of it...

First observations, bear in mind that I have not seen one live in person yet, this thread has the pictures that I have seen. I also have the February Diesel Power magazine as a PDF that I will upload here - it has a nice article about them too.

edit: Here is the link to the Diesel Power from February of this year. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5447172/DieselPower-Feb2016.pdf

I don't know what to think about the 10 bolts on the cylinder head, so I will defer to GDE's superior knowledge. I just know that I'd be happier knowing there were more, and that they were already studs with superior force. Oh well.

EGR: Not surprised it has that, it also has DEF and DPF, and probably a much more secured nanny system that will require the wizards of GDE to un-screw it. I'm right there about not buying one until the bugs are worked out.

The valve train picture shows me three things right away:
1: They managed to fix the stupidity of VM's cams-in-the-valve-cover design, but the injectors still look center-mounted, so those will still have to be pulled to take the top off.
2: They are still using the same DOHC design from the VM R428 (our engine) and I already know they are still using a timing belt system. Looks like my tools won't be resting anytime soon.
3: They are still using the same roller rockers under the cams. My tools won't be resting much at all, since I now firmly believe that the rockers fail because of the EGR soot and a bad original design for the lube system... I can only guess whether they have fixed the lube issue, but the EGR soot STILL will eat those bearings for lunch.

The EGR system on this thing is enormous, much larger cooler than on the CRD, and it looks like the FCV is still there and now might be a vacuum servo or possibly still electric, but not as large / clunky as the plastic disaster of the CRD.

I don't know what to think yet about the Chinese Delphi injection system, I trust the company that has fuelled just about everything diesel since the dawn of time, Bosch. Their systems have never let me down when cared for even mildly. There are some ancient Mercedes diesels that I think could run on oily sand if you asked them to. Whether GM could reinvent that wheel and manage to discover a successful circle (or the square wheel that they invented with the Oldsmobile conversion back in the 80s) is a guess at this point.

Even the Olds wasn't known as a failure right out of the box, it took some time. I shall wait and see, but I AM curious to drive one from a dealer though, even though I have no money to buy one.