I drove in a Pontiac torrent yesterday. I've also been in the backseat of a subaru forrester and a honda crv, all with less than 5000 miles on the clock. The torrent AMAZED me, seats were comfortable, I had room to stretch out, and the ride was smooth and solid, compared to the honda or subaru.
I will say fwiw, my dad was burned by GM products back in the late 70's, so he developed a strong biased towards asian cars. He bought an outback, the suspension failed, common problem aparently, it was a very expencive setup too, it lowered and rose at the touch of a button. Cost was thousands to repair. Also the engine was in need of being replaced, car had less than 100k miles on it.
His new 2003 outback, the transmission is very slow to change gears and is unresponsive. The window seal wasnt on right from day 1 and whistled, and now his driver side window goes too far out of the door. Also the engine pings if he puts the recommended regular gas in. Little plastic pieces of trim keep falling out and breaking too. Never heard any complaints about any of this from him, but when the 2004 grand am we leased had to go back to the dealer to replace something he was ecstatic, told everyone about it and how bad GM was.
I have to say that grand am was one of the best cars i've ever driven, firm and absorbent suspension, handling, plenty of power and great economy. Although he always remarked (he'd driven this car a total of 100 miles the entire time we had it) every time he drove it how it felt worse than when we first got it, and how bad the ride was. He was comparing apples to oranges there, an economy car to his SUV (if you can call it that, not sure what it's classified as)
