Tennessee's smooth back roads, while great for driving, made it tough to evaluate ride quality. Unfortunately, feedback is slim making it more difficult to place the front tires. It's fairly sensitive and precise everywhere except just off-center, and it weights up well. The steering isn't quite as enjoyable as the chassis, though. The Equinox exhibited significant understeer when applying throttle in the corners, but engaging all-wheel drive (on an Equinox so-equipped) helped mitigate this. It was further evident the chassis was more capable than the tires fitted to it, which complained at their earliest convenience in the turns. Roll, and the chassis reacts quickly when changing directions and is stable through corners. For a tall crossover, there isn't much body The impeccably maintained winding roads outside of Nashville also revealed that the Equinox is a fairly agile handler. Putting it in the low mode or manual mode doesn't speed things up, either. It takes a moment for it to wake up and downshift when you demand more giddy-up, and the same goes for upshifts. Where the transmission could use some improvement is in shift speed. This of course means plenty of upshifts to keep the needle from swinging too far up the tachometer, but every shift is silky smooth and nearly imperceptible. It's unlikely many drivers will frequently experience high rpm, though, since the 9-speed automatic transmission does everything it can to keep the engine turning slowly. The engine is also quiet around town and when cruising on the highway, but at high rpm, it elicits some thrumming noises that permeate the otherwise relatively quiet cabin. Power delivery is smooth without much turbo lag. It doesn't turn the Equinox into a tall hot hatch, but you'll never struggle to pass people or get up to speed on highway ramps. In practice, the 2.0-liter engine feels well-suited for this crossover. The $24,525 1.5-liter Equinox is a closer competitor, and its 170 horsepower and 200 pound-feet of torque are square in the middle of the pack. That's not an entirely fair comparison, though, since the $30,090 2.0-liter Equinox costs roughly $6,000 more than any of those less-powerful crossovers. Nissan Rogue – which all make less than 200 horsepower. The 2.0-liter Equinox also outguns competitors such as the The front-drive version of thatĮscape also matches the Chevy for fuel economy, but the all-wheel drive version loses out with 20 mpg city and 27 mpg highway. Only theįord Escape Titanium with its own 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder with 245 horsepower and 275 pound-feet of torque comes close to the "big-displacement" Equinox. Going with all-wheel drive drops the highway number by 1 mpg.Ĭompared with the rest of the segment, the Equinox's 2.0-liter engine fares well, more so than the already available 1.5-liter. The new 2.0-liter four-cylinder gets 22 mpg in the city and 29 mpg on the highway with front-wheel drive. The old V6 only managed 17 mpg city and 24 mpg highway with front-wheel drive, and the all-wheel-drive version got 1 mpg less in each category. But what it loses in power, it gains inįuel economy. Torque is down, too, with 260 pound-feet instead of 272. This new 2.0-liter unit isn't as powerful as the 3.6-liter V6 it replaces, making 252 horsepower as opposed to 301. It's this example that we got to try out in Nashville, Tennessee, to find out if the new In-between is a 2.0-liter four-cylinder gas engine introduced just recently. A turbocharged 1.5-liter four-cylinder serves as the base engine, and a 1.6-liter turbodiesel that will be available later this summer will be the economy leader. Ground-up redesign, with a lighter body (by 400 lbs) and chassis, and three new turbocharged engines. The second-generation Equinox along, doing the bare minimum to keep it competitive in the compact
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