2010 Chevy Equinox: Family Tested

Update: I’ve altered the headline after many complaints from parents, including me, about the rear headrests being fixed.

We’ve written about the new Equinox’s Eco mode, Mike Hanley has posted his full review, and I’ve already detailed the iPod interface, but how does the redesigned crossover hold up for families? I tested it out with my growing brood and found it to be an amazing choice for small families.

I preface that this only applies to small families, because only two child seats will fit in the second row. There is no third row. However, the typical American family has 2.1 children, and I’d bet the backseat could fit that one-tenth-sized child easily…

With that in mind, I loaded up our two seats: a forward-facing Britax Marathon for Carter, 16 months, and a rear-facing Peg Perego Primo Viaggio infant seat for our 1-month-old, Evie. I would consider both to be on the larger side of the car-seat world.

I immediately ran into a problem: The backseat headrests wouldn’t come out. Actually, they didn’t move at all. This meant the Britax wouldn’t fit completely flush against the seatback. However, the Latch straps and anchor had the seat belted in quite firmly with the amount of contact it did allow. GM has confirmed the headrests are fixed, as this makes for a safer seat in rear collisions and will likely lead to higher crash-test ratings. Of course, other automakers have earned top safety awards with removable rear headrests.

Loading the kids was pretty easy. The Equinox is at a perfect hip height, so you’re really not lifting them up or down too much either way to get them into their seats. The one issue I had was with the slope of the pillar behind the rear doors. The angle was so severe — obviously for style, not utility — that I bumped Carter’s head once or twice when I shouldn’t have. I had to remind myself to watch out for it after that. It didn’t take a major adjustment to get him in sans head trauma, but it took enough to annoy me a little.  

The second row slides forward or back on a track like a front seat would. This obviously impacts rear cargo space. The further back the seats, the less cargo room. The further forward, the more cargo space. This means parents can get their tots as close to the front seats as they want while not getting too close to encounter kicking.

I left the seats as far back as they would go the entire time I had the Equinox, and there was oodles of space for Carter to swing his legs and not hit my seat. (That’s not the case in our Subaru Outback, I can tell you.) Maybe one click further forward and I wouldn’t have hit his head on that pillar, too … didn’t think of that till now.

Anyway, slid all the way back the seat left enough cargo room in back to fit our Phil & Ted’s Dash stroller. It’s a rather large stroller that allows for tandem, inline seating for both kids. It fit fine with plenty of room to spare. You could stack stuff on top of it, as well. In fact, the cargo area is deeper than most I test, which makes it less than ideal for the family pet but fine for inanimate cargo.

The big surprise was the second row’s flat floor, which was ideal to fit things like a diaper bag. I thought it would also be great to store an umbrella stroller and went to get ours. Yep; it fit with plenty of room to spare.

Another area of improvement would be the 2LT trim’s cloth seats which have a webbed-knit covering. Not only is this not entirely comfortable to sit on, but I would think it’ll collect crumbs like nobody’s business.

Clearly there’s a lot more to consider when car shopping, but I found myself really liking the Equinox. It was good-looking, fit the kids and cargo perfectly, and had a nice ride and good mileage. My wife liked it, but thought our next vehicle needed to be bigger for the dog and our routine family outings to see grandparents in the Chicago suburbs. But if you’re a family without a dog or a need to travel with both pet and cargo, the Equinox is a solid choice.  

2010|Chevrolet|Equinox