2007-2009 Chevrolet Uplander, Pontiac Montana

I almost forgot this one, I don't drive too many different types of minivans so it sometimes is easy to forget them.



Introduction: The Chevrolet Uplander and Pontiac Montana are both part of GM's minivans. The earliest GM minivans were introduced for 1990 as the Chevrolet Lumina, Pontiac Trans Sport and the Oldsmobile Silhouette. GM's minivans have only gone through 3 generations with the early Luminas lasting nearly 10 years in production. These minivans were GM's attempt to take on Chrysler and its Caravan which sells in very high volume. Ford was the first to quit the minivan business after the Freestar's disappointing sales, now GM also put its minivans on the chopping block and have so far not mentioned a succeeding minivan beyond the 2009 model year.

Like I mentioned in the last review, I wasn't too thrilled about the GM minivans either. I don't even get much in terms of choices of minivans its either GM or Dodge, now its all Dodge.


Performance: The GM minivans are all powered by a 3.9L V6 making this the biggest V6 available for a minivan outside of the highest spec Dodge Caravan. The Canadian spec V6 is flex fuel compatible allowing you to put in E85. These engines produce 240 hp and 240 lb.ft of torque making these the least expensive but most powerful minivans. Unfortunately they do not produce the best acceleration numbers since they can only do 0-100 km/h in 8.1 seconds. Better than the least powerful minivans but not close to Toyota or Honda who both have smaller V6s and are still quicker. You do not really notice the size of the V6 in the Uplander/Montana since it doesn't move the van that quickly, its better than the Caravan but it doesn't feel fast nor acts like the engine is that quick.

My Score: 8/10 - Engine is adequate in performance but not efficient versus Toyota or Honda

Handling: The Uplander as a minivan is not designed to tackle corners. Taking these minivans to a corner quickly, you'll notice huge amounts of roll and at the same time not feel all that excited until you probably get the sense the van will roll over. They're much easier to park than the Caravans mostly with their better turning radius. They're not fun however, the wheel is very lightly weighted and thus produces little feel. I guess its suited for moms but as a driver who likes driving these were a bore to drive.

My Score: 3/10 - Not good at corners, bad body roll, lacking steering feel.


Interior: With minivans, you have to look at the clever ways they use space or innovative features that make them worth buying over the competition. The short wheel base GM vans do not provide very good trunk space and do not have Chrysler's clever stow n' go. Even worse as base vehicles they only provide 6 seats making it a somewhat pointless minivan until you go further with options to get 7 seats. Most minivans offer 7 or 8 seating, its the Crossover SUVs that offer mostly 6 or 7 seats. As for cargo space, you can fold the seats but they take up extra room versus the Caravan which folds the seats to floor level. The van's materials are pretty cheap and mostly unattractive. The wheel like I mentioned about the Grand Prix is also gigantic, not sure why. Last but not least the build quality...the GM minivans have horrid build quality. I've seen some vans where the plastic tag for the carpets that were not removed meaning sometimes you see a tiny plastic spike in your carpet. They rattle very often due to loose pieces all over, the cup holder often fails and I've once had door trim come out. Worse however is sometimes the trim surrounding the door rails fail and prevent the sliding door from opening. They're almost as bad as Trailblazers in this sense. They are built in Doraville, Georgia, USA.

My Score: 2/10 - 7 passenger seating is an option, no interior innovation and very badly built

Styling: The Montana is a pretty standard looking minivan, the Uplander however has a horrible looking grille. Some automobile articles think the Uplander is one of the worst vehicles in terms of style...I'll only agree if they specifically focus only on grilles. Taking out the grille, the rest of the van is generic. The Edsel looked very good if it weren't for that grille it had. There are uglier vehicles out there.

My Score: 5/10 - Generic minivan styling but the Uplander has a terrible grille.

Value for money: These minivans can only compete well if they are at their base MSRP unfortunately the fact that the 7 seating capacity is an option puts it in trouble. There's nothing special about the interior versus the Caravan. Its not very luxurious either compared to the Japanese. This current generation is also horribly unreliable, the traction control always believes it has a problem. Other than being heavily discounted these are not worthwhile vans.

My Score: 2/10 - 7 passenger capacity being an option, poor reliability, offers very little compared to the competition.

Overall: 20/50 - These are not good minivans, they're cheap for a reason and it seems GM realized it was no good and killed it for good reason.

2007-2009 Chevrolet Equinox, Pontiac Torrent, Suzuki XL-7

Just thought of one car that's pretty much gone from our fleet. The Chevrolet Equinox, Pontiac Torrent, Suzuki XL-7, these are all pretty much the same SUV.




Introduction: The Chevrolet Equinox was introduced as a replacement of the old Blazer. The larger Trailblazer was introduced while the Equinox remained GM's smaller SUV in order to compete against the Ford Explorer and increasing Japanese entries. The Pontiac Torrent would fill the gap left by the very controversial Aztek. Suzuki decided on joining with GM to make an addition to their SUV entry with the XL-7. The fate of the Torrent went with Pontiac and would go no further than the 2009 model year while the XL-7 due to very poor sales would also be discontinued as a 2009 model. The Equinox however had better success and has just entered its second generation.

As usual from the beginning I'm not too thrilled about SUVs so I really didn't care about these three. I actually initially thought the Suzuki was a bit different mostly due to the styling until I got inside and saw the exact same dials from the Equinox and Torrent.


Performance: The Equinox and Torrent had two choices of engines the 3.4L V6 and the 3.6L V6 while the Suzuki only got access to the 3.6L V6. All the vehicles I drove had the 3.6L V6, judging from the numbers the 3.4L V6 is definitely not the engine you want to power an SUV. The 3.6L produces about 252-264 hp and 243-250 lb.ft of torque, it differs with each brand. All three SUVs accelerate from 0-100 km/h in about 7.8 seconds. This SUV is pretty well powered and the V6 is reasonably smooth. Oddly enough while this is one of the quickest vehicles I've driven they didn't seem all that fast.

My Score: 9/10 - Very well powered with the 3.6, its not very exciting however despite its performance.

Handling: The three SUVs handle pretty reasonably and offer no real surprises. You cannot push them as hard as good handling cars but they don't feel as heavy as some bigger cars or SUVs. The steering feel is pretty reasonably for a GM vehicle. All in all they corner like you'd expect a regular SUV to, the moment you attempt to try anything rash you'll notice it really is just a regular SUV.

My Score: 6/10 - Not bad, but nothing outstanding.


Interior: All three use very similar interiors, there are minor differences but they're pretty negligible and do not affect the operation of anything in the SUV. As SUVs they offer quite a lot of space as 5-seaters and also offer pretty good trunk space. The materials used to construct the interior are of mediocre quality, you can't really say they're good because they look quite average but they're pretty solid. The colours inside also vary, the Suzuki offers a lightly coloured interior while the Pontiac is pretty dark inside. The A/C unit is pretty powerful so in the heat, this vehicle is quite comfortable. Build quality in these SUVs seem to be pretty good making it much better than the Trailblazer/Envoy. All of these SUVs are built in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada.

My Score: 9/10 - Spacious interior, good A/C unit and pretty good build quality

Styling: The Torrent and Equinox are basically the same aside from the grille. They're pretty generic looking SUVs. The XL-7 is actually the different one but I thought it looked pretty odd from the rear and I didn't think the grille looked very good.

My Score: 5/10 - The Torrent and Equinox look generic, the XL-7 looks weird.

Value for money: Both Torrent and XL-7 have ended up being terrible value for the money due to Pontiac being cut as a brand and the Suzuki selling so poorly. The Equinox is the best deal of the three however, despite the power I didn't really notice anything particularly outstanding. I didn't even drive the base vehicles making me wonder what exactly is the selling point. They're just a bit too generic in my mind.

My Score: 5/10 - Generic Crossover SUVs, the Torrent and XL-7 only have worse resale rates.

My Score: 34/50 - In the end there's nothing particularly bad about these SUVs, they have a good engine although I'm struggling to think of what makes them different.

2007-2008 Toyota Yaris CE, LE

This is the next car on the retirement slot, while there are a few sedans in our fleet we lost all of the hatchbacks. Both hatchback and sedans drive pretty much identical so I'll be doing both and occasionally split the scores.



Introduction: Toyota has always been a player in the subcompact segment of cars. At one point they were the only credible name plate with a credible enough vehicle that Honda and Nissan never really directly competed with. Toyota's original car for this slot was the Toyota Tercel, a nameplate known for its reliability and very low MSRP, a very attractive vehicle for budget conscious car buyers. With increasing gas prices, Toyota no longer has the market to itself and now has increased competition from Nissan, Honda, Hyundai and Kia. Ford and Mazda are introducing their vehicles for the 2011 model year. In 2006 Toyota decided to replace the failing Echo with the Yaris which has sold reasonably well in Europe and Japan. In 2007 Toyota of North America had the Yaris replace the Echo completely following Canada's lead. Unlike other Toyota markets, Toyota used both Vitz(hatchback) and Belta(sedan) and named them both Yaris for the different bodystyles. Both vehicles do use very similar components and do not differ all that much overall.

I was actually surprised by the Yaris, it did catch my attention unlike the failed Echo and the uninteresting Corolla. I wanted to see if this vehicle's European success was a result of good engineering or just a very good marketing campaign. So I was pretty eager to try this car.


Performance: The Toyota Yaris has the smallest and lowest powered engine of all North American car entries. A small 1.5L 4-cylinder engine producing 106 hp and 103 lb.ft of torque. This is by far the lowest powered car I've ever driven so it really comes down to the weight of the Yaris to affect its performance. The bad news is this is the same engine powering the Echo which was a lighter vehicle. Both Yaris manage to go from 0-100 km/h in about 10.7 seconds, they get much better numbers with manual transmissions. This is not the slowest vehicle but its not too far from that. For city speeds the Yaris is more than enough, its the highway speeds the small engine begins to struggle moving the vehicle quickly enough along with the louder noise. Where the Yaris does shine is fuel economy numbers, the hatchback particularly has the best fuel economy numbers of any conventional gasoline powered car currently.

My Score(hatch): 7/10 - Its an economical engine, despite its low power numbers its not the slowest vehicle out there and provides excellent fuel economy.

My Score(sedan): 6/10 - The same as the hatch but its fuel economy numbers are worse due to weight.

Handling: As with all smaller cars they should handle better than their larger counterparts. The Yaris is no different here, thanks to its light weight the handling in the Yaris is pretty good. It can take corners with a bit of roll mostly down to its soft suspension although I get the feeling that it could be better. The steering feel is surprisingly accurate for a new Toyota but its also on the light side and again this could have been done better. I'm a bit surprised Toyota didn't make a trim level to take advantage of the Yaris' handling potential but they didn't leaving me to wonder how much better could this be?

My Score(both): 7/10 - Pretty decent handling and steering feel, but gives you the sense you didn't hit the car's true limits.



Interior: The Yaris being Toyota's least expensive vehicle no doubt has the least luxurious interior. When it comes down to function the Yaris has a pretty acceptable interior, while the plastics are kind of cheap it does have a lot of cubbyholes and cup holders. The 3-door Yaris hatch actually made the process of entering the rear seats of a 2/3-door more efficient with the seat sliding forward as you hold the seat lever. What your equipped with however depends on whether you got a CE or LE. The 3-door CE is very poorly equipped you don't get things like adjustable mirrors for instance. Both CE bodystyles don't have roll up windows or power locks. The LEs give you the basic conveniences you'd expect from decently equipped new cars. The hatchbacks don't have much trunk space and you'll need to fold down the seats, the sedan is about the size as a 1998-2002 Corolla and has a decent trunk. One item that grabs the most attention is the center mounted dash...I personally didn't care that it was there and to me it was practically the same as standard dash placements. As for the build quality, the Yaris is actually superbly put together, I've only encountered one Yaris center console with gaps...because someone attempted to break the thing.

My Score(hatchback): 6/10 - The CEs are very badly equipped, cheap materials and trunk space is poor but efficient cabin design and put together very well.

My Score(sedan): 7/10 - Similar to the hatch but better trunk space.

Styling: The Yaris is one of the first few Toyotas to show some sort of a personality. Many previous Toyotas rarely showed any sort of personality. With the Yaris you instantly can tell its supposed to be a more cheerful car especially with the Yaris sedan with its smiling grille. I actually don't mind the styling of either and think they look pretty good unlike many other boring cars.

My Score(both): - 9/10 - Both cars show some form of emotion and the general style of the car reflects this emotion.

Value for money: The Yaris is not one of the most expensive of the subcompacts, that actually goes to the Honda Fit. This is the only subcompact aside from the Fit that is built very well. In terms of size the Yaris sedan unfortunately is stuck between most subcompact hatches and the next level of compact cars. For its price the Yaris sedan is a tad bit more expensive than the hatchback. You lose the fuel economy and are more likely to buy the LE due to how inconvenient it is to lock/unlock 4 doors. The Yaris hatch doesn't quite have those problems, the 3-door is poorly equipped but the 5-door has no CE option and thus is always well equipped. If you prioritize fuel economy, price and build quality the Yaris hatch is the best choice. If you need a decent sized trunk the sedan also fits the bill. Both cars have been pretty reliable and are good choices for budget minded customers.

My Score(hatch): 8/10 - As a hatch its relatively inexpensive but also very efficient.

My Score(sedan): 7/10 - A good choice if you want 90% of the hatch's efficiency but need a trunk.

Overall(hatch): 37/50 - The most efficient vehicle available, clearly the best car out there when your most concerned about costs.

Overall(sedan): 36/50 - A pretty efficient vehicle with a usable trunk.

2007-2008 Pontiac Grand Prix

Oi, it looks like work hasn't slowed down very much and this month is no different. Here's another big batch of reviews hopefully I finally covered all the retired cars or soon to be retiring vehicles from my workplace fleet. Here's one that will certainly retire very soon.


Introduction: The Pontiac Grand Prix is a very old nameplate for the Pontiac brand. Its also one of the last surviving actually named vehicles before Pontiac started using the G names like G5, G6 and G8. The original Pontiac Grand Prix didn't change very much in terms of its size since every single Grand Prix is a full sized vehicle. However the earlier RWD Grand Prix were merely just large 2-door coupes, which were pretty common back then. It wasn't until 1988 that the Grand Prix switched from RWD to FWD, it also no longer remained just a 2-door coupe it also was a 4-door sedan. Since its entry as a FWD vehicle it also was given forced induction for power mostly in the GTP trim levels. The last Grand Prix dropped the 2-door coupe body style and had two additional trim levels from the GXP supercharged V6 and the GTP was given a V8. However due to poor consumer sales GM decided to replace the Grand Prix with the Australian RWD Holdon Commodore called the G8 as a Pontiac.

I wasn't expecting all too much from the Grand Prix, I never knew anybody who wanted or considered this car. It however is a pretty big car and seemed pretty cheap compared to everything else non-GM.


Performance: The base Grand Prix is given the Series III 3.8L V6. This particular engine produces about 200 hp and 230 lb.ft of torque, from these numbers this engine looks kind of pathetic considering its a big V6 and that many 3.0L V6s produce these numbers. Well...oddly enough these numbers seem to lie to my senses when I drive this car. This is the most savage V6 I've encountered in the company...its this savagery that makes me actually like this engine. The very first time the light throttle made me spin the car out, kind of embarrassing but fun at the same time. It roars, its rough and it due to its large displacement it manages to move the heavy Grand Prix pretty decently about 8 seconds to go from 0-100 km/h. The engine's savagery and its decent acceleration does make it feel faster than it is, so despite its bad numbers I don't consider it bad.

My Score: 10/10 - Its not efficient by any means, but the surge of power you seem to sense when push it feels fantastic.

Handling: Oh dear...you definitely feel the Grand Prix's weight and you also start to realize that big powerful FWD cars are more flawed than their RWD counterparts or smaller FWD cars. The Grand Prix is not exactly a soft rider like its Buick cousin but due to its not so great suspension and extremely front heaviness its handling is pretty poor. The only good news is the Grand Prix doesn't really roll as much as other cars but it doesn't matter your, turning ability worse than regular family cars. Steering feel is also pretty decent for GMs of this time, but it accurately tells you the handling ability of this car is poor. The Grand Prix still seems to fit the stereotype of American cars doing well in a straight line.

My Score: 3/10 - Doesn't roll much but its cornering ability shows the suspension is deeply flawed.


Interior: The Grand Prix mostly have black interiors, I was not impressed with this interior very much. The very first thing is the inadequate seat, I just cannot find a comfortable enough position with this seat and I don't seem to be the only one. The materials in the car are easily noticeably cheap, the door handles inside for instance are plastic and just merely painted in a tin foil colour. I didn't like the steering wheel, its just way too big for any car. I didn't find the Grand Prix to be made all that well, these cars are manufactured in Oshawa, Canada. The good news is the car is very spacious and has a very generous trunk.

My Score: 3/10 - Cheap materials, uncomfortable seats, disappointing build quality but is very spacious.

Styling: The Grand Prix has a pretty aggressive appearance from the front. Much of the styling actually does fit the nature of the car, looks pretty savage and with its engine its acts that way. The rear is kind of bland however, generic American car styling. Despite its aggressive appearance it doesn't look all that great in darker colours, Pontiac also offered an awful orange colour. Overall its a pretty nicely styled car.

My Score: 8/10 - Aggressive front end, a forgettable rear end unfortunately in the end does fit the nature of the car pretty well.

Value for money: The Grand Prix particularly the base car is not a good value for money. Few people bought the car brand new and due to annoying problems they're not known for reliability. Its not rare for these cars to lose 50% of their value within a year of purchase. Chevrolet also has a car that does everything the Grand Prix does well at but with less of the problems, the Impala. The Grand Prix with its rough edges has to convince young buyers since older buyers will go with the Impala or Buick, unfortunately for Pontiac a big, heavy, spacious sedan is not the dream, attainable vehicle in most young buyer's minds.

My Score: 2/10 - The value of the Grand Prix is cannibalized by its GM siblings. As a used buy its fantastic value but as a new car its a money drain.

Overall: 26/10 - The Grand Prix has a fantastic engine and pretty good looks, but is lacking everywhere else. GM unfortunately realized this way too late.