OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
We've got this, and a Mercedes C3xx for rentals currently. I've yet to take the Benz out. This is my 2nd day tooling around in the Tahoe, and so I snapped a few pics and have decided to draft up a bit of a review:
Pros:
- Quiet. Engine noise is extremely muted and the interior appears to be reasonably well insulated.
- Climate control works well and the fan is not obnoxious, despite moving lots of air. HVAC controls are intuitive and well laid-out.
- Turning radius is surprisingly tight
- It eats bumps well.
- Headlights appear to be quite good, but have had limited night use at this time (HID projectors)
- Factory stereo (BOSE) works quite well and is not "boomy" or "tinny".
- Gauges are clear and easy to read
- Signal stock is intuitive and has a quality feel to it, as does the shifter
- Wheel weighting is good, with reasonable self-centre and the materials feel good (leather wrapped)
- Seats are of reasonable quality with decent bolstering. They are heated and cooled.
- There is plenty of storage space in the doors and the less expensive appearing plastic lower down on them is well masked by the higher quality soft touch material higher up.
- Storage space in the rear, with the seats down is quite good, and not awful with the 3rd row up.
- The transmissions seems to shift quickly and smoothly
- The power tailgate works well and is what I would describe as "just the right speed"
Cons:
- The accelerator pedal has in the neighbourhood of 1/4 of it that feels as what I would describe as far too progressive (it does almost nothing) and then all of a sudden you are into the power. This I'm sure aides in gas mileage, as I find myself creeping away from intersections, but has led to "jerky" driving for others, since they try to get past the dead spot and end up hitting the power section pretty hard.
- The seat fan for the cooling feature is loud. REALLY loud. I actually had to turn it off, and I could feel it vibrating in the seat. This is the 2nd time I've had issue with this feature, we had a Suburban where the vents in the back of the seat kept popping out when somebody sat in the seat. We had that issue twice, with two separate ones. When working however, the cooling works well enough.
- The ride, while gobbling up bumps well, seems a bit "bouncy". Like there isn't enough bounce control in the dampening.
- The dead pedal is almost flat with the floor, so it is much less of a dead pedal and more just a part of the floor.
- The lock/unlock button is nowhere near any of the other controls. This is not intuitive.
- The control for the wheel heat is nowhere near any of the other climate/comfort controls. Also not intuitive.
- That navigation works well enough, but isn't as good as the Dodge/Chrysler one
- The third row seats aren't suitable for much other than kids. They are not comfortable and are extremely cramped
- The mirrors are simply awful. For some reason the bottom inner corner of the side mirrors has been cut off? I assume this is for aesthetics but it seriously reduces the utility of the mirrors. They subsequently feel far too small for the vehicle.
- Dash fitment for the navigation is surprisingly poor. The padded section that rides on top of the screen (which slides up to expose a storage bay) does not align well with the dash top and there is a huge gap on the one side.
- Dash cladding appears to be held on with two-sided tape, fitment was also poor and this struck me as something that would eventually delaminate after the heat dried it out.
- The passenger pillar with the handle had a ton of plastic flashing on it from the mould process. This should really have been trimmed, it looks cheap. The drivers side was perfect.
- The transmission, and I don't know why, decided to slam hard into 2nd gear just out of the blue when coming slowly out of Starbucks. It only did it the once but it was a strange feeling
Mileage at time of testing was just over 7,000 miles on the odometer.
Pics:
Pros:
- Quiet. Engine noise is extremely muted and the interior appears to be reasonably well insulated.
- Climate control works well and the fan is not obnoxious, despite moving lots of air. HVAC controls are intuitive and well laid-out.
- Turning radius is surprisingly tight
- It eats bumps well.
- Headlights appear to be quite good, but have had limited night use at this time (HID projectors)
- Factory stereo (BOSE) works quite well and is not "boomy" or "tinny".
- Gauges are clear and easy to read
- Signal stock is intuitive and has a quality feel to it, as does the shifter
- Wheel weighting is good, with reasonable self-centre and the materials feel good (leather wrapped)
- Seats are of reasonable quality with decent bolstering. They are heated and cooled.
- There is plenty of storage space in the doors and the less expensive appearing plastic lower down on them is well masked by the higher quality soft touch material higher up.
- Storage space in the rear, with the seats down is quite good, and not awful with the 3rd row up.
- The transmissions seems to shift quickly and smoothly
- The power tailgate works well and is what I would describe as "just the right speed"
Cons:
- The accelerator pedal has in the neighbourhood of 1/4 of it that feels as what I would describe as far too progressive (it does almost nothing) and then all of a sudden you are into the power. This I'm sure aides in gas mileage, as I find myself creeping away from intersections, but has led to "jerky" driving for others, since they try to get past the dead spot and end up hitting the power section pretty hard.
- The seat fan for the cooling feature is loud. REALLY loud. I actually had to turn it off, and I could feel it vibrating in the seat. This is the 2nd time I've had issue with this feature, we had a Suburban where the vents in the back of the seat kept popping out when somebody sat in the seat. We had that issue twice, with two separate ones. When working however, the cooling works well enough.
- The ride, while gobbling up bumps well, seems a bit "bouncy". Like there isn't enough bounce control in the dampening.
- The dead pedal is almost flat with the floor, so it is much less of a dead pedal and more just a part of the floor.
- The lock/unlock button is nowhere near any of the other controls. This is not intuitive.
- The control for the wheel heat is nowhere near any of the other climate/comfort controls. Also not intuitive.
- That navigation works well enough, but isn't as good as the Dodge/Chrysler one
- The third row seats aren't suitable for much other than kids. They are not comfortable and are extremely cramped
- The mirrors are simply awful. For some reason the bottom inner corner of the side mirrors has been cut off? I assume this is for aesthetics but it seriously reduces the utility of the mirrors. They subsequently feel far too small for the vehicle.
- Dash fitment for the navigation is surprisingly poor. The padded section that rides on top of the screen (which slides up to expose a storage bay) does not align well with the dash top and there is a huge gap on the one side.
- Dash cladding appears to be held on with two-sided tape, fitment was also poor and this struck me as something that would eventually delaminate after the heat dried it out.
- The passenger pillar with the handle had a ton of plastic flashing on it from the mould process. This should really have been trimmed, it looks cheap. The drivers side was perfect.
- The transmission, and I don't know why, decided to slam hard into 2nd gear just out of the blue when coming slowly out of Starbucks. It only did it the once but it was a strange feeling
Mileage at time of testing was just over 7,000 miles on the odometer.
Pics:
