2026 Chevy Silverado MD Line WIll Retain Allison Transmissions

GM is ending its long tradition of Allison transmissions in its HD pickups, but the Silverado MD still features a true Allison transmission.

This 2026 Chevy Silverado 6500 will still have an Allison transmission and Allison badge. If you’ve read previous reporting, including our own recent story, on the topic this may come as something of a surprise. According to Shad Bulch, director of communications for Chevrolet, Silverado medium duty trucks will continue to use genuine Allison transmissions after December 31, 2025. That includes the 4500 HD, 5500 HD and 6500 HD models, all of which use a genuine Allison six-speed automatic transmission developed especially for commercial applications. 

As previously reported, the GM-developed transmission used in the Silverado/Sierra HD line will no longer have the Allison branding and badging. That isn’t changing. This is more in the realm of clarification rather than correction — previous news releases and statements only addressed Allison-licensed transmissions in the heavy duty trucks. A close read of those releases reveals no mention of the medium duty line, so I followed up. After texting back and forth with Chevy about what’s going on with the medium-duty line, they confirmed that the Allison transmission will stay the same. 

Why? Well, Allison Transmissions is a tier one supplier and General Motors doesn’t build a transmission like that! Thus it continues to make sense that they’re continuing to buy the transmission from Allison. As it stands, they’ll continue to be supplied by Allison Transmissions for the foreseeable future. 

There’s been a lot of controversy over the heavy-duty truck debranding, and perhaps this will add to it. I see this as a licensing problem: they couldn’t make the numbers work. I realize there are a lot of people online who think that the separation happened because of GM’s problems with the 10-speed transmission that they co-developed with Ford, causing Allison to not want their name on that transmission, or perhaps associated with GM at all. 

The reality is the recall that affected those transmissions, which technically affected 435K vehicles, didn’t require all those transmissions to be replaced. They inspected that number of vehicles, and if they had a rear wheel lockup, they replaced the valve body on those transmissions. That’s a little bit different story, don’t you think? 

Clearly, Allison has not backed away from GM completely.