When it struck me that I would be driving 6 hours to stand beside my sister as the maid of honour in her wedding I panicked. We own a jeep and needless to say it is not the best on gas. I just saw dollar signs flying by at the thought of driving 12 hours in total with this thing. But that all changed when I was able to get my hands on the all new 2014 Chevrolet Impala to review.
Tell me it ain’t sexy and I will slap you. People were telling me the Impala was an “old man’s car” I however found it to be an amazing car for our family of 5. Yes I said 5, we had our oldest with us for the week-end. I was so nervous when we picked up the car. I have only had my licence for 9 months and never drove anything besides our jeep. I made Tobei drive the car home from the dealership. Once we got home I took the car out around the neighbourhood and slowly fell in love with it.
The 2014 Chevrolet Impala is such a smooth drive. The breaking is amazing, the sound is…. well there is no sound. The steering is nice and tight and steers like a dream. Seriously I could not believe how easy it was to steer. I guess that has to do with the electronic steering is how I believe I read it in the manual.
The part that made me all giddy from that first night of driving was the park assist feature. The back up camera is seriously pretty awesome especially since this was a new car for me and I was not exactly sure the size of the car. My friend and I tested out the park assist feature in her parking lot. We both got a thrill over it beeping at me and flashing to stop once I got too close to an object. Hmmm come to think of it I must be getting old if this is what thrills me.
Bright and early the next morning we packed up for the 6 hour drive to Orangeville. The trunk space in the 2014 Chevrolet Impala is to die for. We had a playpen, 3 suitcases, a duffel bag, a camera bag, and a few other odds and ends with tons of space still left over. I could not believe all we could squeeze in there. I did not dare bring the 2014 Chevrolet Impala on a trip to Costco. That would have been very dangerous for my bank account.
Wow I failed on watermarking that picture.
Look at that sexy dashboard and everything on it. Most notable and favourite features of mine were in no particular order.
* Volume controls on the back of the steering wheel.
* Cruise control very easy to set and resume and slow down and speed up and so on and so on. I was in love with the cruise control.
* Individual temperature control. My husband likes to be in an icebox, I don’t. I had my AC set at 23 while he had his set at I think 18.
* Built in navigation system. That was AWESOME when driving through Toronto and not once did we get lost in Toronto or Orangeville. I was very happy about that as we both hate driving in places we do not know.
The back seat we were worried about but the kids had no problem. We had a full size car seat, a booster seat and then the 9 year old. Our 9 year old brought his portable DVD player but was concerned it would die during a movie and his younger brothers would get upset. Well wasn’t I surprised when I looked back and saw that he had it plugged in. Yes ladies (and gentlemen) there was an actual plug in the back seat console. How fricking cool is that. We had movies for the children all 12 hours of driving that week-end.
The best part of all… Remember how at the beginning I said I saw dollar signs flying by at the thought of driving our jeep from Ottawa to Orangeville? Well we got all the way to Orangeville on one tank of gas. That was AWESOME!!!
My favourite feature of all is one that I think should come standard in every single vehicle out there. Blind spot indicators. We always knew when a car was in our blindspot thanks to this. It was WONDERFUL. I am totally missing that extra in my opinion safety feature now that I am back to driving my jeep.
So here at Nolie’s Place we always keep our reviews 100% honest so I must share with you the 3 things Tobei and I did not like about the 2014 Chevrolet Impala.
* There was no car starter. I am spoiled by having one in our jeep. I love hitting the starter and having it nice and cool or warm depending on season when we load the kids in. The good side was though that the 2014 Chevrolet Impala took no time at all to get nice and cool.
* Though I personally loved the fact that it has the push to start feature. I mean how could I not love the fact that I did not have to dig through my purse to find the key as I only needed it to be near me. However as a mother I did not like the feature. See as smokers (yes eww smokers) we load our kids in the car and have smoke breaks along the way. With the jeep we turn it off then use the car starter to keep it running. We didn’t have this option in the 2014 Chevrolet Impala. Even if we turned off the car and rolled down the windows as long as we were standing leaning against the car our kids could easily start the car themselves with the push of a button. That is a safety concern for me. If I were to own the 2014 Chevrolet Impala I would make sure to get a car starter installed for this reason alone.
* It was hard to come up with 3 things we didn’t like but we did it. The 3rd and final thing we did not like about the 2014 Chevrolet Impala was in Tobei’s words “That it wasn’t ours and we had to return it”.