Does the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox Improve Blind Spot Visibility?

CARS.COM — With its bulky window pillars and yuge head restraints, the old Chevrolet Equinox landed a last-place finish in our comparison for over-the-shoulder visibility among small SUVs. GM redesigned the Equinox for 2018 with a new chassis that trimmed nearly 5 inches’ length and some 400 pounds’ curb weight, but smaller doesn’t always mean easier to see out of (see: Nissan Juke). Does the new Equinox improve on its predecessor’s sightlines?

Related: 2018 Chevrolet Equinox Review: First Drive

In short, yes. But not as much as it could have. First off, check out the old Equinox’s blind spot.

The redesigned model keeps the thick C- and D-pillars, and roughly similar rear window, but it downsizes the old head restraints, which were about the size of Delaware.

The restraints now release downward, which opens the view. There’s no spring-loaded release to do it from the dashboard, a feature Volvo and a few others offer. So if your passengers deploy them — which they should — and eventually get out, visibility depends on whether you climb in back to flip them down again. (You could also ask your passengers to do it as a courtesy upon leaving, but you’d risk being a subject in one of these forums.)

Up front, the Equinox’s A-pillars are as massive as ever. The side mirrors are on the small side, but the upright windshield and thin-frame center mirror help the straight-ahead view.

It helps that the Equinox has a standard backup camera and available surround-view cameras with a pretty good stitched-together view — but nothing beats good visibility in the first place. Absent the current competition, it’s hard to judge how the new Equinox would fare in a visibility rematch, but there’s only one direction to go. The 2018 redesign improved things, but it’s no Subaru Forester. GM has put a lot of its cars through a slimdown, but we’d like to see the General apply the same strategy to its window pillars.