I picked up my new 2016 GT in Canada last night, during a nice freezing rain storm. Thank God I bought snow tires for it. Overall, I am very happy. The car is quiet and smooth, nice stereo and adequate power. I traded in a Rav4 V6 so it is nowhere near that kind of power and acceleration, but still OK.
Here is my list of annoyances I noticed during my first couple drives, maybe 30 miles total...
- The angle of the windshield seemed to cause a lot of glare when I was driving at night in the slight freezing rain. It is tough to say whether the car is any better or worse than other cars without driving them in the exact same conditions?
- Homelink would not program without the existing remote. My Altima was not like this.
- The back window is very small. (I knew this all along). The rear visibility is quite poor and the rear seat headrests encroach on what is already a very small view. This really isn't a huge deal, it will just take some getting used to. I wonder if this means that Aleksei's face is going to always be in my rear view?
- It is tough to press the little button on the door handle to unlock it with winter gloves on because it is small, and recessed. (Nissan is much easier)
- If you sit high, and have the steering wheel low, you can't see the top of your instrument cluster (not the only car like this). Even if you raise the wheel, the steering wheel tends to cutoff the outer trim around the left and right dials, which is irritating. Also, if you have the steering wheel raised, you can't rest your arm on the door arm rest and reach the wheel. So... I am going to have to figure out a comfortable compromise.
- The drivers leg area is narrow or maybe the gas pedal is too close to the center console?, but my leg rubs against it. This does happen in some other cars also. It is partly because the seats do not go back enough to allow me to stretch my legs out a little more. This isn't a big deal to me. (I am 6'2")
- The shape of the side view mirrors is strange and it has a distracting effect looking into the mirrors because it is so strange. I can't describe this it is almost like it is difficult to focus on the mirror itself because the mouding around it is an odd shape. It really bugged me.
- The car will not let you do much on the touch screen when it is in motion. You have to use the dial/click wheel in front of the center storage. I guess the thinking is that "touching" the screen while driving is distracting or "reaching" is distracting. The truth is, you still have to look at the screen to do anything and still have your hand off the steering wheel to use the dial/click thingy they give you ... so WTF? How is that less distracting?
- If they are so concerned with distractions, how come the climate controls are very low with little buttons and little graphics for fan speed and where air is blowing. SO... when you want to adjust this, you need to look way down and concentrate. The lower you look, the less peripheral vision you have in front of you. This will obviously get better as you get used to the controls, but the design does nothing to help you concentrate on driving. In fact, I am not sure I have ever seen a more distracting climate control scheme.
- Also about the climate controls... they sit low, but the control panel is angled straight up and down. So, when you look down, you are looking at the controls at quite an angle (at least I was). Again, this is something I will get used to, but they really should have considered angling the control panel a little bit upwards for a more direct view to the driver, especially since there are quite a few controls there.
- I wish the seat went back about an inch more, but it is not too bad, and is not worse than most other cars.
- The owners manual and documentation takes up most of my glovebox! The book is like an inch thick and they give you one in French also, and a Navi book, and more literature than a herd of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Overall though, I drove everything in the class and even considered the RDX. I think the CX5 was the best choice and I really liked my first real drive in it this morning
It does well on the things that are important.