Video: 2015 Chevrolet Trax - First Look

since it's been on sale in global markets since 2012, but it's sort of the new baby SUV in Chevrolet's U.S. lineup, and it measures considerably smaller than the existing Equinox SUV. Let's take a closer look. A lot of familiar Chevy queues up here include perky headlights and a split grill. As you get along the side here, very familiar profile. If you've seen the Buick Encore that's Buick small SUV, actually it's a platform made to the Chevy Trax. Both are based off of Chevy's subcompact, Sonic Hatchback, and Sedan, Buick and Chevy obviously, both divisions of General Motors. You get along the side here, the Trax is fairly small, like the Encore about 10 inches longer than a Sonic Hatchback, but about 20 inches shorter bumper to bumper versus the Equinox. Inside the Trax trades the Encore's kind of button heavy dashboard for a much simpler layout with a lot of elements from the Chevy Sonic things like the motorcycle inspired gauges. This standard seven-inch Chevrolet MyLink screen right here, flanked by little storage bins. There is a little more storage up here and a couple of glove compartments here. Neither of them are particularly large, but you put it all together and you've got decent storage. No covered center console here in this car here at the auto show. But overall, a fairly functional interior. Now about that seven-inch screen, this is Chevrolet's MyLink system, which we've used in the past has pretty good graphics and responsiveness. It comes with a standard backup camera. It also has various apps on it, including an affordable navigation app. And finally, Siri Eyes Free integration. If you have a compatible iPhone. The front seats have a nice high seating position and the backseats kind of carry a little bit of that over to. I'm about six feet tall, that's where I would sit to drive a decent seating height off the ground here. So my knees aren't up in the air and a little bit of leg room leftover, which is always nice, good head clearance too. So tall passengers, aren't going to be knocking their heads up against the roof here. About 19 cubic feet behind the rear seats in terms of storage space. About 50 cubic feet, if you fold the seats down and there's a fold flat front passenger seat, that augments things a little bit more. Unfortunately, the folding process, a little antiquated, you got to put the head restraints down and fold the seat cushions forward before you can finally put the seats down. Now, once you finally do, there's this sort of flat storage space there. As far as comparisons, the tracks measures up about even with other real small even subcompact SUV is like the Jeep Renegade, the Mitsubishi Outlander sport, a few small hatchbacks we're talking cars like the Kia Soul, the Scion XB, those have 60 to 70 cubic feet in their maximum range, so a little bit bigger there. If you really need more storage space and can do without things like all wheel drive. One concern is that the Buick Encore, like a lot of small SUV's didn't do so well in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's new, small overlap frontal crash test. There's little reason to believe that Trax will fair any differently. This comes despite both SUV's having 10 standard airbags. Still, we've driven the new Trax. We like how it drives. The 1.4 turbo has decent torque and it combines a pretty good ride handling package as small SUV's go. You two can get behind the wheel when the Trax goes on sale in early 2015. (car revving)