The Acadia has been with us since 2017 and, since that time, it has become a standard of mall parking lots all over America.
While it's not really an off-road machine, the Acadia is an SUV meant for tackling the urban jungle. This is especially true for the top Denali trim that we sampled. Its 3.6-liter V6 paired with enough leather and wood made driving in traffic a little less terrible. The Acadia is also available with all-wheel drive.
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It’s come to my attention that I was a little hard on a recent GM SUV that we had in the test rotation. If I was, it’s only because it sucked. Luckily, the GMC Acadia does a fantastic job of flushing the bitter taste of the Terrible-Ain and replacing it with the minty goodness of competence.
The current version of the Acadia, introduced in the 2017 model year, is positioned as a mid-sized SUV, although it drives and “lives” much more like a full-size, but in all the best ways. It’s maneuverable and drives very car-like, but also swallows a healthy amount of gear, and features easily accessible passenger seating areas. Unlike its smaller counterparts in the GM SUV lineup, the Acadia kind of nails the ergonomic equations and the result is an SUV you could actually drive every day and not want to just go home and cry.
There’s also a lot a cool touches that we’re surprised don’t make it on to more vehicles. Like the lock/unlock buttons that are located in every door handle, not just the fronts, or even just the driver door as in so many other vehicles. It’s a sensible addition that you really notice missing from other cars once you realize how handy it is.
But, look, it’s still and SUV and this is still a sports car magazine, so it’s not like we’d go so far as to dig deep into the hyperbole for this one, but it’s darn solid from a utility, functionality and user-friendliness perspective. If GM could only apply this model to their smaller SUVs…
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