2011 GMC Acadia Denali

This big family truckster grew on me over a long weekend and a couple hundred miles of driving. I'm still not sure how I feel about the visual aspects of the Denali package (chrome wheels that look exactly like giant plastic hubcaps from AutoZone and bigger, lower body cladding), but the interior appointments were nice. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to activate the head-up display (someone else had turned it on between photo sessions), nor could I reset the mpg counter. The trip odometers were buried as well. A quick breeze through the manual would have solved this, but I consider these types of nonintuitive telematics issues extremely annoying. One thing the manual was absolutely NO help with was locating the USB jack for the iPod. I had to go online to discover it was in the dashtop compartment (probably not a good place for an electronic device in the summer), and in the dark I could not find the jack by feel. Once connected however, the iPod controls were easy to use. The highway and around-town ride was very comfortable, and the Acadia seemed to be pretty maneuverable in the parking structure and crowded mall lots for a vehicle of its size.
- Matt Tierney, Art Director