2014 Impala Rental Review

[MinisterofDOOM]

Well...This one's been interesting. I showed up to grab my car for my latest trip and was offered one of two Chrysler 200s. I refused point-blank, and asked about other options. The only one that didn't bore my pants off was a current-generation Chevy Impala, so that's what I'm driving this week. Usually I wait until the trip is done to write these reviews, but I'll start this one off partway through because I am sitting in my hotel in a farm town with nothing to do and it's 8pm.

I suspect this one is a 2014 model. It feels and looks a bit used and the features feel a bit dated.

The reason I say it's been interesting is that this car straddles a very bizarre line between fleet and luxury.
It's fairly nice-looking (though that aft end is far too tall and bulbous), has a sort-of-fancy interior, has lots of tech features, comes with a refined V6 and not-horrendous automatic, and rides fairly nicely.
But it's also laden with cheapness in strange places. It's a full-size sedan with no back-up camera standard. It has onstar and a touchscreen but no CarPlay or Android Auto. The seats are cloth and unheated and uncooled. The audio system is abysmal, with subwoofers apparently mounted in the front DOORS that rattle everything in sight.

It is most certainly in a different league than its fleet-fodder predecessor, but it also seems stuck between segments in a strange way.

So, to the details:
Exterior: 7/10
It's not...BAD, per se. But it suffers horribly from modern bloat. Visually, It's too tall, too narrow, too stubby, and the details are overwrought in a way that skews its sense of scale.
Any of the details alone seem pretty nice, but as a whole they form a car that's a bit of a pig, though with clear aspirations of sexiness. Or, at the very least, sleekness.
The rear deck is hilariously too high. It looks silly outside, throws off proportions, and creates interior issues I'll talk about later on.
The headlights and grille are sharp, but attached to a towering fascia that seems to fall off endlessly to the pavement.
The hood is way above the grille, and the decision to keep the hood seam separate from the grille creates a nasty, unsightly panel gap.
By far the blandest aspect of the car to my eyes is the taillights. A common Chevy failing of late (look at the last few Malibus, Impalas, and compacts). They're ultrageneric but with this impetuous subdetailing to make them look "Chevylike" despite their brandless shape. Again, you see the same on the Malibu--"Oh, let's make these boring rectangles look Chevy by adding notches..."

Interior: 7/10 maybe? Sort of? It's kind of there out of 10?
The interior is where a lot of the "between segments" shows through. It's acceptably laid-out, with minimal button counts and sensible ergonomics. But it doesn't really do anything special. It LOOKS like it wants to be special, with a weird wraparound arc from door to door and along the cowl. There are leatherlike touches amongst the cloth. The dash is upholstered. But none of it pulls of what it's going for, and it still looks like a fleet car interior. Not bad, just not anything special.
The ~7 inch touschreen looks decent and is well placed. However, it has the same great-idea-but-laughable-implementation retractable hideaway cubby that the GM trucks have: press a not-secret-at-all button and the display raises (after unnecessarily turning off) and exposes a cloth-lined phone cubby with a USB port for charging.
There are a couple problems with this phone hideaway. First, it's so tiny that no remotely modern phone would ever fit with a charger connected. My Nexus 6 is comically larger than the entire cubby without any charger in the mix. iPhones, Samsungs, and even Windows phones are all trending around the 6-inch-screen size so nobody buying this Impala is going to actually be able to use this weird and unnecessary gimmick anyway. Maybe if you have an iPhone 4.
The seats are okay to sit in. The lumbar support is way too low. They adjust across quite a large range of positions. They are not heated, which is stupid in a car like the Impala.
The gauge cluster is pretty decent. I can actually see ALL THE INSTRUMENTS with the wheel and seat adjusted comfortably. THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING. NOBODY else gets this right. This one detail made my day.
Storage spaces are plentiful but generally useless. There are tons of nonslip spots to place things but, once again, none of them are big enough to fit any kind of smart phone.
The cupholders in the doors hold 1 liter bottles. Halleluja for that.
Speaking of the doors, the armrests are angled awkwardly and don't really support your arm as much as give you a place to try to keep it.
I mentioned above that the rear deck height affects the interior. Firstly, rear and quarter visibility are horrible, due to both the tiny backlight (low roofline plus high deck equals gunslight) and the huge c-pillars. Secondly, the rear parcel shelf is goofy as s***, and raises way above the seatbacks to accommodate the full height of the cavernous trunk. It looks strange, lazy, and halfassed. Right behind the seats, it angles up sharply, and there's this big expanse of black upholstery that takes up half the rearview mirror because it's occupying the space where the lower half of that gunslit backlight should be. It sort of looks like some kind of bad aftermarket custom conversion or something.

Powertrain: 7.5/10. It's a FWD V6 automatic, so there's a ceiling to this one. But it's pretty close to it. The six is smooth, sounds okay, doesn't intrude, and makes torque everywhere. The trans compliments this nicely by tending to find the right gear quickly. It doesn't seem overeager to be excessively efficient, which means throttle inputs get a lot more useful response than in most other modern cars. I still managed 28mpg combined at a 78mph average speed over 250 miles. That's the sweet spot for me: torque on demand but sensible fuel economy in one place. 9-speeds and CVTs can't do that, and neither can boosted fours.

Handling: ???/10
Look, this isn't a remotely sporty car. It turns when you steer the wheel. It doesn't pitch or roll a whole lot. It's very smooth and gobbles up bumps impressively. I would not feel inspired to hunt for apexes in it. So does it handle? Yes. Is it fun? Not particularly.
The steering is overassisted but pretty well weighted, and the turning circle is tighter than I'd expect from a big front-driver.
Brakes don't really bite but do respond affirmatively and feel adequate to the car's heft.

Overall: 7/10
It's a nice full-sizer, but not one anyone will ever lust after. Not a bad option for people needing to haul multiple adults. I'd be interested to drive a new Avalon and Azera to see which of the three comes out on top, but I doubt the Toyota or the Hyundai will have interiors as straightforward and usable as the Impala even if they drive nicer.


I'll add more detail (and pictures) once my trip is done and I've had a few hundred more miles in the car.

[Jesda]

I know a guy, 27, who bought one. Strange choice for a young male but I guess the new Impala is appealing to people that completely ignored the previous one.

I strongly prefer Chevrolet's current flavor of anonymous international styling to the heavy-handed 2013 Malibu. That thing was a dud and not just because of its shortened wheelbase, strange dashboard, hard seats, and limited rear leg room. It was awkward all over.

[Bubba1]

I have an elderly coworker that has one. He likes it al lot. Though to be fair, he's a long time Chevy guy. I've been a passenger many times, driven it once or twice. I can tell you from experience that front seats are ok, not great, but the rear seats are dreadful for adults for trips longer than 30 minutes.

[MinisterofDOOM]

A couple more thoughts:
The electric park brake switch is in the worst place conceivable. I spent several minutes hunting for it on the center console and dash before giving up. Fortunately, the Enterprise folk didn't set it. A few parks and starts later, I spotted it while not looking for it. Where is it? It's on the far LEFT of the dash, and is a teeny, tiny little switch that's barely noticeable. It's a push-pull switch like on my LS8, but it's oriented vertically so it doesn't feel as natural...I kept wondering if it was push or pull to engage. It also takes FOREVER to engage or release, and takes over the dash screen to let you know it's in the process of doing either. Yeah: it takes long enough to do either that it warrants a "please wait" screen. Wow.

The trunk lid has a pull handle. It's a trunk. I guess it could save you from getting your hands filthy if the car's dirty? I don't get it. 2 inches higher is the trunk. You put your hand on it and push down. It closes. Granted, it starts 73 miles off the ground when it's closed, so maybe some people have trouble reaching all the way up when it's open?

"Shift Denied" is my least favorite display message ever. DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD INFERIOR MACHINE.

I'm still coming to grips with the fact that someone built a car with a rear window whose lower extreme is above my 6'4'' eye level and which also has no backup camera. This is the ONLY car that's ever left me wishing for a backup camera. How do short people reverse without killing people in this thing????

This car reminds me of many of the reasons large cars are better than small cars. For instance: I get reasonable fuel economy AND have lots of fuel onboard. 250 miles and barely at half a tank. The Focus would have been nearly empty. The LS8 would make the trip twice without a fill-up. The Sonata I had last week wouldn't come close.
Oh, also, all of me fits without contorting. That's pretty important, too.

I strongly prefer Chevrolet's current flavor of anonymous international styling to the heavy-handed 2013 Malibu. That thing was a dud and not just because of its shortened wheelbase, strange dashboard, hard seats, and limited rear leg room. It was awkward all over.

Oh, I definitely agree. That generation Malibu is all-around horrid. Those tail lights! What were they thinking!?

[Desert Rat]

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