Visa Approved
Acadia is the first Holden-badged product to be sourced out to the United States, a significant point of distinction as we are so used to seeing Holdens out of Europe and Thailand predominantly.
The timely release of the Holden Acadia at time of this publication’s release meant a look at the all-new seven-seater’s credentials were in order. Sean Willmot took on the role of Customs Inspector.
The Acadia is a halo vehicle for Holden New Zealand. It represents the brand’s newfound ability to source vehicles from anywhere a General Motors product is produced.
Built on a GMC platform, Acadia hails from Tennessee, though under the bonnet is a very familiar powerplant, a 3.6-litre V6 petrol, delivering 231kw and an extremely useable 367Nm of torque.
Its looks may be a little hard for our market to embrace, being reminiscent of American SUV designs rather than those out of Asia. The sweeping curve lines of our more familiar SUVS give way to a consistent solid, blocky design, right down to the squared off wheel arches.
For all that Acadia is a US truck, described as a full-size sevenseater and engenders the sense of luxurious levels of space and comfort matched to its powerful on-road presence, it is not only pleasantly manageable, but when parked alongside vehicles competing against it – and there are many – the Acadia looks oddly compact.
It is well proportioned, balanced, somewhat squat and reassuringly solid and yet – up against the stablemate Z71 Trailblazer for instance – it is not at all imposing.
Inside, the Acadia feels like something it appears to be, a generously spacious US truck which inspires a sense of road ownership on the part of the driver.
This is a feeling which you don’t lose when you park alongside the likes of Toyota Prados, Nissan Patrols, Isuzu MU-X’S and so on, the occupants of which can look down to the Acadia – because there’s more to the Acadia’s presence than height or width.
Despite those muscular wheel arches and the AWD badging, Acadia does not appear to be the
rugged, go-anywhere truck it is.
It looks to be more at home amid close concrete canyons than on slick slippery slopes, but Acadia’s All Wheel Drive system is switchable between two and fourwheel drive on the move, via dial up controller and can cope with a diverse range of Downunder road surfaces.
The flexibility of this system contributes to the Acadia’s realworld consumption figure of 9.1 litres per 100km, though that was with a single occupant onboard on a road trip from Wellington to Auckland via the Rimutaka Hill to Masterton, through to Napier, up to Taupo, Matamata and Pokeno over 12 hours.
Bearing in mind the 3.6-litre V6 petrol engine – the only offering for the Acadia – was working through a 9 nine-speed transmission, and the adaptive cruise control was only used intermittently for efficiency, there is still a compelling case for a comparatively large vehicle in a world where fuel economy is a critical consideration.
The road trip undertaken by NZSUV also demonstrates another strong suit of the Acadia – driveability. Wellington to Auckland is a seven to eight-hour trip up the spine of Te Ika a Maui, but if you want to see a little more of the country, well, you’ll be on-board for a fair few hours beyond that.
But before we start our little travelogue, it’s probably a good idea to answer the question some have already voiced: what’s with the name?
An international publication headed up its teaser review of this vehicle “Arcadia Games,” which is clever, but ignorant. Holden’s seven-seater is actually Acadia with no ‘’r” in it at all. Now those who are Dwayne Johnson fans, might remember the Scorpion King was an Akkadian, which would have been a cool namesake, but no, the truck is spelt Acadia with a “c”.
From what we have found – in keeping with a lot of GMC names, Acadia is the name of a National Park in Maine which is home to 26 mountains, the tallest at 1530 feet being Cadillac Mountain and one of the smaller ones at 681 feet, is Acadia Mountain itself.
The park today was inhabited by the Wabanaki peoples about 5000 years ago, but the French moved in during the 1800s, which led to the English coming along and beating the cr…oissants out of the settlers, who later migrated down to Louisiana.
The English renamed what the French had called New France, New England, though Acadia National Park got its name in the late 1920’s. Now, the Acadia name is on a colonising vehicle of sorts, thanks to GMC and Holden.
Holden’s Acadia has seen a long settlement period here, first coming to light just before the 2018 Fieldays and then reemerging a few months later – on US soil in New Zealand – at the Wellington home of the US Ambassador Scott Brown and his charming wife Gail. This was in late August with an official release expected in October.
And before this is where our road trip begins. Ideally, there would have been two, four or even seven of us onboard, but that would have meant I couldn’t stretch out as much as I did. Plus, no one was brave enough to come driving that distance with me.
So, feeling something like the late great Burt Reynolds (RIP, Bandit!), I found myself with the keys to an Acadia at the funkily hip Johnston Ebbett dealership in Wellington.
Mike and the team there were keen to talk to me about the Acadia and there was a good 10-minute delay while it was prepared – read, the boys wanted a good long look at the Holden hero for 2018/19.
Ten minutes after the Acadia arrived, fleet manager Lindsay Hill was comfortable to do a complete customer handover with me before sending me off into the wilds of Wellies without benefit of a sat nav (Acadia has one, but it was only set for Australia at the time) to guide me out of capital.
About three wrong turns and