Almost as a rule, the logbooks of Automobile Magazine long-term test cars are filled with extremes of opinion. One person can't stand Feature X? Flip forward a few pages - someone else loves it. Styling too dumpy for Staffer Y? Don't worry; Staffer Z thinks those curves are the bee's knees.
Leafing through the logbook for our Four Seasons GMC Acadia, however, we were reminded that there's an exception to every rule. Over the course of its twelve-month stay in Ann Arbor, our Acadia accumulated page after page of driver comments, and nearly all of them showed the folks at 120 East Liberty Street in agreement. Most entries echoed the same thought: the Acadia may not be perfect, but ultimately, it makes a whole lot of sense.
Conveniently, that seems to be how General Motors planned it. GM gave its minivan lineup the axe in late 2006, filling the newly created hole in its showrooms with a family of three (now four, counting the Chevrolet Traverse) crossover vehicles. The thinking - that most people who drive minivans and full-size SUVs want all the utility they can get but none of the big-truck thirst or minivan stigma - is logical, and we were intrigued. As such, we welcomed a gold mist metallic Acadia into our Four Seasons fleet last spring.
Like the Saturn Outlook, the Buick Enclave, and the Traverse, the Acadia is built on GM's Lambda platform. The basic features - front-wheel drive; a transverse-mounted, 275-hp V-6; unibody construction; four-wheel independent suspension; and a six-speed automatic - are the stuff ordinary passenger sedans are made of. The ideas borrowed from the minivan and SUV world - standard third-row seating, optional second-row captain's chairs, optional all-wheel drive, and generous seats-down cargo capacity - help sweeten the pot and theoretically provide all of the big-hauler advantages with few of the negatives.
In the spirit of that two-worlds-collide philosophy, we equipped our all-wheel-drive Acadia SLT with a host of features from both camps. Adding a rear-seat entertainment system, nineteen-inch aluminum wheels, a twin-panel sunroof, a towing package, a touch-screen navigation system, a head-up display, cargo-area audio controls, and HID headlamps (whew!) to our order sheet brought the MSRP to a whopping $44,965. That's $6860 in options on top of the well-equipped SLT's $38,105 base price - not an unreasonable amount for that much equipment, but certainly not bargain-bin material, either.
We put the Acadia to work immediately, and just as quickly, we found ourselves impressed by the quality of its interior. The GMC cabin's mix of tight panel gaps and durable materials, not to mention its tasteful use of chrome, surprised more than a few testers. "The interior is a real cut above the Detroit norm," remarked one staff member. "From the driver's seat, you see nicely sculpted shapes and three different types of plastic finish. Best of all, there's none of that cheap, nasty, old-school GM feel." Others outside the magazine's offices were just as taken. "I had a Lexus RX300 owner in the Acadia," said senior editor Joe Lorio, "and he was impressed with the interior. I am, too. It's attractive, comfortable, and well-executed."
Our SLT came standard with minivanlike seven-passenger seating (the optional second-row captain's chairs plus a third-row bench), and the spacious practicality of that layout was much appreciated. "Split second-row seats are far nicer than folding down a bench to get the kids into the third row," noted production manager Alan Luckwald. Copy editor Rusty Blackwell hauled four friends - three of whom were more than six feet tall - five hundred miles to Boyne Mountain for Saint Patrick's Day. "I heard no complaints about legroom," he wrote, making us wonder if his friends have telescopic limbs. (Or, for that matter, mute buttons. The Acadia is roomy inside, but not that roomy.)
Regardless, cramming that much seating capacity into a vehicle the size of the Acadia had to take a toll. As you'd expect, with a full complement of passengers, cargo room was scarce. "I've passed on driving the Acadia for long trips," said road test editor Marc Noordeloos, "solely because I can't fit the Noordeloos family and all our gear into the vehicle. The fifth person needs to sit in the third row, taking up valuable luggage space." And as Luckwald pointed out, "the Acadia may be every bit as spacious as a Chevrolet Suburban for passenger use, but my luggage - a laptop, a small suitcase, a backpack, and a box of magazines - took up all of the room behind the third row."
Speaking of Suburbans, comparisons with Chevy's king hauler came fast and easy. Given that the Acadia was designed specifically to lure people out of thirsty, unnecessarily large SUVs, it seemed appropriate to evaluate the two approaches side-by-side. Executive editor Joe DeMatio was one of the first to chime in. "The Acadia is a lovely vehicle," he wrote, "and in most cases, it would handily fill the needs of the average Suburban owner." He wasn't alone in that opinion, and most of us agreed that the Acadia was also far nicer to drive than the live-axle, body-on-frame Chevy. "The Acadia trumps the Suburban dynamically," wrote West Coast editor Jason Cammisa. "It handles better and rides smoother. It also gets better fuel mileage and costs less." ...next page >>