I drive a big vehicle and drive it about 20-22,000 miles a year. It used to be I would do about 26-30,000 miles yearly, but online meetings and the general transition towards more impersonal sales has changed that.
Usually I trade them in around 80,000 miles, and the last ones have been GMC Denali Yukon XL SUVs.
And it is trade-in time on the current 2021 Denali.
So the dealership’s fleet representative had a new 2025 GMC Denali Yukon XL for my test drive.
It only took me eight miles of driving to move from “meh” to “I don’t think so” with the revised interior styling.
This new styling is all about technology.
And it sucks.
I was surprised that the seating felt constricted. Felt narrowed, and felt like the seat didn’t go quite as far back as the 2021. The steering wheel is thinker and for a tall drive obstructed seeing the dash.
What is that about? Appears that the addition of several cameras point to watch the driver may be a big player in restricting the likely area the drivers face (and hence eyes) would be. So the driver needs to be pinned-in to keep the system happy.
I don’t think the SUV would be drivable, other than short distances, in full winter attire, by a guy as big & tall as me. Not good.
So I started fiddling with adjustments to find that majority have been moved to a giant touchscreen (about a 20 inch monitor size in portrait orientation vs the 2021’s 10.8 inch in landscape mode – a design that worked just fine), that also likely contributes to the narrowing of the driver’s position.
This means you have to take your eyes away from the road and if cold season take off your gloves, to play computer games.
I tried to get the HUD (Head’s Up Display) to show, and it was several swipes followed by a few taps to get to a set of sliders on the touchscreen vs the two tactile switches easily found on the dash in my present version.
Talk about moving backwards.
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