Driving this vehicle as a rental this week, down here in the Sunshine State. Sport suspension, decent (power height adjust) seats and the 3.5L, OHC V-6 engine. Transmission is a GM four speed with a "Tiptronic", manuamatic shift option.
A couple of grips for my fellow mechanical engineers at GM:
1) Why can't you design a decent steering rack that doesn't feel so "rubbery" and isolated from what the wheels are doing??? Even the cheapest VW Golf ($18k) has better steering than any GM vehicle I've rented over the past 25 years. The car still doesn't track as well at high speeds (80-90 mph) as it should to satisfy the demographic you're shooting for.
2) Suspension tuning is still too soft for any Sports Sedan pretensions and the car gets too floaty in hard cornering and on wavy pavement sections. A little more $$$ spent on springs/shocks and perhaps (slightly) higher durometer bushings would do wonders.
3) The cloth wind deflector for the sunroof looks REALLY cheap. I'd just copy the hard metal deflector used by European car makers for about the last 30 years. While we're on the subject of the sunroof, why can't you make one that fully retracts into the roof instead of only opening 3/4 of the way?
4) It seems a high percentage of the GM vehicles I rent have wheel alignment/balance issues - this one pulls horribly to the left. I know these are rentals, but the suspension settings seem to go out of whack too easily on the smaller GM offerings....
5) Why no fold down rear seat? Is the fixed rear seat being used to stiffer the chassis in torsion? The Japanese and European manufacturers seem to be able to offer split, fold down rear seats and still keep torsional stiffness very high.
This G6 (particularly the very refined, fuel efficient, powertrain), is a nice first effort at building a world class compact sedan, to compete with the OHC, six cylinder, foreign offerings. However it could be much better with just a bit more money put into the little stuff that "motorheads"notice.
A couple of grips for my fellow mechanical engineers at GM:
1) Why can't you design a decent steering rack that doesn't feel so "rubbery" and isolated from what the wheels are doing??? Even the cheapest VW Golf ($18k) has better steering than any GM vehicle I've rented over the past 25 years. The car still doesn't track as well at high speeds (80-90 mph) as it should to satisfy the demographic you're shooting for.
2) Suspension tuning is still too soft for any Sports Sedan pretensions and the car gets too floaty in hard cornering and on wavy pavement sections. A little more $$$ spent on springs/shocks and perhaps (slightly) higher durometer bushings would do wonders.
3) The cloth wind deflector for the sunroof looks REALLY cheap. I'd just copy the hard metal deflector used by European car makers for about the last 30 years. While we're on the subject of the sunroof, why can't you make one that fully retracts into the roof instead of only opening 3/4 of the way?
4) It seems a high percentage of the GM vehicles I rent have wheel alignment/balance issues - this one pulls horribly to the left. I know these are rentals, but the suspension settings seem to go out of whack too easily on the smaller GM offerings....
5) Why no fold down rear seat? Is the fixed rear seat being used to stiffer the chassis in torsion? The Japanese and European manufacturers seem to be able to offer split, fold down rear seats and still keep torsional stiffness very high.
This G6 (particularly the very refined, fuel efficient, powertrain), is a nice first effort at building a world class compact sedan, to compete with the OHC, six cylinder, foreign offerings. However it could be much better with just a bit more money put into the little stuff that "motorheads"notice.
