2026 GMC Terrain Denali | Lots MORE Luxury for LESS Money Than RAV4 & CR-V??

What's going on YouTube? So GMC has been making moves recently when it comes to their crossover and SUV lineup and one of the biggest pieces of that puzzle is this the all-new GMC Terrain. Now if you were paying attention to the channel we covered the all-new Terrain last model year but if you want a luxurious Terrain now is the time that you can buy that finally. This is the 2026 GMC Terrain in its fully loaded Denali trim level and we want to know does this Terrain offer more luxury than the rivals and also at a lower price tag than many of the rivals? Let's go ahead and find out. As always let's start things out under the hood for a quick spec dump. This new Terrain is going to be powered by a 1.5 liter turbo four-cylinder making 175 horsepower. All-wheel drive models will be routed to the ground via an eight-speed automatic and for this all-wheel drive Denali model fuel economy is coming in at 25 mpg combined. Now the base price of the Terrain this year is $29,000 and if you're looking to buy one or any new vehicle we'd encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash new car quotes to get the best price. Now of course later on we'll be taking it out for a spin to show you the performance as well as get things like our sound level reading to see how quiet this Denali model is. Now let's go ahead and shut up the hood because a big part of this Denali packaging is the exterior design as well as the interior. Now like I said at the introduction when this vehicle originally launched it came out as an all-new model in 2025 and that was just the elevation trim level but finally here for the 2026 model year we've unlocked all the trim levels so that's going to be two additional trims that will be the AT4 and this fully loaded Denali and I have to say looking at it here in person this is one good looking SUV. It really has a lot of baby Yukon vibes especially when you get this fully loaded example so as far as the grille is concerned you're going to have a very nice squared off shape to it it's going to have that satin silver finish and then the Denali is additionally going to add this silver accent down here at the bottom. Now speaking of the bottom I do want to point out if you go for the AT4 which is the more off-road focused model that's going to increase your ground clearance up to 7.9 inches so it's 0.2 higher than the other versions. Now as far as our headlights are concerned we have some really really nice lighting and that's actually standard across the board so you're going to have standard projector LEDs on every single terrain. Additionally if you get the AT4 Denali you're going to get the dynamic turn signal and then down at the lower fascia we also have LED fog lights which is increasingly becoming very rare. Now when it comes to your wheels you start with a 17-inch alloy design and then as you move up the trim structure and into the Denali that gives you 19-inch alloys. We actually have the standard wheel option you can go all the way up to 20s if you want the most blingy design but I think these look quite nice and we'll discuss ride quality a little bit later on. Now as far as our wheel surrounds all that's going to be body color here on the Denali that really amps up the premium design. We also interestingly have kind of a side marker light as well. Now as far as your mirrors are concerned every feature is standard equipment so that would be heating and blind spot monitoring. You do not have power folding them. Now at the side the terrain is 181 inches long and as far as design touches you have a lot of chrome here for this model. We also have the chrome roof rails up top. I do additionally want to point out if you really want to spice up your design you can actually get a two-tone roof option in either black or gray. So there's a lot of design customizability with this GMC Terrain which I do really like. It's kind of like the Yukon and giving you all that customizability depending on what you prefer. Now as far as the rear design is concerned I really like this as well. It has a very handsome look to it. Definitely a lot more premium than some of the rivals in the segment. We have a spoiler up top. We have a exposed wiper right through here. Big prominent Denali branding so you'll notice that Denali is really the center point of the rear. You do have some terrain branding but that's going to be a little bit lower. And then as far as our taillights are concerned once again very happy with this because we have a full LED taillight unit that includes your brake light your reverse light and your dynamic turn signal indicator. You also have a little bit of chrome to spice it up. Dropping down to the lower fascia more chrome no exposed exhaust outlets and as far as your tow rating it's 1,500 pounds with all-wheel drive or 800 pounds if you choose the front-wheel drive model. Now as far as your safety systems are concerned I'm happy to tell you that you're getting all four of those as standard equipment on the GMC Terrain. But one feature that you will notice that's missing from the bigger SUVs like the Acadia and Yukon is supercruise. That's not going to be offered even here on the Terrain Denali. But guys I think you're going to be blown away by the cabin. But first if you're new here we're brothers and we've been reviewing cars since we were 12 and 16. We started young and since then we've reviewed over 2,000 cars at every price point. No matter what you're looking for from our long-term vehicle videos to our side-by-side comparisons we'd love for you to subscribe to be a part of our car confections family. Let's learn a lot and have some fun with all the latest cars. Now it's time to check out this Denali's cabin but first let's start out with your key of course. You have your standard GM key you do have some branding here on the back you do have smart entry as well as remote start standard on all models. Now to hop inside you do have a you don't have a sensor behind the door handle excuse me but you do have this little chrome button on the Denali to go ahead and unlock the car. And go ahead and take a look at this very special Denali interior. As you can see there's going to be a lot of elements brought down from bigger brother models such as the Acadia and the Yukon and it also brings its own flair for the Terrain as well. But let's first start talking about your seat materials. You'll have a wide range of materials starting with premium cloth going up to Cortex leatherette. But when you go for the Denali you do have this full leather seat with a lot of really nice details to it. You have the stitching detail the white piping as well and you do have your Denali stitched up in the top. It's a really nice and comfortable seat overall and you can get it in a couple different colors. Now as far as your seat adjustments you have eight-way power adjusting on the AT4 and above and you also do have two ways of lumbar support. Standard on the Denali only is going to be memory located over here in the side. But let's go ahead and check out all of the interior materials and technology. Now let's go ahead and take a second to dive into overall interior materials and I think you're going to be impressed here. Starting out over here in the door trim you're going to have a lot of leatherette going all throughout with a lot of stitching detail which feels very very nice. Up here you have a little bit of silver trim as well as some wood accents and then up at the top is going to be some soft touch material as well. That as well as some leatherette wrapping continues all the way across the top of the dashboard. Here's more of that leatherette here more of the wood trim you're going to have a little bit of hard touch material here as well as very nice leather padding on the center console as well. Everything feels very sturdy and well put together. But let's go ahead and start it up with the standard push button start. Now as you can see upon startup this new terrain is centered around tech so let's dive into some of these elements. Keep in mind we're going to be focusing mainly on this Denali model today since this is the top model with all of the available features. But let's start out with your gauge cluster. Standard on all models is going to be an 11 inch fully digital gauge cluster with a lot of customizability. You can go through a lot of different modes here including putting google maps right there in your gauge cluster. Now one thing that is missing from the previous generation that I am going to miss out on is a head-up display so that is no longer available on any model of the terrain. Now moving back to your steering wheel you're going to have a standard leather wrapped one as well as having standard heating for all of your terrain models for this new generation. Also on the AT4 and above you will have rain sensing wipers. But a big part of any compact SUV is going to be your storage so let's dive into that and I think you're going to be impressed here as well. So when I open up your center console you're going to be seeing donuts here. That is because our logo at Car Confections is a donut and we stuff our consoles full of them to give you an idea of what the center console volume is. For this terrain it will be 14 donuts which is above our 12 donut benchmark and is going to be quite large in comparison to all of its other competitors in this segment so very impressive. But the storage does not stop here. If you move up you do see your wireless phone charging pad that will be on the AT4 and above. You have your cup holders here, another little bin here, and if Mason can move around to the side you will see that there's a very large center pass through as well to throw even more goodies in here so you will not be short on storage here in this terrain. Now you do get all of this storage because you do not have a shifter here in the middle is going to be GM's new style of column mounted shifter so you just push down for drive you push back and up for reverse and when you go into reverse you are going to see a nice 360 camera which is standard here on this Denali trim. You do have a lot of different views that you can choose from as well and overall the quality is very nice. I wish it would take up maybe a little bit more of this large display though but to put in the park you just press P on the end of the stalk. Now let's begin to work our way up through this large screen here but that actually begins down at the bottom here with some physical controls as well. So on the AT4 and above you will have standard dual zone automatic climate and you do have these really nice and really nice feeling toggles here down at the bottom for all of your main climate functions and then you can also kind of click through some of the menus down at the bottom for some more customizability. You do also have access here in your touchscreen to your standard heated seats and the ventilated seats that are here on the Denali trim that is not given in this segment so it's very nice to see. Now there is one more physical control to talk about and that would be your volume knob. Now standard on every single model is going to be only a six speaker audio system so let's go ahead and give that a sample. So while the overall quality of the system is good I did say only six speakers because there is no offering at this point of a branded sound system on this new Terrain. I really wish they would bring in some sort of Bose system for those audiophiles that want to have overall better sound quality. But let's go ahead and talk about the overall screen as well as the technology within it. As you can see this is a very large and standard 15 inches of overall display size. Now there are some rivals that are similar if not a little bit bigger than this Terrain but I really am impressed that this is the standard screen size. If you're talking about big rivals like the CR-V, nine inches is only going to be as big as you can go so this is really an upgrade if you're coming from a model like that. Now as you can see on the screen you're going to have a lot of different functionality primarily since this is a gas model from GM. You do have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto running wirelessly so you do have that on this model. You're also going to have overall your Google built-in system with Google Assistant, Play Store and overall the response is very snappy. You also do have built-in Google Maps as well which is very nice. Now moving up top this camera mirror is going to be standard on the Denali trim itself and optional on some of the lower models and in typical GM fashion when Mason pulls back you will see that all models will come optional with a full panoramic sunroof. Now let's talk about the rear seat in the all-new Terrain. Now when it comes to overall space numbers I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised because it is pretty big. About 39 inches of legroom and about 38 inches of headroom. Those are like I said pretty good figures. We expect that to be very much similar to the all-new RAV4 although it is slightly less than something like the Honda CR-V so keep that in mind. Now of course we brought the official car confections ruler along and the reason we do that is so we can see how much knee room you can find. Behind my own driving position I'm five foot nine for reference I'm looking at 10 inches of knee space. That's really really quite good and my feet can also slide up underneath of the seats. Now these seats themselves I will say are quite comfortable back here although they do not recline in any capacity. Now if we fold down the center armrest it has that nice like wide grain leather. We have two cupholders inside and then as far as features are concerned I'm happy to say that you have heated back seats. That's actually going to be standard here on the Denali version of the Terrain so a lot of the rivals are not including that either. We have two air vents and then down in the lower area we have two USB-C ports. As far as the door trim is concerned we have a pretty nice one. It's going to be hard touch on the upper part but it's a little rubberized. I love that we still have that real wood trim. It feels very nice here on the Denali and we have leather all through the armrest portion and we even have a little bit of door storage. Now walking up to the tailgate the top two trims are going to come with a hands-free power tailgate and as you open up this area you will find a pretty good amount of space as well. So we're sitting at just a hair under 30 cubic feet of space behind the second row of seats. If we fold those seats down we're looking at about 63 cubic feet of maximum capacity. Now you might be curious as to how that compares to a lot of the rivals. Like I said this is a very hot segment with a ton of rivals and we'd encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash vehicle rankings to see how it stacks up. On our website we've gone through all this competition in the segment and we've ranked them in individual categories. Things like cargo space, interior technology, luxury, reliability, resale value, drive experience. All of that is detailed for you so you can see some of your best options in the segment and maybe some of your worst options in the segment. So if you want to make an informed buying decision carconfections.com slash vehicle rankings. Now back to the terrain as far as folding the seats down they do fold 60-40 split. There are not any handles to get it in the cargo area so I can just kind of reach up there and fold the seats down. For those of you that are a little shorter though you may have to go up to the second row to fold those seats down. Now as far as the seats they fold flat in the floor and let's get cargo length width and height figures. This is a car confections review after all. 75 inches of cargo length behind my own 5'9 driving position. Behind the rear seats 36 inches of length. As far as width that's pretty good 41 inches wide and height is coming in at 29 inches. We lift up the floor we actually have quite a lot of additional space. Note that it goes all the way back here and there is also a spare tire integrated underneath of the floor here which is also becoming kind of rare in this segment of vehicle. Well guys here we are behind the wheel of the all-new GMC. Terrain in this test drive we're going to be discussing quite a lot as you can see on the screen right now. We'll also be getting things like our sound level reading so we can see how quiet this cabin is but first we need to start with a hard acceleration. All right that was a brief acceleration up to about 55 miles per hour is a little bit spoiled by this red light but that's a definitely a good indication of what we have on board when it comes to the powertrain section. So if you were paying attention at the spec dump we said that this model has regardless of what trim level you select a 1.5 liter turbo four-cylinder engine makes 175 horsepower 203 pound-feet of torque. Overall those are going to be on the weaker end when it comes to power figures for this segment and you can feel that when you accelerate this certainly isn't going to be the fastest compact SUV that you can get that's for sure but one thing to keep in mind is that most people buying in this segment you know you're not going to be flooring it all the time so just driving around town it is perfectly adequate but I do wish they had maybe a higher output motor available. Yeah we lived with this powertrain in the all-new Equinox as well for an entire week there's one right there actually and we found it to be pretty good just getting up and around town unless you need to get somewhere in a hurry that's where you start to notice some of the deficiencies with this motor. But now it's time to talk about the other aspect of the powertrain which is the transmission. So when it comes to the transmission on this it will depend on if you get front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. What we have today is the all-wheel drive example which has an 8-speed automatic overall this transmission is pretty good uh it's definitely willing to downshift to give you the power when you need it although it does take a little bit of time to do so it's not the fastest transmission out there at least when it's paired with this engine but overall it's reasonably smooth and I think a big upgrade over what you get with the front-wheel drive model which is a CVT instead. Yeah and that front-wheel drive model is only going to be available on the on the base elevation trim so you probably won't see many units out and about with that certain setup but I will also note that you drop down to 184 pound-feet of torque when you go for front-wheel drive. But now we are going down a straight stretch of highway at 55 miles an hour so let's go ahead and get our signature sound level reading. We are on fan speed one very good we settled in at 55.3 decibels in this 2026 GMC Terrain Denali and I don't have to sit here and guess how it compares to all of its competition I can go to carconfections.com slash sound level readings to find that out and overall that is a pretty good sound level reading it's not going to be the quietest in the segment but it's certainly not going to be one of the loudest and I think this Terrain also has some goodies up its sleeve that we will talk about during the ride quality section that will help it be just a little bit quieter overall. And we're just kind of cruising along the road here and I think now is a great time to talk about ride quality so like Josh was insinuating earlier when it comes to your ride quality on this model they have done some special things for the Denali this has some smart frequency based damping for the suspension setup that does mean that it's going to have a really good ride quality even despite having those 19-inch wheels on the outside this vehicle does ride very nicely I've been very impressed with it that's to say the least I honestly think it rides better than some of the more affordable models we actually tested out an Elevation on the channel about a couple months ago and I think this is the nicer riding of the two despite having the larger wheels these seats I find to be comfortable as well so really no complaints in this department. Now that we're sitting here in a little bit of traffic let's talk about fuel economy for this Terrain now you do have a couple of different ratings the front-wheel drive model will be rated at 27 mpg combined and then there's two different ratings for your all-wheel drive models the AT4 and the Denali will drop your highway rating just a little bit but any all-wheel drive model will be rated at 25 mpg combined overall which is not bad for an engine of this size that being said though we do really wish they offered a hybrid version of this Terrain that's one of the areas that I think is the weakest about this model is just the fact that there is no hybrid offering the main competitor CRV is over 50% of the models are hybrid exclusive now the RAV4 is all hybrid exclusive so I think that's just a big deficiency when it comes to this model it could certainly benefit in the fuel economy department it could certainly benefit when it comes to overall responsiveness and horsepower compared to the rivals so that today is easily going to be the airball we really need that hybrid powertrain or at least a you know higher output motor I think that's really where this Denali kind of falls a little flat is everything else is very nice but when you start driving it it's a little bit slow that's for sure yeah and there are other options that exist such as the two liter turbo four that exist in the Cadillac XT4 as well as the Buick Envision that I wish they would have just put into this more premium product overall and the missing of a branded sound system I think the slam dunk is easily going to be the overall luxury you're getting in this package especially with the Denali now we're going to discuss it here in just a few minutes but the pricing is very equivalent to a lot of its rivals if not even a little bit cheaper so overall you're getting a lot of value packed into this Denali that we really really do like just kind of going around the sweeping corner reminds me to discuss overall handling when it comes to the terrain certainly not a focus of this vehicle it does exhibit quite a bit of body roll as you go around corners it's not bad per se but it's definitely not as sporty as some of the options you could be looking at like a Mazda CX-5 or CX-50 those will definitely be your more athletic of the bunch and you know it's pretty much tuned like that just because that's what the average buyer wants so like I said in the spec dump this vehicle starts at $29,900 for the base elevation trim level now if you want the higher end versions like the AT4 and the Denali that's going to cost significantly more $38,600 for the AT4 Denali is $41,100 now do keep in mind those two trims come standard with all-wheel drive as you can see we have the 26 terrain Denali all-wheel drive we also do have the optional paint color $495 for that $1395 destination all told we're sitting at $42,990 for this model you've seen today which may seem like a high price point but really a lot of the rivals are pushing $45,000 or more fully loaded so this actually is cheaper than a lot of its main competition which is what I was kind of hinting at throughout this video now if you're looking to buy a GMC Terrain or any new vehicle we'd encourage you to go to carconfections.com slash new car quotes now if the reason you do that is because we have a tool on our website that will connect you with local car dealers in your area to get you the best price it's also going to give you access to invoice pricing information which is a great tool for dealership negotiation we even have a monthly payment tool so if you'd like to check all of that out you can find a link to that in our video description as well as a pinned comment at the top of this video but buying a vehicle is about more than just the original MSRP so let's talk about resale and reliability first up let's talk about resale value as an economics graduate myself we took the time to develop what we think is a good estimate for this GMC Terrain's potential resale value we estimate that after five years and 60,000 miles it'll be worth 55.8% of original MSRP and after 10 years and 120,000 miles at 21.6% now it's worth noting those are pretty good resale value percentages it's actually above industry average and really the only brands that will do better than that would be some of your Japanese rivals such as Honda and Toyota now we've also done the same for reliability by creating the combined reliability index which takes into account a variety of data from trusted automotive resources in our updated 2025 ratings GMC is rated well above the overall industry average now if you'd like to learn more about our resale values our reliability information or our methodology be sure to go to carconfections.com resell and carconfections.com reliability buying a new vehicle is a very big decision so you want to make sure you're making a smart purchase especially if between different vehicle brands now when it comes to your warranty GMC is protected by a three-year 36,000 mile basic warranty a five-year 60,000 mile powertrain and you do get your first service visit covered complimentary and guys that's going to wrap up our in-depth review of the all-new 2026 GMC Terrain Denali if you enjoyed watching this video or found it helpful in your purchasing decisions which we hope you did we'd appreciate it if you hit that subscribe button down below by subscribing you're going to be a part of our car confections family we have a lot of fun on this channel and i promise you won't want to miss out if you're already part of our family thank you so much for your continued support and we'll catch you next time as we sample more of the latest automotive delicacies