2025 Chevrolet Trax (2RS) - POV First Driving Impressions

Today we're driving the 2025 Chevrolet Trax. It costs a little over $26,000 as tested with optional adaptive cruise control. It is a good size. It's well packaged. There's a nice amount of space inside. It's attractive. Overall, I think the Trax is a win for GM, especially in the small SUV segment. Let's walk guys around it. I've spent some time in it this week. We'll give you guys some driving impressions and talk about what this has been like to live with. First things first, let's start on the outside. This is the 2RS trim, which means it's supposed to be a little bit sportier looking. We have 19-inch wheels with a decent amount of sidewall, a set of Continental Pro Contact TX tires, which is a decent tire. It's quiet on the highway. These are in 245x45 R19s, a little bit wider of a tire than I was expecting on this type of SUV. This Trax is painted in Marina Blue Metallic. It gets decent fuel economy, 28 in the city, 32 on the highway, and that's because it's powered by a turbocharged inline three-cylinder, a 1.2 liter. It only makes 137 horsepower, 162 pound-feet of torque, but because it's turbocharged, it feels a little bit gruntier than you would expect. It's also mated to a six-speed automatic transmission instead of a CVT, which is kind of the segment norm. There's a good amount of cargo space in the back, a spare tire. The interior is simple. It's easy to use. We have a completely flat floor in the back seat, which is always nice. I like the RS trimming on these seats. This is my driving position at 5'10", and I am very comfortable back here. There is a ton of space in the back of this Trax for a compact crossover. A couple of nocks, no rear vent for climate. You get a couple of USB ports, though, but no armrest for those rear passengers. Still, not a major complaint. I'm just comfortable enough back here. And these seats feel quite nice. We get heated seats, adaptive cruise control, a nice-looking infotainment. It's a little bit slow and laggy. We'll show you guys what that looks like once we hop up front. Even the bass audio system here is fantastic for this segment. Ingress, egress, super easy to get in and out of. Roof height is about right, and I think it's attractively styled. Let's pop the hood, take a look at this 1.2-liter Ecotec. This is actually a flex-fuel vehicle, which means you can fill it with E85 or 87 octane. This new Trax seems like a huge improvement on the previous generation. Honestly, for the money, I'm kind of struggling to come up with any complaints, except for the fact that the Buick and Vista exists. Still, this doesn't feel bargain basement in here at all. Yes, there are some harder plastics, no armrest padding here or on the door, but the steering wheel touch points are nice. The shifter feels good. There's good ergonomics and layout here in this interior. Nice big water bottle cup holders, a place to put your phone right here and down here. You've got plenty of USB ports, a little center console there. Good-sized glove box, and a lot of headroom and space in this interior for the category. Something I've appreciated living with this car all week is the amount of physical controls and buttons in this interior. There are buttons for everything, even to dim the gauge cluster. You've got a heated steering wheel, heated seats, one of three settings, auto climate control, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a Wi-Fi hotspot. The infotainment controls here are very simplified. You can turn off traction control right there in the menus. You've got a home screen, CarPlay. The screen's a little bit laggier than what we've seen from a lot of GM products, but it shows you all the information you need to see without any extra fluff. You can see your trip, your gauges. The driver's display doesn't really show you much information besides the speedo and tach. You can also option to show your trip information in the cluster or not, and that's kind of about all you get. Still, it works. There are a handful of settings that you can customize in the menu, like chime volume, auto wipe in reverse gear, lighting controls, exit lighting timers, and power door lock settings, but ultimately the customizability here is pretty slim. Other than a somewhat laggy infotainment screen, I don't really have too many complaints about the UI in this Trax. We get a pretty decent looking reverse camera. Good visibility except for the rear three quarters, but we have a nice wide-angle mirror on the passenger side to help mitigate any blind spots. Auto light controls down here, not in the screen, which I appreciate. Climate buttons. You've got a button here to turn off auto stop start as well as lane keep assist. Let's take this out on the road and give you guys some driving impressions. Power level feels great for city driving, especially off the line. This thing has a ton of grunt because it's not waiting for a CVT to spin up. It can just get into first gear and actually will spin the tires pretty aggressively sometimes if you're trying to make a tight gap or accelerate quickly from a light. Once you get up to highway speeds, it gets a little bit sluggish past 60 or 70 miles an hour, but that's to be expected with only 137 horsepower. There are no drive modes here. You just get in and go. It handles well too, better than a lot of the cars in the segment. Ultimately, it just feels like a taller, bigger hatchback. It feels light, nimble. Ride quality is nice, even on these 19-inch wheels. All right, let's show you what this can do around a corner. There is a low range gear. No paddle shifters behind the wheel, but we do get volume and track selection controls. Good mechanical grip. Not a ton of steering feel, but about right for the segment. And good suspension control at the limit. It's a good handling crossover. I have a lot of confidence in this thing around a corner. Yes, some buyers are going to complain that it doesn't have all-wheel drive, but honestly, with only 137 horsepower, you don't want all-wheel drive. That'll suck away all your power with drivetrain loss. And just get a good set of winter tires on here if you drive in the snow. It has good ground clearance. The fact that it isn't all-wheel drive means you get a flat floor in the back and better packaging in the interior, and it's less expensive. If you absolutely need all-wheel drive and you want a little bit more ground clearance, there are plenty of other options in this segment. All right, so on the highway here, cruising about 75 miles an hour. You can engage your adaptive cruise control. It works great, as it always does in GM vehicles. You have three following distance settings with your gap adjust. All seem to be just about right. One neat thing here is you've got a following distance timer with the vehicle in front of you. There's a little bit of wind and tire noise, but again, for the price point, I'm not complaining. Brakes are strong. Gearbox seems to kick down pretty well. Drivetrain tuning here is quite good, honestly. Not too long ago, we drove the new GMC Terrain, and honestly, I'm actually more impressed with the way this tracks drives than that. The Terrain had some weird throttle hesitation issues, some gearbox problems with strange shifts. The handling was an absolute mess, and the sound system was one of the worst in-car audio systems I've ever listened to. This beats that on all fronts, and it costs almost half of what the Terrain was. While we're just cruising here, let's go in and do a quick sound system test. Gives you a taste of the in-car audio here. Alright, now that we're on the highway, following some traffic, we've got a 1 second following distance here with the car in front of us at the closest gap setting. If we do the second setting, I wonder if that puts us at a 2 second following distance. Let's find out. That puts us at a 1.4 second following distance, okay? So setting 3, a little bit farther away, and this is, of course, adaptive according to your speed. Now we're at a 1.6 second following distance. That looks about right. Nothing revolutionary here, but just a solid entry-level compact crossover contender. Good value, affordable, well-equipped, options aren't outrageous. For under $28,000, I think this is a great buy. It drives well. I can't really come up with too many complaints, to be honest, for the money. It's kind of what I was expecting, just because I've already heard a lot of good things about this. Out here in Metro Detroit, we do see a lot of these. Styling isn't offensive. It blends in well. It's just big enough inside. You could fit your family and a few things in the back of this. Maybe you don't need a big full-size SUV for everything. Something like this that's fuel-efficient, economically priced, and just easy to drive, use, and live with. Kind of the way to go. Good brakes, too. Strong bite here. What about the turning radius? Eh, about normal. About what you'd expect. All right, guys, that's gonna be a wrap on this video. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you in the next one. There's the Chevy Trax. Hopefully you enjoyed this and got something out of it. We'll see you later. Here's our key fob.