Our Cars: GMC Terrain Denali – Week 2-3
The family mover that thinks it’s a hot hatch
By Shahzad Sheikh
26th March-8th April 2013 – Read Week 1 here, Read final report here
Some of you won’t believe this, but it’s been quite a hoot trashing about in our long term Terrain. That’s mostly down to the hilarious combination of nearly 300bhp and front-wheel drive – top tip, if you don’t need 4×4, don’t bother speccing it on this car.
You don’t even need to turn the traction control off to get wheel spin and torque-tastic tugging at the wheel. There seems to be a surge at around 3500rpm from the engine, and it even sounds grunty. There is toggle switch and ‘manual’ selection mode for the transmission, but I just don’t find it natural to change gear that way, besides, the gearbox does a decent job left to its own.
Despite the torque-steer, bulky frame and tall-riding body, understeer is admirably restrained and turn-in surprisingly keen. Okay, it’s no Focus ST, but as family wagons go, it’s far from a dull drive in this configuration.
And then of course you have the SUV-style greater ground clearance, that helps in parking and roving around off the black stuff if required. There’s decent space and comfort inside and useful features like remote start and remote tailgate opening and closing. Great for getting the shopping in.
It’s got blind spot sensors, lane keeping assist alert and collision warning system – the last two of which I’ve turned off, but which many owners could find useful. The reversing camera is helpful too, particularly as this car seems to have a larger turning circle than you might expect. But it slots into spaces quite nicely thanks to a compact width.
I’ve also had an opportunity to use the satellite navigation which works very well and has a neat 3D map, although the controls to input destinations could be more intuitive.
Despite my propensity to give it a bootful of throttle whenever the opportunity arises, I’m not doing too bad on the economy front either having managed over 1000km and still on my second tank, in fact it’s showing a range of 150km still. The previous lowest average consumption of 8.5L/100km has been destroyed by me, but 10.5L/100km isn’t proving too bad either and we know a fill-up costs about AED100.
Was meaning to shoot this car properly, but the sandstorm and stormy weather has left it in a right state. Hopefully will try and get those for the next update.
Let us know what you think of the Terrain below
