Video: 2013 GMC Acadia

It's got new exterior design, it's got an upgraded interior, and new safety features for 2013. Let's check it out. Big changes on the outside include a taller grill here now, it's got three bars here versus kind of the monotone appearance on the old Acadia's grill. The headlights have LED rings around the outside here. There's also this kind of dark section here, looks a little bit like the dark section on the Buick Encore, that's their small SUV. Kinda blocks off a chunk of the headlights. This is an SLT trim, there's trims below it. You get over here to the top of the line Acadia Denali. There's not as much of an underbite as the old Acadia Denali had. That really was a pretty substantially revised version of that car. This looks more like the other Acadia, as you notice there is a little bit more body colored parts here as you get to lower parts of the bumper, there's also more chrome along the grill, a typical Denali thing. GMC actually says the Denali trim of the Acadia accounts for 30% of sales now, that's quite a bit. You get around to the tail, and this looks more similar to the old Acadia. Tail lights have been redesigned, and the tail pipes here now come out of these kind of integrated valences along the lower bumper, better integration, I think, than on the old Acadia Denali. The shapes of the dashboard inside the Acadia kinda remained similar to before, but you can see the materials have improved a bit. This isn't real leather along the dash and doors, GM says, it's actually vinyl, but it does a pretty decent job imitating leather with this sort of French stitching is what GM calls it. The center controls here have been redesigned. The old ones had aged pretty well, but some of the buttons had gotten kind of smaller. Large knobs here now for the climate controls, there's a standard touchscreen radio here, GM says. The IntelliLink system from Buick also from GMC is available, you can tether your smartphone via Bluetooth to stream things like Pandora and Stitcher internet radio to the vehicle. This is the first car to employ GM's new front center airbag, it actually deploys from right here, much like an outboard side impact airbag. We spoke with the vehicle's chief engineer, she told us that it's basically supposed to keep you from having injuries that occur from when the side curtain airbag deploys, and then your body kind of rocks back to the center. It also keeps two people up here from kinda knocking heads together. We'll have to see how safety agencies rate the feature. GM's three row crossovers haven't had the roomiest second and third rows, but what they do have is a lot of cargo room. You could fit a cooler back here with about 24 cubic feet of space behind the third row, not something you can do in a lot of the competition. Gas mileage remains 17 city, 24 highway for the front wheel drivers, and that's a little bit less than cars like the Toyota Highlander, Honda Pilot. We'll have to see how this drives closer to when it goes on sale in late 2012. <v Narrator>For more car related news, go to cars.com, or our blog, KickingTires.net.