The three-row midsized Acadia grew larger in nearly every dimension for the 2024 model year, bringing it more in line with its mechanical near-twin, the Chevrolet Traverse. The larger body gives the Acadia more competitive passenger and cargo room. The reworked interior is outfitted with large screens, and the Acadia boasts a lengthy roster of standard active safety and driver assistance features.
The one area where the Acadia got smaller is under the hood. It loses the V6 engine it was previously available with in favor of a more powerful 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder.
After testing was completed, we think the Acadia remains a well-rounded family SUV, thanks to its comfortable ride, roomy cabin, large cargo capacity, and generous standard features. But while the new powertrain works just fine—with delay-free takeoffs, strong power, and a mostly smooth-shifting transmission—the engine’s coarse and gravelly sound makes it too obvious that it’s working hard to haul around a pretty heavy vehicle.
That’s a shame, as the elevated noise sours the experience in a vehicle that, before, didn’t suffer from any major vices.
As one of our testers noted, “I had high hopes for this vehicle, as I loved the last Acadia we tested. But I’m not impressed with this one; the sound of the engine when you step on the gas pedal is disappointing.”
“Mediocrity on four wheels,” chimed in another about the mid-pack-ranked Acadia. “I struggled to get comfortable in the driver’s seat, the engine lacks the smooth, robust power expected in a GMC, the interior doesn’t feel very premium, and some of the controls have a head-scratching unintuitive operation about them.”
We bought a 2024 GMC Acadia Elevation AWD for $49,190—anonymously from an area dealer, as we do with every vehicle we test—for the purpose of this road test review. The Acadia is assembled in Lansing, Michigan.
Driving experience
Although the Acadia has gotten bigger, its sole available engine has gotten smaller—though more powerful. The 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine produces an energetic 328 horsepower, which is 18 more horsepower than the previous 3.6-liter V6. In terms of power delivery, the engine works well. It isn’t marred with any delays or abruptness off the line, instead providing strong and linear acceleration. But the engine often sounds like it’s laboring, based on its elevated and uncouth raspy snarl, anytime the revs rise above 3,000 rpm.
Acceleration is competitively quick within the three-row midsized SUV class, with 0 to 60 mph arriving in 7.6 seconds. Of note, that’s 0.3-seconds slower than the similar Chevrolet Traverse, and nearly a second slower than the previous Acadia, which was considerably lighter. Fuel economy improved by 1 mpg over the previous V6 model, but the 20 mpg overall we achieved with the turbo-four is merely mediocre. Further insult to injury is that some rival six-cylinder-powered SUVs get better fuel economy.
GMC programmed the Acadia so that you can’t use the paddle shifters behind the steering wheel to manually shift the transmission until you first press a small “L” button on the steering wheel. Not only is this annoying, for example if you want to get a quick downshift to help control the vehicle’s speed on a long downhill, but we’re guessing many owners will never understand what the button means, and may wonder why their paddle shifters don’t work.
The powertrain may have some oddities, but GMC found a nice suspension setup out on the road. The Acadia has a settled and controlled ride, and sails smoothly over all kinds of surfaces. For a sizable SUV, the handling is solid—the steering has decent precision, and the Acadia proved secure when pushed to its limits around our track. Curiously, models with the optional all-wheel drive (rather than standard front-wheel drive) get delivered in front-wheel-drive mode; the owner has to press an “AWD” button on the driver’s left dash area in order to engage all-wheel drive. Once engaged, it stays on indefinitely.
Stopping distances proved competitive with other midsized three-row SUVs, and our drivers found the brake pedal pretty easy to modulate for smooth stops out on the road, beyond a bit of an abrupt initial response when you first step on the pedal, particularly at very low speeds.
Cabin comfort
Wind and road noise are kept nicely at bay inside the Acadia, but the aforementioned engine noise brings down the whole atmosphere, creating a din unbefitting of a $50,000 vehicle. Our base-level Elevation’s cabin has a decent fit and finish for the price, including a fair amount of padded areas. Plus, the wood-like trim on the doors, dashboard, and center console, along with some chrome bits and contrasting stitching, breaks up the monotony of the sea of black trim. But, it was disappointing to find exposed wiring and rough cutouts in the carpet around the second-row captain’s chairs when we slid them forward to get into the third-row seat.
There’s generous headroom up front, and both the door- and center armrests are well-placed, although the one on the door suffers from weak padding. We found the left footrest to be too close and upright for optimal comfort, causing a few drivers to move the seat rearward so as to not feel cramped. Some of our drivers struggled to find good comfort with the front seats. The main issue is the seat’s flat shape, which makes it feel more like you’re sitting “on” it than “in” it. Plus, some drivers felt that there was too much built-in lumbar support poking into their lower back. We were happy to find a power-operated front passenger seat in our Acadia, vs. the all-manual seat in the similarly-priced Traverse LT we tested.
Outward visibility is aided by large windows most of the way around the vehicle, but it’s hampered by thick windshield pillars, which force the driver to move their upper body to see around them through turns. The side windows are nice and large, and the Acadia benefits from a more useful third side window than the one in the Traverse.
Both seven- and eight-passenger configurations are available in the 2025 Acadia, depending on whether you go with a conventional second-row bench seat or dual captain’s chairs, like in our test vehicle (the 2024 model only had seven-passenger seating). While captain’s chairs bring greater space and typically better comfort over a bench seat, note that this layout means a fifth occupant will always be relegated to the third row. As with most competitors, the Acadia’s third-row seat is best reserved for kids, due to tight head- and kneeroom, although it’s larger than in the previous model.
As expected in a vehicle well-suited to road trips, small-item storage in the cabin is quite good. The front door pockets are deep and fairly wide, and each has a well-defined bottle holder that doesn’t compromise the rest of the pocket. There’s an open bin underneath the center console that is a little tricky to access, but it could come in handy for the right-sized items. Opening the rear liftgate reveals a significant amount of space behind the upright third-row seat, plus there is a deep underfloor storage cubby.
Controls and usability
The Acadia’s controls are a mixed bag of some that are pretty user-friendly, with others that make you wonder, “Why?” The infotainment touchscreen is quite large, but its portrait-orientation (which means it’s taller than it is wide) places some controls down low on the screen, forcing the driver to look away from the road. We appreciate that the Acadia has a fair amount of physical climate toggle switches, but they are at the very bottom portion of the screen.
Some other controls are either inconvenient or unintuitive. For example, the Acadia has a very large audio volume knob toward the bottom-center of the screen. But it’s nearly flush with the display, which makes it difficult to grab. Then there’s the left steering wheel stalk, which has a complicated secondary function for the windshield- and rear-window wipers that can lead to accidental activations. The right stalk serves as the electronic gear selector, and its operation can take some getting used to. We also don’t like that the emergency flashers button is hidden high up on the overhead console. Not only is the button small, but its out-of-view location makes it difficult to find quickly in an emergency situation.
Active safety & driver assistance
Standard active safety and driver assistance features include automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, automatic emergency braking that operates at highway speeds, blind spot warning, rear cross traffic warning, reverse automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning, lane keeping assistance, adaptive cruise control, and automatic high beams. Some of the Acadia’s safety warnings are communicated via vibrations to the driver’s seat (called the “Safety Alert Seat”), a feature we’ve appreciated in the Acadia and in numerous other General Motors products.
GM’s excellent Super Cruise active driving assistance system is available on the Acadia (although not equipped on our test vehicle). It gives the driver the ability to simultaneously use adaptive cruise control and lane centering assistance, and allows for hands-free driving on pre-mapped highways. We think it’s a good stress-reliever, particularly in congested traffic. The system is also capable of changing lanes on its own to get around slower vehicles on the highway.
We’re happy to see that both a rear occupant alert system and a belt minder come standard. The former is designed to remind the driver—based on rear-door logic—to check the rear seat when they turn the Acadia off to help prevent children and pets from suffering heatstroke or hypothermia if unintentionally left behind in the vehicle. The rear belt minder alerts the driver if a rear passenger unbuckles their seat belt during the trip. There’s also a standard Side Bicyclist Alert that will warn you to not open your door, when parked on the street, if the system detects a cyclist approaching from behind.