Rental car review: Chevy Impala (a.k.a. GM just can't help itself)

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 07/25/2016 at 15:25 • Filed to: None

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I have this hulking beast of Chevy for the moment. The Enterprise office was out of smaller cars so I got an Impala. It is mostly ok, and a huge improvement over the dreadful previous versions, except for all of the stupid little decisions GM made that I just can’t understand.

First off, the good: the Impala is a generally comfy and quiet highway cruiser that in spite of its size and comfort, doesn’t wallow around uncontrollably. It is a boringly competent car to drive. This is much more than I can say for the previous generation, which was the literal embodiment of every single “Old GM” bad habit.

That being said, the current Impala is not a vehicle I can recommend to anyone, because of several stupid things that make no sense.

Rear visibility in particular, and visibility in general, is terrible. It’s like GM said, “You can’t see shit out the back of a Camaro and people love those, so let’s do the same thing on the new Impala!”

There’s a good 4+ inches of rear deck height over and above the top of the rear seats. The pillars are huge, and the front passenger seat is so tall that it blocks most of your view out the rear passenger side window. How do you know when someone is tailgating you in an Impala? When you can only see the roof of their car.

I took this picture at a red light, not while actually being tailgated, but you get the idea. My rental-spec Impala, in spite of having multiple screens, has no backup camera or parking sensors to make up for the rear visibility.

Side visibility isn’t much better. The B-pillar is right next to the driver’s head, and it’s so wide that when you look over your left shoulder to merge, pretty much all you can see is the pillar. Looking over your right shoulder, your view is blocked to a bit lesser of an extent by the gigantic front passenger seat and headrest.

There’s this odd seam in the middle of the top of the dash. Why is this seam here? Maybe it’s a door? Nope, it’s not anything.

I tried pushing on it, pulling on it, looking for a button to raise it, nothing. This flap does nothing at all that would necessitate being a separate piece from the rest of the dash, but here it is. Maybe it’s supposed to shade the infotainment screen, but it doesn’t cast a shadow that far.

EDIT: Ok, the screen slides up to reveal a cubby. I’m posting this here since I now have like 12 replies saying this.

That seam is still ugly, and my example was already noticably rattling over most bumps. But ok, yes, the weird seam is because of this potentially useful secret hidey hole.

Let’s talk about that infotainment screen. It was simple enough to pair up to my phone, except when I wanted to pair my phone, it blocked me from doing so while moving. Yeah yeah, I know, don’t pair your phone while driving. In addition to “you can’t do that while moving,” it said to try voice commands. So I hit the voice command button and said “pair bluetooth.” The screen did its little waiting-for-voice-recognition dance, then pulled up the same pairing screen, and told me I still couldn’t do that while moving. Why’d you tell me to use voice commands, screen?

Each time you start up the Pandora app by pressing the Pandora icon on the screen, if your phone’s Pandora app isn’t open yet, while you wait for your phone’s app to open, the car’s screen says “Pandora connection error,” as if something is wrong, when really the app is just booting up on your phone. Also, if you place a call from your phone instead of beeping and booping your way through the poorly designed contacts list on the infotainment screen to place a call, half the time the audio from the call doesn’t transfer over to the car. The person you’re calling’s phone rings but you don’t hear shit.

At night, both the infotainment screen and the one in the gauge cluster are so much brighter than the gauge and button lighting, that to not be blinded by the screens, you have to turn the dimmer so low that you can barely see the gauges and buttons.

Moving further down, we see a shifter whose markings don’t quite line up with the positions of the shifter.

Why put the markings for PRND etc. next to the actual spot the shifter is in when in those gears, when instead they can be offset from the shifter by a couple inches? That’s a great feature! At least I got a free quarter from the last person who drove this car.

Not to mention that horrible “wood” trim, that I don’t even think really qualifies as some sort of attempt at fake wood, because I have no idea what material GM was trying to imitate in this obviously-printed design, with all those inexplicable lines on it with equally-inexplicable random blobs at certain points along those lines.

I should point out that I noticed all of these things in approximately 45 total minutes of driving time in the Impala. Well, the screen lighting at night was a later trip. I’m an observant guy, but come on, this is ridiculous.

Don’t buy one.

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 15:32

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I really liked the old W body Impala, mostly because it was an honest car that drove competently well, had the controls where I wanted them, and did highways really well (plus bench seat!).

The new Impala is like a $20 hooker in $100 heels.

Jayhawk Jake > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 15:33

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The seam is there because the screen goes up. There’s a button somewhere, I don’t remember exactly where, and it reveals a cubby behind the screen.

bhtooefr > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 15:33

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The rear visibility issue is something that a lot of modern cars have, between aerodynamic requirements (requiring a rear deck that blends into the rear window), trunk space demands, side impact requirements (requiring raised beltlines), and the styling attempts to hide the aerodynamic and side impact changes to the designs.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 15:38

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Those issues with visibility are common to a lot of modern three-box designs. It’s from a need to deflect impacts effectively, particularly from high-angle shells and... what were we talking about again?

Probenja > Jayhawk Jake 07/25/2016 at 15:38

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Textured Soy Protein > Jayhawk Jake 07/25/2016 at 15:38

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Well what do you know, I learned something.

Looks like the button in the middle of the dash is for raising it.

Fun.

The seam is still pretty terrible looking though.

Textured Soy Protein > BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind 07/25/2016 at 15:39

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You and I must have different definitions of “drives competently.”

Logansteno: Bought a VW? > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 15:42

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There’s a button in the cluster of buttons below the screen that raises that piece and the screen up to reveal a cubby with a USB in it. Button should have a square with an arrow pointing up and down next to it. It also works as a sort of safe thing that can be locked with a code through MyLink.

And it might be because it’s rental spec, but impalas with the 8" MyLink screen should have a reverse camera. Or there might be a setting to turn it off and some douche canoe did that.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 15:49

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I recently had the pleasure to drive a rental spec 2016 Camry. When I’m used to the Hyundai or Kia of the day for rental cars the Camry was downright luxurious. The Camry was also worlds better than the Rental Spec 2015 Chevy Malibu that I had back in May.

It’s all relative, the new impalla I’m sure is way better than the old one, which I have rented several times. I had one a couple of years ago that I drove 300 miles with the CEL on, no biggie it’s a rental car.

AfromanGTO > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 16:19

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The screen part of the dash raises up, and it reveals a cubby hole behind the stereo.

Chinny Raccoon > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 17:41

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It looks like a leather version of those horrible carpets people put on their dashboards.

wafflesnfalafel > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 18:29

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You didn’t mention the dumba$$ electric parking brake? That’s really the only thing that bugged me bad. It does “drive big”, you can feel the weight, but once up to speed on the freeway they just fly along. I’m a taller guy and I really liked the seats. The glare on the touchscreen was greater than average... but not terrible. Tons of room in the back seat. The rear window viability is less than on many cars but it didn’t really bug me. Just that stupid parking brake...

ranwhenparked > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 20:11

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So, basically, poor visibility and fake looking fake wood in a $27,000 car = total, unmitigated disaster. I would love to send this review back in time 30 years to somebody dealing with Citation or a diesel Cadillac and see their reaction.

The poor visibility thing is a huge annoyance though, but Bob Lutz was a big believer in the notion that people buy cars based on how they look, not how well they can see out of them. GM had lots of rigid internal rules regarding outward viewing angles and glass area that was making it increasingly hard to do attractive cars, so he threw them all out and told them to forget about it. So, in a way, having good outward visibility would be a relic of the old GM. I would say the pendulum has swung too far by now, though.

jvirgs drives a Subaru > Textured Soy Protein 07/25/2016 at 22:27

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At least they put PRNDM markings near the shifter. The previous gen only had them in the gauge cluster.

Textured Soy Protein > ranwhenparked 07/26/2016 at 11:23

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It’s not only the visibility and fake wood. It’s lots of little annoying things, plus the extremely annoying lack of visibility, that ruin what is otherwise a pretty decent vehicle.

Textured Soy Protein > wafflesnfalafel 07/26/2016 at 11:25

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You are right about the freeway cruising. Goes down the road very nicely. I don’t generally use the parking brake on cars with automatic transmissions. I’m only 5'11" but I find the seats mediocre. The upholstery is pretty shitty too.