The Critical Consumer

On one of my recent road trips, I rented a Chevy Equinox, which is considered to be a mid-size SUV. I was very impressed, first of all, that it was a rental car. It had leather seats, wood trim, and a moon/sun roof (I never know the difference between the two. It opened up and slid back). Other amenities were the AWD, XM radio built in, CD player, Cruise control, volume control on the steering wheel, numerous information displays, and a gas “range” counter (so you know how many miles you can drive before you are totally out of gas).

Now, if I have any complaints, the first would be the gas. I know I chose to drive an SUV so I should’ve been prepared to pay the price of gas, but that 16 gallon tank cost me about $150 in gas. Ouch!

My other complaint, well, its not really a complaint, but it was kind of an annoyance in that I was driving a rental car and didn’t have enough time to get used to it, is that the window controls are all on the center console. It took me about 5 minutes to find them at first. I was sitting in the car rental lot thinking, “Surely there are automatic window controls”, but I couldn’t see them. I even tried saying “window” out loud, just in case it was voice activated. No, I didn’t, but that would’ve been funny. Anyway, more than once, I put down the wrong window because I hit the control for the back window instead of the driver side. I can see the benefit of having the controls there if you have the car long enough to get used to it, but for me, it was just a bit confusing.

Cargo space was very nice, except that the back seats, which do fold down, don’t fold down flat. So you have the back cargo area, then you have a raised portion with the flattened seats. I don’t see much purpose in that. Especially when there was space under the seats. It seems like they should’ve easily slid into that space.

It also took me a little time to figure out the remote control lock device, but that’s only because the car came with two of them and only one worked. I didn’t realize that for a while, I just thought I wasn’t hitting the buttons in the correct order.

Overall, I was very impressed with this car. It rode well, I never felt unsafe, and I had a really good time driving it.