Chevrolet Orlando (11 on) - Review

The ride is pretty impressive both on the motorway, town and B-roads. It’s firm enough to deliver a positive experience that isn’t wallowy in corners yet compliant and supple when driving around town and cruising on the motorway. Don’t bother with 18-inch alloys since they compromise the ride - the 16-inchers do the job perfectly well and they look smart enough too. The seats are nicely supportive but for some reason the leather chairs give you much more lateral support when negotiating tight bends. The air conditioning system is simple to understand and it’s easy to find the right temperature. It’s quiet when cruising but you do get a little bit of wind noise from the wing mirrors. Engine and road noise are both well suppressed but the petrol engine does get extremely vocal when pushed, which is pretty much all the time. This further underlines the case for the diesel, which is refined and relaxed, although a little clattery on start-up.

Chevrolet has included a few nice touches that could turn the heads of a dyed-in-the-wool Grand C-Max buyer. First of all there’s plenty of room in the front, middle row and rear seats as well as the rear loadbay when the rear seats are down. There’s 89 litres of space available with all the seats up, 458 litres with the rearmost seats down and 856 litres with the two rear rows down, but that’s only up to the glass line. A total of 1,499 litres is available if you want to fill the car up to the roof, which makes it the biggest in the class. If the priority is carrying passengers you won’t feel sold short either: although it’s a little tight a six-footer sitting in the rear-most seats won’t find his, or her, knees touching the backs of the middle row. The folding mechanism is pretty nifty too. The Orlando has five doors, rather than the sliding side door on the new Ford Grand C-Max and to get access to the rear-most seats you simply pull a plastic lever on the top of the middle-row seat and the back folds down. Then with a quick push the whole assembly tilts forward to allow enough space to climb aboard. The rear seats are also a cinch to fold down and you don’t have to go though a palava to get the headrests down since they fold in automatically. The only real faff you have to endure is when you want to move the parcel shelf: first of all you have to reach across the load bay to get at it and then click on two buttons to get it out. Once you have done that there’s no place to put it. This is a shame because so much thought has been put into making the seat arrangement easy to use. Another nice addition is a small cubby that’s located behind the radio CD display. By clicking a button the display tilts up to reveal a storage space that’ll hold all manner of items. It’s perfectly placed and it is convenient. Overall, there’s little to complain about: there’s plenty of legroom and headroom and it’s perfectly suitable for a family of five.

The most irritating aspect of the Orlando is the poor visibility: the chunky A-pillars blot out quite a sizeable portion of the view when you are negotiating a roundabout or right turn and the headrests and rear pillars constrict the sight-lines out of the back. If you do a lot of driving in town and regularly parallel park and U-turn, you might be put off but can opt for parking sensors that'll cost you extra or go for the LT version. The dashboard layout is sensible, easy to use with robust switchgear that looks like it will stand the test of time. It’s not quite as classy as say, a Ford Grand C-Max or even the Renault Grand Scenic, but the layout is much more user-friendly than the French MPV.