The interior of my test Terrain was well-equipped in terms of options, being the uplevel SLT trim. It had a sunroof, perforated leather seats, a power rear hatch (which I enjoyed), and heated front seats. While the feature list is nice, the interior quality will not trick you into thinking this is a luxury car. The graining of the plastics and the two-tone color theme of my test car made it have premium aura, but the plastics were all hard. There wasn't a single surface that was padded anywhere other than the gauge hood and armrests. To make matters worse, there was a liberal use of glossy silver plastic on the dashboard. I'm not sure if it's even supposed to look like genuine aluminum because it looks so artificial, but its obviously-plastic look isn't impressing anyone.
The buttons and knobs don't fit well, either. All of them wobble around quite a bit, and I found two buttons that didn't line up with their neighbors at all. The gaugetop cover rattled over a certain road coarseness (a good hit fixes it) and the sunroof rattled when there were extremely high winds blowing. Those things make me question the longevity of the interior.
What the Terrain lacks in quality it does make up somewhat in little storage areas. The center console is narrow, but it is ridiculously deep. The glove box is a decent size, and there are plenty of small cubbies throughout the car for cell phones and little snacks. Nonetheless, I found the map pockets to be too shallow. It can't really hold any larger maps without the map falling out when you open the door.
Controls for the multimedia system were simple; I was able to figure out how to work everything without any trouble. The colorful and high-resolution touchscreen responded well to my touches, though the knobs did not. Sometimes, the system would only register one click when I actually twisted it two clicks. Other times when I'm scrolling through menus, there would be a second-or-two-long lag between my twisting of the knob and the screen showing it.
The upgraded Pioneer sound system had good clarity and powerful bass (I had to turn the bass down quite a bit to enjoy my music), but it is not an exceptionally good sound system.
The gauge cluster did not look nice, which is a problem because you stare at it so much. There were both rectangular and triangular tick marks, and the smaller triangular tick marks on the speedometer overlapped the the little rectangular tick marks immediately beside them. It seems poorly designed to me.
The font for the numbers is typical retro GM gauge font. I really question why GM still uses that font. It looks unappealing to the eye, and it's not like the rest of the car is retro. Surrounding the numbers are plain, gray, glossy plastic rings with the tick marks. They look low-rent at best. Had they been metal-looking or had they not been there, I would like the gauges more.
I'm not done yet picking at the gauges! With all the new cars moving towards sharp electroluminescent gauges, the Terrain's gauges still look like conventional backlit ones. Because the numbers and tick marks themselves are white, the electroluminescence isn't apparent when there is another light source around (e.g. the sun). That defeats the part of the purpose of electroluminescent gauges, which is to look bright and sharp in the daytime.
Between the speedometer and tachometer, there is a vehicle information display. It can display many useful things, but the two most useful and unique displays I found were the instant tire pressure monitor and oil life percentage. I have not seen them on other cars before.
Things are good when it comes to space, at least in the backseat. The backseat offers generous shoulder room, plenty of headroom, and expansive legroom. No rear passenger will be complaining there. An added bonus: the seat slides forward and backwards along with being able to recline. However, the seats slide as one piece, unlike some 3-row crossovers where the seat is split 60/40 in sliding capability. The front seats are crowded. The headroom is tight, as the sunroof took up a lot of space; my head was about an inch from touching the ceiling, and I'm only 5 feet 8 inches tall. The center console is wide, blocking your knee from spreading out. In the footwell, there is a small bulkhead protruding from where your foot wants to stay. I'm not sure if that's because my test car was all-wheel-drive, but it was annoying at first.
A complaint specific to me is the shape of the dashboard. The dashboard swoops around with a distinct point. When I put my feet on the dash like I do sometimes, that pointy line gets very intrusive. It sticks out too much and forces my knees into my face.
The front seatbacks were also oddly shaped for me. There is
no support for your upper back, and the hard headrest impedes when you want to
lean back. My father did not complain of such seat abnormalities, so it depends
on the person.
On the other hand, the passenger sunvisor extends far, just like the driver's sunvisor. The sunvisors also slide on lubricated metal tubes, instead of the clunky plastic tubes of other cars I've been in. Huzzah!
Another annoyance was the door opening size. There isn't a lot a width once you open the door between the seat and the beginning of the door for your feet to go in and out. This makes it very hard for you to get in and out of the front seats without banging your dirty shoes on the lower plastic paneling. Over time, I've gotten used to twisting my feet severely when I get in and out of the car to avoiding getting the lower panels dirty.
On the bright side, the doors themselves go all the way down the side of the car, meaning your pants won't get dirty if you brush them against the doorsill. Take that, Subaru Forester! GM has been doing it for years!
Visibility to the rear was a problem when merging onto the highway or changing lanes. The thick D-pillars did a swell job of creating large blind spots, and thus we almost hit a hidden Audi A4 while trying to change onto the exit lane in Las Vegas. Despite the thick roof pillars, visibility was otherwise surprisingly good. It's better than some swoopy sedans such as the Hyundai Sonata of Ford Taurus. I would rather have a Terrain with the blind-spot monitoring system.
There was a problem with an omnipresent reflection of the light part of the dashboard off the windshield. If that kind of stuff bothers you, get the all-black interior.
The riding experience was pleasant. The wind noise was mostly muted, the engine was extremely smooth and quiet, and the ride was mostly smooth and always solid. Over continuous rough pavement (not a common sight in California & Nevada), it can get slightly choppy, but there was no excessive bounce. Some unexpectedly loud road noise filters through on coarse asphalt.
Some of those elements make this car an excellent speeder. It can go over 90 miles per hour in normal circumstances without drama.
I found it hard to believe my test car was a 2013 model, as the 2013 model got the powerful 3.6-liter V-6 as the V-6 option. Both my father (the driver, obviously) and I thought our rental was the four-cylinder model until we opened the hood and discovered that - surprise, surprise - our rental actually had the V-6. Though it had fine power, the car generally felt sluggish even with an acceptably responsive 6-speed automatic transmission. Part of this could be due to the extra weight of all-wheel-drive on my test car.
And while the V-6 was exceptionally smooth at lower revs, but the sound became extremely coarse once the engine kicked above 5500 RPM to climb steeper hills. It sounded like a blender about to explode. The cooling system did a good job, though, as the temperature gauge needle always stayed on the cooler side even when we were ascending mountains near the violently hot Death Valley.
A feature I enjoyed when I opened the hood was the strut that was supporting it. I really loved having the hood open and close with a damped feeling, and the feeling of lightness the strut gave to opening the hood was pleasant.
We found the Terrain to be a fine handler. I can not offer any fun-to-drive ratings since I was the passenger, but there was plenty of grip on winding roads to me. The body stayed fairly flat around bends as well for a vehicle of this size.
On the other hand, we found the turning radius to be on the wider side, at 40 feet. More often than not, expected U-turns became 3-point turns. For reference, our daily driver is a 2003 Honda Odyssey, so my father isn't exactly not used to piloting larger vehicles.
Towards the end of the trip, the trip computer displayed an average of 16.1 miles per gallon. That might seem like a low number, but I forgot the reset the mileage at the beginning of the trip. The trip computer displayed 15.7 miles per gallon at the very beginning of the trip, so the average was already unfairly low. We didn't hypermile improve the average either. We drove the car harder than normal through mountain passes and mountainous highways.
Overall, I enjoyed the Terrain as our rental car. It is an excellent highway cruiser and handles winding roads confidently. While I would not consider buying this car due to the narrow front seat space and aloof power, it does make a great car for road trips and hauling around passengers.
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| I know, this picture of the car is not very good. |
Some random observations on my trip:
-The highest concentration of people with tank tops has to be Las Vegas.
-The highest concentration of shirtless people (men, of course) outside of a beach or pool has to be Yosemite. There's shirtless men everywhere. Is it supposed to be the wild there or something? I didn't find it that hot, either.
-Eastern California has a lot of cars that are not necessarily common in other states, such as: Volkswagen Bus/Transporter/Vanagon (something like 8 spotted), Toyota Prius (everywhere), Subaru (a lot, pretty much the same as Colorado), luxury station wagons
-Rental car companies are really diversifying. Some rental cars I haven't seen before: Mercedes-Benz GL450 (3 spotted), Infiniti FX (1), Volkswagens (3), Subaru Outback (2), Volvo XC60 (1)
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