Graeme Fletcher
Inside, its more nipping and tucking. In the case of the Sport model tested, the driver-focused cockpit arrives with top-class materials including Nappa leather, front sport buckets that hug without being confining and a new free-standing 10.25-inch infotainment display. The wide-screen format is a marked step forward, as it allows more information to be displayed without seeming cramped. As systems go, it is a good one that gives the driver fast and easy access for everything from vehicle settings to the navigation, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functions along with a 15-speaker Lexicon sound system.
Ahead of the driver sits an updated eight-inch reconfigurable digital instrument cluster. It is functionally attractive, but has one nit the semi-digital setup puts an analog speedometer on the left and the digital portion to the right. This means both the left and right side views for the camera-based Blind-Spot View Monitor show up on the right side of the cluster
So, what exactly is the XC40 Recharge? Well, as that jumble of letters and numbers implies, it is based on Volvo’s wildly successful XC40 gasoline-powered crossover, which debuted in 2017 and was named European Car of the Year at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. When we say based on, we mean that quite literally, as the Recharge shares the same Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) as its gas-powered stablemate. It also is very close in proportions and exterior styling, however the all-electric version gets a distinctive front nose no need for a engine-cooling radiator here and, of course, no tailpipes extruding from the rear.
really wanted the Envision to be completely
au courante, the gauge cluster should have been some form of configurable digital screen. But otherwise, the Envision’s cabin, at least in its top-of-the-line Avenir form Buick is hoping to create the same cachet for Avenir as GMC has for Denali is pretty impressive.
Top marks definitely go to the infotainment system. Unlike pretty much every other auto marque, Buick has no flowery, marketing-department-vetted, fully-acronymed name for its infotainment. Instead, it simply refers to it as a “Buick 10.2-inch touchscreen.”
It’s no lesser for its Plain Jane appellation, and in fact, it’s one of the most pleasing and certainly the most easily-learned infotainment systems I’ve tested. Within five minutes of fiddling, I knew where all the apps were, had at least perused their sub-menus, and figured out how to pair my phone. Compare that with Mercedes’ MBUX, which is admittedly more powerful and graphically-pleasing, but which
Let’s say one had access to a
Bill & Ted-style time machine. And let’s further stipulate, just for argument’s sake, that, for whatever reason, one had a penchant for revisiting the early ‘90s.
Let’s even, in the full spirit of
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, make this fantasy even more specifically stupid and suppose the entire motivation of this journey back in time is to shock the denizens of the SUV community, which in the early ‘90s, were just on the cusp of re-imagining the sport utility vehicle as something other than bush-beater and manure-hauler.
In fact, the subject of this road test, GMC’s Yukon, was brand-new in 1992, General Motors thinking the radical step of adding halogen headlights and some chrome bits to the front of the grille warranted a change of name from the previously low-rent “Jimmy” to “Yukon.” And, while according to no less an authority than