The Silverado is Chevrolet’s best selling vehicle, but can you name their second-best seller? Impala? Malibu? Cruze? Tahoe? Traverse? Camaro? Corvette?
Nope. It’s the Equinox, the brand’s compact SUV.
It’s all new for 2018, too: 400 pounds lighter than its predecessor plus an all-turbo engine lineup. The new styling fits with the rest of the Chevy lineup, while a nine-speed automatic is available.
Our tester, in fact, featured said transmission. We drove the LT 2.0T model–which, as the name suggests, is powered by a 2.0-liter turbo engine.
Writing any kind of review for the Chevy Equinox is difficult because it’s the living embodiment of “damning with faint praise.” The Equinox inspires such lofty adjectives as “competent,” “useful,” “functional,” and “pleasant.” Tell any of those to your Tinder date and there will be no second attempt.
But they’re all relevant, and none of them are meant to disparage in any way the effectiveness of this vehicle at moving people and things. Oh, there I go again…
Look, the Equinox is fine, it’s just somewhat unremarkable, which is actually kind of welcome in a vehicle with “utility” right in its descriptor. The only things that really stand out because they’re particularly good are the seats and the price, which is below many of its competitors in the segment. Everything else blends into the pastiche of adequacy that make up the entirety of the vehicle.
I guess it’s good that most cars these days are unremarkable because they’re all fairly good instead of the opposite. That’s why I feel little bad about not getting terribly excited about the Equinox. I mean, it got nearly 30 mpg on an extended highway road trip, which would have been unheard of for an SUV in the pre-direct injection and turbo era. Complaining that the Equinox is merely adequate is the ultimate first world problem, and I guess we’re lucky to have it.
I’ll just second what JG had to say. The Equinox was kinda there—like lunch at the airport. Yes, you experienced it, but you can’t really remember it. It’s totally competent, but it’s not going to really change your life. Maybe that is damning something with faint praise but, really, it’s an appliance designed to appease the masses.
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