The LaCrosse rides extremely well on the highway, as you'd expect from a large American car. It is extremely quiet, with no wind noise at all, even though it has large side mirrors. On freshly-paved surfaces, the only sound you hear (besides the decent audio system) is some tire noise. The engine does moan a bit when pressed, not an unpleasant sound, but not something to cherish, either.... Minimal sound comes from the dual exhaust.
Outward vision is a bit problematic, especially to the front angles - the combination of large side mirrors, which seem to be mounted high up on the body, and think A-pillars cause a lot of craning of the neck when initialy turning into parking spot or during low-speed maneuvering. And vision to the rear is terrible, a result of a short (vertically) rear window and high trunk lid. A car 12 feet behind you appears to be driving into your trunk! The front corners of the car are difficult to see as well.
The key fob is a cool switchblade, just like my Audi. But the remote buttons seem very sensitive. After stopping at a rest area on the Mass Turnpike, we came out to find the trunk popped open. And after stopping for lunch on Saturday in Newport, ME, someone came into the restaurant to ask who owned the LaCrosse, as the car alarm was wailing! Turns out I had the fob in my back pocket both times, so I am assuming that sitting on it caused the trunk to open and the panic alarm to go off. On the flip side, the range of the fob seems to be very good!
Exterior and interior styling is very nicely done, IMHO. This car would look great in a dark exterior color, as it has enough chrome accenting to really set off those darker colors - a dark blue with tan leather interior would be really sharp. The character line that dips down in the rear doors - kind of Austin-Healey-like - is very distinctive and the whole car is kind of canted forward, making it look like it's moving even at rest. The interior has cool blue lighting in several spots - along the upper edge of the dashboard, along the lower sides of the console, inside the door handle wells and around various points of the center stack. Very nice and subtle. The controls have a nice tactile feel to them, and the blinkers - which blink 3 times when you partially depress the stalk, again, just like my Audi - have a very subtle but solid sound to them as they flash. The trip computer is a little clunky to operate - a combination of 3 separate stalk-mounted switches have to be operated to move through the menus - but the visibility of the display is excellent - right between the 2 big chrome-trimmed dials. The cool blue lighting circulates around the speedometer and tach. And the needles of all 4 gauges (speedo, tach, temp and fuel) swing around their dials when you start the carm before settling back to 'normal' when you start the car, a neat touch.
Unfortunately, I found the seats a little uncomfortable. They were a little soft and narrow - I had to take my wallet out of my back pocket after a while, as my right leg would start to feel like it was losing circulation. Perhaps the leather seats are a little better and more firm.
One strange item - according to my navigation system, the speedometer was actually 1 - 2 mph LOWER than actual speed. I've never seen that before - most cars are optimistic with their speedos by 1 - 2 mph.
Mileage was good for a large car - we averaged just under 26 mpg for the trip, with the cruise set at 73 mph (except for the 2 hours in stop and go traffic mentioned above).
Here are my pictures -
