Cars.com's Kelsey Mays takes a look at the 2010 GMC Terrain. A twin to the Chevrolet Equinox, it competes with the Ford Escape and Toyota RAV4.
Transcript
(high energy music) <v Narrator>Cars.com Auto Review. Hi, I'm Kelsey Mays for cars.com. With me, the 2010 GMC Terrain. This is a new vehicle for GMC. We covered it earlier this year at the New York Auto Show.
And if you saw that video, you'll know that it's basically a twin to the redesigned Chevy Equinox, which I've now been reminded is pronounced Equinox, not Equinox by my colleagues and readers. Sorry. I'm really working on this whole and fastest thing. No matter how you pronounce the Terrain's Chevy twin though, I really think you're gonna find it a better choice than this GMC. And either way, you're probably going to find the four-cylinder a better option than the V6 model. I'll explain why. Now, General Motors says the Equinox and Terrain share very few body panels. I actually think they should have shared more because the Equinox pretty good looking SUV. The Terrain's got these blocky fenders. It's got a really busy front and tail. It seems kind of indecisively style. Like it didn't really have a cohesive theme to it. Better things going on inside. I have plenty of room to spread out and the seats are reasonably comfortable. It's the driving aspects that have me concerned. We've driven both the four-cylinder and the V6 Equinox. The Terrain, obviously mechanically identical. Our V6 test car uses hydraulic power steering, not the electric car steering the four-cylinder has. The difference is that it's a little bit harder to turn and it takes a little more effort to turn the wheel at low speeds especially, than in the four-cylinder. I'm also noticing that the accelerator pedal has a little bit more of a gradual take-up to it. And there's a bit of accelerator lag that kind of manifests itself as you're pulling into traffic. You hit the gas, kind of moving up in speed. Sometimes it doesn't seem like the drive train really is showing up for the game. Same thing with the 6-speed automatic transmission. Not a big fan of this one in particular. It's a little bit laggy, takes a little bit long to sort of kick down. The four-cylinder actually seemed better tuned in general. It just seems more responsive and there's adequate power there. It's not like, you know, you're really wanting more power. The V6 doesn't feel all that much more powerful in the end. Cargo setup, pretty good. There's a decent amount of room back here and multiple scuff plates here. You can easily throw in a few golf bags and not have to worry about scuffing up your bumpers any of the paint back here. You will want to think about gas mileage. The V6 does take a significant hit in mileage versus the four-cylinder, especially if you're just sticking with front wheel drive. The V6 does tow more than twice as much as the four-cylinder. So there is some reason to get that yet, but I think a lot of buyers are going to stick with the four-cylinder. And I think a lot of other buyers are going to go with an Equinox instead of this. Honestly, I can't fault you for doing either one. <v Narrator>For more car related news, go to cars.com or our blog KickingTires.net.
