I felt like a superhero. There I was, minding my own business while the petrol attendant filled the Chevrolet Captiva 3,2-litre V6 LTZ’s tank, when I noticed a lady in some distress.
Another attendant was helping her and her three kids inflate a fairly big inflatable pool. She glanced at the swelling pool and at her quarter-of-a-million-rand German sedan and was obviously nervous. The pool was longer and wider than her car.
My sister and I looked at each other and I knew instantly that she too wanted to help the distressed damsel. So we offered to strap the pool to the Captiva’s roof and transport it to her house.
She and her kids were exceedingly grateful. Once we had reached her house and untangled ourselves from the very long rope we had used to secure the pool to the Captiva, we reversed out of her driveway, waved them goodbye and grinned all the way home as though we had done something stupendous.
The Chevrolet Captiva is one of two vehicles that M&G Motoring is testing over an extended period. Normally road-test vehicles are loaned to journalists by manufacturers for about seven days and, while we try to drive them as much as possible in those seven days, these samples are mostly new, recently serviced and practically faultless.
Evaluating a car over six months gives you a better idea of what it would be like to live with that vehicle and the Captiva has, in the past four months, caused me a fair amount of consternation.
Normally, when I’m thinking of buying my next vehicle, I gravitate towards sporty sedans. Now, however, I’m not so sure. After spending some quality time with the Captiva, I’m not sure what my next car is going to be.
General Motors has experienced a fair deal of financial instability over the years and this is evident in some of its vehicles, which tend to give you the feeling that attention to detail wasn’t of paramount importance. The Captiva, however, is GM’s comeback kid, the car that signals the company’s intention not to fade away silently into the night.
When GM offered me this soft-roader — an SUV that’s more at home on the road than off — I was excited because it would give me an opportunity to get to know a vehicle that I would never have considered before. Even though I might have preferred a manic Lumina SS, I wasn’t disappointed when the Captiva arrived.
From a design point of view, it’s about as attractive as soft-roader SUVs get. One of its biggest drawcards is that it’s a seven-seater, so you get a car that doubles up as a pretty cool multi-purpose vehicle whenever you need to do the school run. It’s also worth noting that erecting the last row of seats and taking them down again is child’s play.
In the run-up to Christmas there seemed an abundance of sprogs in my family and transporting them all around wasn’t really what I wanted to do in my spare time, but whenever I was forced to move the child armies from one spot to another, it didn’t go unnoticed — by a childless person such as myself — that it was quite a relief to confine them to their own seats, strap them in and not have them do much more than shout at one another.
Equally cool is the Captiva’s ride height. No doubt much like you, I snigger at those idiots who park their behemoths on every bit of available pavement space. But when it’s the end of the year and parking spaces are about as rare as Christmas cheer, you will be oh so thankful for your car’s ability to mount those pavements easily.
The Captiva comes equipped with all the expected mod cons such as climate-controlled air conditioning, leather seats, a front-loading CD player, cruise control and a multi-function steering wheel, while safety features include six airbags, ABS, EBD and much more.
The 3,2-litre V6 engine means that the Captiva LTZ never feels underpowered but also makes it a rather thirsty beast. If you’re not too much of a speed freak, though, you can get about 450km out of a 65-litre tankful.
For me, one of its most impressive features is that it offers a smooth, comfortable ride: so much so that I never felt bad about giving up a million-rand test vehicle to get into the Captiva and that says a great deal about this consummate all-rounder. In fact, it can best be described as the Shaun Pollock of cars, though it’s much better looking (sorry, Shaun).
The facts
Model: Chevrolet Captiva LTZ 4×4
Price: R329Â 900
Engine: 3,2-litre V6 petrol
Tech: 169kW, 297Nm
Top speed: 202km/h
Tank: 65 litres
Services: 15Â 000km
Odo at start: 2Â 780km
Odo now: 6Â 639km
Average fuel consumption: 15Â litres/100km