Traverse crowding full-size Tahoe in Chevy line GILBERT’S GARAGE by
JOHN GILBERT
The newly enlarged Traverse is officially “midsize,” but larger. Photos by John Gilbert In the old days, Chevrolet took care of all the size requirements for SUVs by offering small (Blazer), medium (Tahoe) and large (Suburban). Of course, those intentions expanded to the 2020 model year, when Chevrolet stretches from the largest Suburban, to the Tahoe, then the midsize Traverse, down to the reimagined Blazer, the compact Equinox, the compact Trax, and the also-compact TrailBlazer. There was a recent time when fuel economy restrictions caused a realistic elimination of the largest vehicles and a splurge of the compacts. But my memory was challenged recently, after
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I test-drove and reported on the new Chevrolet Equinox, which surprised me because it performed well and handled impressively in its latest form. Most recently, I got a Traverse to test for a week, and when I first laid eyes on it, I was impressed by the shapely form that made it look modern and sporty, with a dash of luxury. When I climbed into the driver’s seat, I was impressed with the amount of room, and when I hit the ignition button and stepped on the gas, it took off with a bit of a jolt, and it showed tendencies for power whenever I touched the gas.
Always looking for the reasons a company builds a certain vehicle, I thought it was curious that the new midsize Traverse seemed to have grown into something larger than midsize. In fact, I thought the Traverse might have been a flashback for Chevy, to the days when it built vehicles that were always a little bigger than last year’s models, gradually luring us to buying bigger vehicles that were, yes, less fuelefficient, while hauling larger groups of people. Because of the difficulty I had estimating the dimensions whenever I tried to park the Traverse, and the
way it seemed almost cumbersome whenever I tried to take a corner with a dose of performance, the Traverse’s size bothered me. The old rule still works, that if you need more room you have to sometimes build the vehicle bigger, but the Traverse seemed to have grown large enough to intrude on the Tahoe’s turf. The Equinox, which I declared “big enough” for almost any family’s duties, seemed like a compact sport-ycar by comparison. True, the Traverse has a larger 3.6-liter V6 with 308 horsepower and 270 foot-pounds of torque compared to the Equinox, April 23,2020 2020 8585 June 18,
