We got ourselves a Captiva for a rental car today. It gets great mileage, but haven't checked it yet. Drove all day and it's still 5/8 of a tank.
Good- Looks cute says the wife. Ok, I guess that's a "good". It's not garish to look at, but still, it's an SUV. I do like that it's rather small. Not an SUV fan at all, but have the mother in law with us and "women's luggage" (guys know what I mean) so an SUV sounded more practical. Mileage seems to be good. When on a smooth level road, it's quiet and rides well. Steering is...SUV, but it goes pretty much where you point it. Has all the room we needed.
Gages were easy to read and controls were ok, and the DIC was typical GM. The DIC controls were on the dash, exactly the same operation as my GMC truck, so that was easy enough. A LITTLE dissapointed that those buttons weren't easy to see on the lower left part of the dash.
The A/C is controlled with an auto temp knob. Set the temp you want and forget it. Wish Camaro had that.
Seats were comfy. AND, it has a feature that looks remarkably close to the steering wheel found in the current Camaros. Not fond of it, but it does feel ok in the hands. 2+ hours straight to Flagstaff and it didn't even phase me as far as a tiring drive. Rides pretty well overall.
The Onstar stuff is in the overhead console, and the rearview mirror now looks like the mirrors of old, found in things like a 75 Malibu. Looks cleaner.
One very cool little feature I found was the Garmin power wire plugs in UNDER the cupholders in the console. Really. You push a button down, and slide back the entire cup holder assembly which unveils a very deep pocket to store the garmin and stuff while not using it, and it has the power cord plug and a USB port in there as well. When in use, the garmin power cord conveniently fits into a formed notch in the cupholder so you can close the cupholder without crunching the wire.
Bad- Similar hatch operation as the CTS Wagon, but isn't motorized. That sucks. Maybe I'm spoiled, but with all the other bells and whistles on the car you would think it would have that. Didn't even come with backup alarm sensors (that I noticed. I did notice there were no "beeps" going into reverse, so I'm assuming that's the case.)
Interestingly enough, it reminds me a LOT of that Hundai equivalent from the outside. But anyway, it's got a rockin' 4 cylinder that really LABORS to get up the mountain passes from Phoenix to Flagstaff. When you get on it, it's very noisy because of the high revs needed. Maybe that's the way they're supposed to be, I dunno. Around town it's great, but when you need power, forget it. It is peppy for a 4 cylinder, but if you ever decide you want one, unless you're in the city only, opt for the V6.
The ride on rough roads transfers a lot of road noise up through the cabin. Again, maybe it's just me and that's how they're supposed to be. No issues at all on smooth roads.
Overall, it is fairly impressive to me for a small SUV. Obviously I'm not going to evaluate it very carefully as if I were going to buy one, but for a jellybean, it works as intended. Just some first blush observations is all.
