>> What the hell is this thing? The world's biggest crossover? I got to tell ya, when I saw in the calendar Chevy Traverse suit today, I had to go look it up. Didn't know what it was. Let's go find out and check the tech. ^m00:00:12 [ music ] ^m00:00:19 Now because our... now what is this thing? Traverse - is an LTZ, it's loaded to the gills and there's not a lot to option. So let's check out the rather lavish standard equipment. Here's our navigation screen of course, it's always the first crowd pleaser. I find the display to be relatively smooth in it's resolution but not terribly sharp, so it looks, I'd say, mid-pack in terms of how quickly you can glance at it and get the information. It's a touch screen as you can see, we've got a variety of good size buttons. We do have live traffic also, you can see very clear indications of red, green, yellow, and also icons. It'll tell you when there's an issue and you can actually click one of those to find out what the problem is directly from that icon. That traffic by the way comes via XM Nav Traffic, so there's a subscription and an account you've got to maintain after your - I think it's 3 months free expire. And then of course also tells us we have XM satellite radio on this guy, as well as of course AM radio, FM, no HD, no iPod adapter here. Notice I've got a DVD in the deck right now showing a movie. This is also the DVD deck for our optional rear seat entertainment system. You can see the monitor right there up on the ceiling, center mounted - not crazy about it because it blocks some visibility out of the rearview mirror. We do have an AUX jack very easily placed right here on the front face plate. When I put that in I get an AUX menu though; front AUX input, which we're on, or rear AUX input. Those guys live back there, they are the multicolored RCA jacks for video and left and right audio. But notice this; single optical drive, 2 screens in the car. If you've got a DVD here for the backseat passengers, you have tied up your optical drive for the entire car. Now 2 strange things I want to show you here; the first one's kind of trivial. If I go into my menu settings here under radio - limit features while driving. So you can kind of set this thing to self police you, and of all of those things right there, those functions you could fiddle with while driving - it won't let you. I don't think I've seen that before on a car. And much more substantially on this vehicle, is the fact that it's Noah's Ark. The technologies come 2 by 2. So for example, you have 2 ways to do hands free calling. The vehicle has hands free Bluetooth, and it has On Star hands free calling. The vehicle has of course, on screen GPS navigation and it has On Star turn by turn direction. So there is absolutely no excuse not to make that call and not to find that destination. But do I really need 2 of everything? Seems like they could have saved a little money. The backup camera on this car is interesting - again, standard on the vehicle. When you put it into reverse, you get your visibility but what I also like is you've got this floating icon that moves around to highlight where there are things you're likely to back into. ^m00:02:59 [ music ] ^m00:03:03 The Traverse is like a Buick Enclave or a GMS Acadia or a Saturn Outlook, all the same basic vehicle. Chevy's version is aimed largely at women and or those who are coming off a full size SUV, and want better economy and styling that actually gets good comments. Our Traverse is a top of the line LTZ. That basically means a lot of high trim, but it also rings a few more horses and foot pounds out of the 3 point 6 liter V6 used in all Traverses; specifically 288 horsepower and 261 foot pounds. Steering clear of a V8 means 17/24 mpg in our front wheel drive version, and you'll lose about a mile per gallon all around if you go for all wheel drive. The single transmission is a modern 6 speed automatic with a rocker switch on the left side of the knob for doing your own manual shifting. There's good power and torque, and the transmission is clearly modern; which means it's both smooth and many geared, but also programmed to seek overdrive relentlessly - which will fairly frequently make you feel like you're in the wrong gear at the moment when you try to zip into an opening on short notice. A Traverse LTZ is about a 40,000 dollar ride, but as you've seen most of the toys are included. About all you gotta consider for the tech options are all wheel drive 2,000 dollars more as a trim level adjustment, and 1,300 for that backseat DVD system. ^m00:04:30 [ music ]
