Initial Impressions - Chevrolet Captiva LTZ AWD

Not often we see at Indians Autos blog, torquey engines added with auto gearboxes driving all wheels. This is exactly what I'm piloting today - From behind the steering wheel of the Chevy Captiva Automatic AWD, which GM India handed us hours back, I can see everything on the road. What a view!

This is the only SUV at this price which offers a diesel motor along with the auto tranny. For the next four days I will be telling you about each and every aspect of this SUV.

Before going in for the test details let me put forth a brief history of the Captiva -

The Chevrolet Captiva is a crossover SUV derived from the Chevrolet S3X concept car of 2004. The Captiva is based on the GM Theta platform. It is also called as Daewoo Winstorm and is developed by General Motors' (GM) South Korean subsidiary, GM-Daewoo.

First Glare:-

First glare and you will find it hard to lift your eyes of it. Like all Chevy products from cute little Spark to Optra Sedan, every product has lots of road presence. You could skip the Aveo U-VA from the list which just looks plane Jane.Now back to Captiva - this SUV has tons of road presence, be it the large chunky honeycomb grille added with Chevy Bowtie or those black body cladding which add extra ruggedness and shouts "I am a go anywhere Vehicle".

Overall a good long lasting first impression.

First Drive:-

When I first drove the Captiva in manual guise four months back, I was floored with its massive torque but was seriously disappointed with its low-end grunt that irritates you when are driving in the city traffic. It's like public transport in India - it's not there when you need it!

With the addition of Auto tranny, which I'm driving here, this problem has been solved to a large extent, if not completely solved. Through my short city drive I discovered that this gearbox's tuning has improved the Capti's drivability. What makes me crazy though is the omission of parking sensors. What on earth was GM thinking while not coming up with the parking sensors for this truck-sized SUV?

Nowadays even hatchbacks come with factory fitted sensors, leave alone the vehicle of this size and price. It just takes quite a lot of effort to park this vehicle in city conditions.

It way too early in the game to talk about anything else. If there is one that the Captiva's already done is impressed us with its looks - it's probably the best looking SUV in its class. We'll talk more about its engine, gearbox and other details in the coming days, so stay tuned!