I did my test drive yesterday at Tysons. Quick impressions:
- it’s tough to tell too much from a quick spin around the mall, which is all this really was. No back roads, nothing twisty, lots of traffic. So unfortunately I think it would be hard to have walked away thinking “OMG Gravity is incredible!” That’s not the fault of the car - it’s just a shame that they can’t really get these into showrooms in quantity to allow people to have real test drives. So I only have a small sample set for impressions. Here are a couple of the things that I noted that maybe haven’t been mentioned as much or where I thought the comment might be helpful:
- steering feel is really, really firm. I’m coming from a car with much lighter steering so that was a surprise to me. It’s probably a good thing in the long run but it will take some getting used to for me.
- HUD was not on and my test drive babysitter said they could not turn it on. There was a little blanket draped over the HUD apparatus, I guess so it would not cause any reflections or distractions? (I’m on record here as a skeptic that the HUD will perform as advertised, particularly on schedule).
- that said the screens are so great. I was told that with dream drive pro you would get a lot of the same information on the upper screen. Obviously it won’t be augmented reality. But we’re talking about a very small difference in line of sight angle between the HUD and the screen. I’ve never had a HUD so admittedly I don’t know what I’m missing, but I didn’t feel like I’d be missing much.
- I’m sad to report that it definitely appears true that you get less interior ambient lighting without the technology package. (I had initially been told by an SA that you got all the same lighting, but that it just didn’t “move” without the tech package). There was a marketing guy from HQ there who showed me the same image that others have reported, showing that you get some puddle lights in the doors and footwells and the one small strip up high in the windscreen between the driver and passenger, but none of the cool strips along the dash and running down the front and rear doors. I guess that’s pure cosmetics but I think that kind of ambient lighting is starting to be standard issue in most luxury cars so it’s a bummer to miss that if you can’t wait for the HUD.
- squircle was no problem even though I was a little nervous about it going in. In fact, putting my hands on the “corners” at 10 and 2 felt extremely comfortable. Tighter turns are slightly “different” as I could sort of note the “narrowness” of the wheel when it’s turned 90 degrees but still quite intuitive. In general the low hand position was probably the one thing it will take some time getting used to. I think this manifests a little into a feeling that the seating position isn’t quite right, which one of the professional reviewers noted. I similarly felt slightly “odd” in the seat. This is always going to be true for any new car until you find your comfort zone, and the seating obviously has full range of motion, so I am guessing it’s the relative hand positioning that just takes a little getting used to.
- I couldn’t really open it up and honestly my nanny didn’t seem to even want me to put it in sprint, but accelerations off the line in smooth and swift were plenty fast enough for darting ahead of traffic, as you might expect. The HP is huge but the car is heavy and in Smooth//Swift the HP is reduced. So it felt like a positive sign to me that even the GT is going to be able to haul ass in comfortable drive settings.
- The AC felt like it could blow plenty hard enough to cool me down quickly. But it is LOUD on full blast. It’s loud in every car but the way the ducting seems to be done into one big channel on the Gravity sounded like it created a big echo chamber behind the dash. It’s a small thing but it was notable.
- worrying: as we got started, I was checking out the key fob, which the SA on nanny duty had put in the center console. He told me I had to put it back because it needed to be close there for the car to recognize it because the battery was running very low. The car is less than 2 months old. He chalked it up to the fact that the car has gotten lots of use. I don’t think I’m convinced by that excuse. It can’t have that many miles on it even if lots of people have been in and out of it. Admittedly I have no idea what lots of time in standby or on a showroom floor does to a key fob battery, but considering the issues I’ve heard about on Air, this seemed troubling.
- The upper rear quarter panel appears to be plastic. I sort of expect bumper panels and some lower panels to be plastic, but it was surprising to me that a major upper panel was plastic. Who knows, this may have even been a one off for the car in the showroom. And honestly I’m not qualified to say whether this is good or bad or indifferent. I just note it because it’s non-obvious and it was unexpected to me.
otherwise, the staff was friendly and it definitely appeared that there was a steady stream of people interested, but of course this was also a preselected group of folks who had signed up in advance, and pulled from a wide geographic area.
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