So I've had the absolutely
delightful pleasure of driving a 2015 Chevrolet Impala LTZ V6 for the past day, while my Jaguar is getting its scheduled maintenance done. And here I am writing about this absolutely wonderful experience, trying to figure out whether it's italics or bolding that works better when trying to convey sarcasm?
I could've waited for a Jaguar or Infiniti loaner car, but they had this Ashen Grey LTZ V6 that I told my wife to just take since she needed to go to work and since it was not a particularly bad looking car, either. In fact, it's rather nice. And therein lies our first mistake: the proverbial book cover.
So where to begin? You walk around the outside of the car and it's got nice little bits and bobs that stand out. It's big. It's long. Nice bi-xenons. Sculpted slabs of sheet metal give it a brawny look. And quite frankly, I've long wanted to sample this "New GM" and their products, so what better way with one of the companies most revered names? The Impala. A loaded one at that, with a 305HP V6 out of the Camaro (well, sort of).
I jump in and I'm immediately greeted by this downright hideous slab of veneer plastic around the shifter and center console. It is one of the saddest textured pieces of plastic I've ever seen. It doesn't even seem like it's trying to look like wood...or anything resembling wood. I've seen eBay dash kits that glue onto old Maximas and Accords that did a more convincing job and probably even used better material quality. To call the veneer in this car "dull" would be an insult to the word. Then you realize how tacky the veneer is, and I actually mean the word literally...it's tacked on. I could stick my pinky underneath its gap or insert a card under the veneer.
Have I rambled about the cheapness of the interior enough? I have more. You touch the center console and it creaks. Nudge it a little bit and every plastic bit shrieks as if the car's lived the life of a 300,000 mile New York City taxi, as opposed to the 4000 mile Florida car that it is. Seriously, we don't have pot holes or torn up roads here. This is just how shoddy the build quality and materials that make this car are. And again, we're talking about a loaded car with a nicely sized touch-screen in the console, not a bargain bin stripper.
You look ahead of you and you're greeted with two very familiar, very blue, and hideously outdated gauges that look like they were ripped off a Chevy product from the 1990s. The steering wheel is an ergonomic mess, as is the rest of the interior with its clusterfuck of buttons and downright offensive infotainment unit that has the touch response speed of an ATM from Uzbekistan. The base sound system (Bose is optional) is probably the worst I've heard since my 1993 Ford Tempo. Why does this car even give me the option to adjust bass and treble if it doesn't have any of it? And this isn't just me spitting out hyperbole, either. I turned the volume all the way up...and it was basically just muddy mids, not one bit of shake from the bass no matter the genre of song. I was convinced the speakers were shot, but I pressed my ear to them all and verified that this car has just about the worst audio money can buy. Truthfully, my mother's base 2010 VW Rabbit had better audio than this Impala.
But my senses tell me to look at this car as an appliance first. Does this do the job of transporting its owner from point to point? Yes. But so do mules and modern societies don't ride on mules anymore. There must be something redeeming about this car, though...right? Well, yes. Somewhat. The motor is solid. It's got good grunt. Not a whole lot of low-end torque to carry this 4100lb behemoth of a car, but the horsepower can still sling it with proper momentum you're not likely to call "slow". The 6-speed transmission shifts adequately, but in slower traffic conditions it can be dumb and jerky occasionally.
This car also has, without question, the stupidest use and implementation of a 'manual mode' I've ever seen. Instead of paddle shifters or even shifting using the shift knob, instead there is a little button atop the gear selector. Well, it's actually two buttons - up and down - taking up about 1 inch of space. So you shift using your thumb and press the buttons. It's downright peculiar and ridiculously stupid. Not to mention pointless.
Also, its FWD characteristics are blatantly obvious through the mushy steering wheel, which is supposed to be electric, but somehow manages to retain its terrible and rubbery on-center feel, making it very clear you're driving a boat and not a car. Don't try doing anything cute with this car on the road, because it has communicative feel of an emotional teenager whose ran out of makeup to aggravate his parents with. The fact that this car's electric steering so desperately tries to remind me that this is a front-wheel driven car made me wish that Chevrolet did more to disconnect the steering "feel".
But that's not even the worst of it. The worst of all this is the price tag. An astounding $37,000 including the destination charge. You can ring up a few other options such as guided cruise control, sunroof, etc. and the final tally is over the $40,000 mark. 40,000! For a mule propelled by gasoline. Nothing about this car remotely justifies such a price tag, especially when for that kind of coin you can have yourself a BMW 328i, an Audi A4, and an assortment of other vehicles with far more refinement, pedigree, and prestige. Granted the Impala is a larger car, with more storage, and a plush ride, but it's a car destined to sit on the paved garages of rental lots everywhere. And this is supposed to be one of the hallmarks for the "New GM"?
While it may look brutish and sleek on the outside, the interior is just a nightmare of parts-bin assembly complete with lifeless materials, bland decor, shoddy build quality, a stereo system that would've been better off excluded, hideous steering wheel, and poor ergonomics. Even the base stripper car rings out to nearly $28,000 and for the life of me I'll never understand why.
So... I'm conflicted haha
