By Adam Ismail
Do you have kids? How about pets? Do you like to ride dirt bikes or own a boat? Do you often travel with backseat passengers who wish to entertain themselves in full isolation from the outside world? And do you also like to explore the outside world, without being limited by the parts of it that are paved? If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, I think you’ll like the GMC Yukon AT4 Ultimate. If not, the good news is you don’t need to worry about going $100,000 into debt for one.
Make no mistake: The Yukon AT4 is a specialized tool, albeit one draped in rugged luxury. (Because if all you needed was a tool, the Chevrolet Tahoe is right there, for a lot less.) Oh, my passengers loved it, from its massaging seats to its second-row seatback screens and supple captain’s chairs. Me? I don’t have kids, animals, or powersports, so I’m certainly not the kind of buyer GM has in mind—the buyer that would use the 460 lb-ft of torque from its beefy 6.2-liter V8 to haul something other than ass. It’s important to recognize that there is stunning capability in this machine, but if you don’t need it, it kind of makes everything worse.
The fifth-generation Yukon has been on the market since the 2021 model year, and it gets a comprehensive update for 2025. This refresh incorporates taller headlights, which have the effect of making the entire vehicle look higher—something it surely didn’t need, but it is a big truck, after all. 2025 also brings this new AT4 Ultimate trim, which fuses the ruggedness of the AT4 line with many of the amenities you’d typically associate with the Denali label. The interior has been redesigned, with a massive, new 16.8-inch vertical infotainment screen; massaging, full-grain leather seats with second-row heated and ventilated “executive” thrones; and a panoramic sunroof.
The Ultimate swaps out the base 5.3-liter mill for the 6.2 V8, though a 3.0-liter Duramax turbodiesel is available as well. This trim also gains Air Ride adaptive suspension, which allows for some adjustability and doesn’t come standard on a regular AT4, and rides on chunky Goodyear Wrangler Territory AT tires. My colleague Byron, The Drive’s foremost expert on the misfortunes of these 6.2-liter “L87” motors, tells me that GM completely revised the engine’s tooling for the 2025 model year, so at least buyers going forward should be spared the pain of catastrophic failure.
Do mind that you’ll be spending quite a lot extra for everything this Yukon has to offer. Where a normal AT4 runs $76,395, an AT4 Ultimate starts at an eye-watering $96,495, and the sticker for this one came in at $102,280. The good news is that the almost $6,000 in optional extras here are mostly illuminated trim, all-weather mats, and the Midnight Pine exterior paint (which is technically green, but most of the time looks gray).
From the outside, the Yukon pretty much looks like any other big, modern body-on-frame SUV, with a towering grille that jacks up the hood and elbows the headlights aside. Knock off the GMC badge and it may as well be a Chevy or, to a lesser extent, a Cadillac. The AT4 grade at least throws in a re-sculpted front bumper that improves approach angles, and looks athletic with its chrome trim evoking bull bars, encircling red tow hooks.
The interior is more of the same: rectangular, big, and chunky. Quality seems fine, and I like the copious physical buttons and switches, and the strip of wood on the dash. The white piping on the seats and circuit board-esque texture to the upholstery are a little much, but you don’t buy one of these for subtlety or tasteful design.
The Yukon AT4 Ultimate really isn’t about driving enjoyment. There are aspects of the driving experience that are nice; I found that SuperCruise and its automatic lane changes worked well, for example, and the 6.2-liter V8 and 10-speed combo is smooth, strong, and honestly not quite as thirsty as you’d think. But this is one of those vehicles that’s better to be a passenger in, and that’s OK.
Firming up the suspension via Sport mode helps the big SUV change direction a bit more confidently, but you’d best get used to some wallowing. In an ideal world, Air Ride’s cushiness would at least positively impact the ride quality, but even in Comfort mode, I wasn’t particularly impressed. It’s not terribly harsh, but it does feel a little clunky and loud, and for the money, it should be better.
This is a truck at its core, though, and I don’t begrudge the Yukon for many of those faults. My beef rests, as it has often with these recent GM products, with the infotainment. An almost 17-inch touchscreen sounds luxurious until you first experience how far your finger’s got to travel between on-screen buttons.
I think the row of physical switches below the panel is clever, because those inputs can serve different functions depending on what’s shown. Also, I’m at least happy that there are still GM vehicles with CarPlay and Android Auto, for however long that lasts. But this interface still feels haphazardly designed, with hieroglyphics for icons. Simple things, like reconfiguring the instrument cluster, can’t be done with buttons on the steering wheel—you have to “pin” widgets like fuel consumption or trip data to the gauges from the center touchscreen.
Again, though—for everyone other than the driver, this cabin is great. There are rear tablets with dedicated headphones and HDMI ports on the back of that gigantic, power-operated center console, presumably so your passengers can plug in some PS5s and go to town. They won’t even be forced to play against each other, because naturally, the Yukon can become an LTE hotspot. I’m also pretty sure third-row passengers have more legroom than anyone ever has in my Corolla. The ride may not be perfect, but frankly, I think everyone will be too distracted to notice.
You can get some of these amenities in other vehicles, but you get a Yukon for what it can pull, and you get an AT4 for where it can go. I didn’t tow anything on my journey, though GMC rates the Yukon AT4 Ultimate for 8,200 pounds. (The Elevation 2WD model improves on that by another 200 pounds.) It’s worth adding that number is a good sight shy of the cross-town rival Ford Expedition Tremor’s 9,300-pound limit.
GMC quotes the Yukon AT4 Ultimate at 14 miles per gallon city, 18 mpg highway, and 16 mpg combined. I found that figure to be on the money, as I hovered around 16 mpg mostly racking up highway miles around the Oregon Coast.
If those numbers seem a bit low compared to the competition, that’s the cost of two extra cylinders and no forced induction. The Ford Expedition and Jeep Wagoneer only come with a V6 and inline-six, respectively, and promise an extra roughly 2-4 mpg over a 6.2-liter Yukon with four-wheel drive. On the flip side, this fuel economy advantage would quickly evaporate while towing, whereas the penalty wouldn’t be so great for the naturally aspirated Yukon.
This GMC Yukon AT4 Ultimate might be very nice and very powerful, but it hasn’t changed my mind. If you purely need to haul people and not something big and heavy connected to a hitch, you’d be much better served by a unibody SUV, of which you have so many alternatives. This Yukon is massively overbuilt for getting family and pets around, and I’d swap all that torque and fuel expense for something more car-like to drive, with an interior that isn’t just full of tech, but aesthetically nicer, too. Maybe a Mazda CX-90.
Casting all that aside, if you do need a massive and comfortable body-on-frame SUV for your purposes, a Yukon is by no means a poor choice, but I’m not sure about this Yukon. A $96K floor is a tough pill to swallow, and most options, even on this high-end trim, are also available on a Tahoe High Country that’ll run you just $84K, with the very same engine and a horizontal infotainment screen that looks like far less of a pain to use. As usual with a GMC product, its biggest rival is something wearing a bowtie. Not sure GM cares, though; either way, the house wins.
The AT4 Ultimate is indeed the ultimate Yukon for hauling people and things off the beaten path, but it comes at a hard-to-swallow price.
Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
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