Over the holiday period I spent some time with Holden’s new mid-sized SUV the Equinox – a five- seater replacing the long-standing Captiva although the seven-seat Captive soldiers on until a
replacement next year. The Equinox has arrived in our second largest market segment – medium SUV’s are on fire with the Mazda CX-5 the big seller. Sourced from Mexico and General Motors
second highest volume model the Holden Equinox is a very well packaged – two engines – 1.5- litre and 2.0- litre turbo – the latter the better option. There’s five front driven variants while the
top line model come in all-wheel drive which is switchable and you can disconnect drive to the rear wheel for improved economy. I tested the top line AWD Equinox LTZ-V nine-speed
automatic at $46,290 – the most impressive model – with 188Kw of power and 353Nm of torque, both best in class although economy is not as good as the Mazda CX- 5 and some others despite
the super smooth 9-speed automatic. Importantly, the Holden Equinox is absolutely loaded with standard features – the LTZ-V with leather seats, heated in both rows, hands-free tailgate, park
assist and 19-inch alloys even gets a huge dual-panel sunroof, a heated steering wheel and front seat cooling and its better equipped than most mid-sized SUV’s in its class. Ride and handling is
very well sorted by local engineers even on this models large 19-inch alloy wheels. The surprise is build quality – no worries here GM’s volume on this model has produced nice fit and finish levels.
I’m David Berthon

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