Holden Acadia vs Infiniti Q30

What's the difference?

The Holden Acadia is a proper seven-seater SUV in that it will fit adults in the third row without turning your friends into enemies. It’s also practical and well fitted out with storage places and utilities such as USB ports.

I was particularly impressed with the advanced safety equipment on-board even at this entry LT level. Yes, it’s a V6 petrol and it’s not the most fuel-efficient SUV, but our time with it showed that with cylinder deactivation and the stop-start system it might not be as thirsty as you’d think.

The Q30 Sport is a left-field choice in the premium hatch segment. For those who don’t care about badge equity and are looking for something different, the Q30 provides maybe 70 per cent the feel of its well-established competition while offering decent value courtesy of standard safety and spec inclusions.

The biggest letdown is how much better it could be with just a little extra in every department. Even in this top-spec the drive experience is a bit generic, and it’s missing an up-to-date multimedia experience limiting its appeal to a younger audience.

Even with its promising mixed heritage, the Q30 hardly feels more than the sum of its parts.

To fully understand the look of the Acadia, take a peek at the GMC website - but make sure you shield your eyes in the same way you would during a solar eclipse, or when welding, or in an atomic blast.

You’ll understand when you get there but suffice it to say contained within the site are some pretty confronting trucks and SUVs. Once you’ve recovered, you’ll realise the Acadia is the supermodel of the GMC family.

Yep, it has a big, blocky, truck-like look but it’s a refreshingly tough styling alternative to more elegant looking SUVs such as the Mazda CX-9.

The Acadia is also one of the smallest members of the GMC family, yet its dimensions position it as a large SUV in Australia. Even then it’s not huge compared to other large SUVs here, so you won’t have an issue piloting it in Aussie car parks or fitting into spaces.

The Acadia measures 4979mm end-to-end, 2139mm across (with the mirrors out) and 1762mm tall.

Along with the Mazda CX-9 the Acadia would also consider the Kia Sorento and Nissan Pathfinder to be among its rivals.

Inside, the Acadia is a modern and stylish looking place, although it’s a bit unrefined. Still, as one YouTube commenter reminded me parents will like the wipe clean surfaces.

Well her comment wasn’t written that politely but being a parent, I concur that the hard plastics have that advantage.

The interior is not all unrefined. The seats, even in the entry grade LT we tested, while cloth (and only available in Jet Black) are sculptured with bolsters and finished with a textured pattern that looks and feels great.

The Q30 drew more than just looks for its badge. It genuinely looks like a concept car from a motor show stand. Not the paper mache Mars rover early prototype kind, more like the six-months-before-production kind.

It’s all swoopy with curves cutting all down the sides, and Infiniti has done a good job imprinting the brand’s signature design queues – like the chrome-framed grille and notched C-pillar - on the front and rear three-quarter views.

It’s genuinely hard to tell it shares major componentry with the last-gen (W176) A-Class from the outside and I’d place the overall look somewhere between Mazda and Lexus’ design languages for better or worse.

While the front is swoopy and resolved the rear is a bit busy with lines everywhere and bits of chrome and black trim all over the place. The tapered roofline and high bumpers set it apart from your regular hatchback fare. 

It might grab the eye for the wrong reasons, but it certainly gives the Q30 a slick look when viewed in profile. I wouldn’t call it a bad looking car, but it is divisive and will appeal only to certain tastes.

Inside is simple and plush. Perhaps a little too simple when compared with the new (W177) A-Class with its entirely digital dashboard or the 1 Series with its M bits. One could even argue the Audi A3 has done ‘simplicity’ better.

The seats are nice in the two-tone white-on-black trim and the Alcantara roof is a premium touch, but the rest of the dash is a bit too basic and dated. There’s a smattering of buttons down the centre stack which are replaced with more intuitive touchscreen functions on most rivals, and the 7.0-inch touchscreen looks small, distantly embedded in the dash.

The materials are all nice to the touch, with most important touch-points clad in leather, but it also feels a little claustrophobic, with the abundance of dark trim, thick roof pillars and a low roof-line, especially in the back seat. The switchgear, which is mostly dropped straight out of a Benz A-Class, feels good.

The Acadia’s practicality game is strong. It boasts seven seats with third row positions actually able to fit adults, five USB ports sprinkled through the cabin, and a cargo capacity of 1042 litres with the third-row seats folded flat and 292 litres with them in place. If you have three kids, even teenagers, the Acadia could be the perfect family personnel carrier for you.

All three rows are spacious and even at 191cm tall I had good shoulder and elbow room up front, and in the second and third rows I had enough legroom to sit in each seat behind my seating position without feeling cramped.

Feeling a bit down because you might not be able to stretch the budget to get the LTZ-V? Well, cheer up – the LT has more headroom and that’s because it doesn’t get the sunroof which eats into the ceiling height.

Cabin storage is excellent. There’s a wide and deep centre console bin, a hidey hole in front of the shifter, a tray for second row passengers, six cup holders (two in each row) and decent-sized door pockets.

Directional air vents for everybody on board, three-zone climate control, two 12-volt power outlets, privacy glass and proximity unlocking complete a great practicality package.

Infiniti calls the Q30 a “crossover” rather than a hatchback and this is best reflected through its pumped ride height. Rather than hugging the ground like the A-Class or 1 Series, the Q30 sits propped up, almost like a small SUV.

There’s also the QX30 which is an even more pumped version of this car complete with plastic guards in the vein of Subaru’s XV. The QX30 is also your only way to all-wheel drive now that the Q30 is front-wheel drive only. 

While the extra ride height means you won’t have to worry about scraping expensive body panels on speedbumps or steep ramps you won’t be wanting to get too brave off the tarmac.

Interior space is fine for front passengers with plenty of arm and legroom, but back seat passengers are left with a small, dark space which feels especially claustrophobic. Headroom is not great no matter which seat you’re in. In the front seat I could almost rest my head on the sun-visor (I’m 182cm tall) and the back seat was not much better.

Rear passengers do score nice seat trim and two air-conditioning vents though, so they haven’t totally been forgotten.

There’s average amounts of storage up front and in the back, with small bottle holders in each of the four doors, two on the transmission tunnel and a tiny trench – useful for keys maybe – in front of the air-conditioning controls.

Even the centre console box is shallow, despite a large opening. Once I had collected enough loose objects on my trip I started to run out of room for things in the cabin.

There are nettings on the back of the front seats and an odd extra one on the passenger’s side of the transmission tunnel.

Power outlets come in the form of a single USB port in the dash and a 12-volt outlet in the centre box.

The boot is a much better story despite the swoopy roofline with 430 litres of space available. That’s bigger than the A-Class (370L), 1 Series (360L), A3 (380L) and CT200h (375L). Needless to say, it ate up two large duffle bags and some extra items we brought with us for our week-long trip.

This is due to its impressive depth, but it does come at a cost. The Q30 only has the sound system’s base and an inflator kit under the boot floor. There’s no spare for long distance trips.

One irritation I have to mention is the shift-lever, which was annoying in its tilt-shift operation. Often when trying to change to drive from reverse or vice versa it would get stuck in neutral. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with a shifter which locks in position…

If you’re shopping in this segment, there’s a good chance you’re not looking for a bargain buy, but the Q30 shines in some areas its competition doesn’t.

A promising start is the complete lack of a lengthy and expensive options list with items which should be standard. In fact, apart from a reasonable set of accessories and the $1200 premium 'Majestic White' paint, the Q30 has no options in the traditional sense.

The base Q30 scores 18-inch alloy wheels, LED headlights with high-beam assist, heated leather seats, flat-bottomed leather steering wheel, leather trim on the doors and dash, Alcantara (synthetic suede) roof-lining and a 7.0-inch multimedia touchscreen supporting DAB+ digital radio and built-in navigation.

Our Sport adds a 10-speaker Bose audio system (which could have been better…) dual-zone climate control, a fixed panoramic sunroof, fully-electric front seats and Nissan’s 360-degree ‘around view monitoring’ parking suite.

It might have premium aspirations, but value-wise Q30 is still specified like a Nissan.

The standard safety suite is also reasonably impressive, and you can read more about it in the safety section of this review.

Our Q30 Sport comes in at a total of $46,888 (MSRP) which is still premium money. The price pits it against the BMW 120i M-Sport (eight-speed auto, $46,990), Mercedes-Benz A200 (seven-speed DCT, $47,200) and fellow Japanese premium hatch act - the Lexus CT200h F-Sport (CVT, $50,400).

Herein lies the Q30’s biggest problem. Brand recognition. Everybody knows the BMW and Benz hatches by virtue of their badges alone and the Lexus CT200h is known by those who care about it.

Even without the extensive options list, it makes the price of entry against such established competition tough. While you might see a couple of them around Sydney, the Q30 is a relatively rare sight which garnered more than a few quizzical looks in the towns of NSW’s mid-north coast.

The standard spec is also missing the all-important Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity. It rendered the 7.0-inch multimedia screen clumsy and largely useless, although the old-fashioned built-in nav gives peace-of-mind when you’re out of phone reception range.

If you have an Apple phone you can make use of the iPod music playback feature via the USB port.

All Acadias come with a 3.6-litre V6 petrol engine which makes big dollops of power and torque or 231kW (at 6600rpm) and 367Nm (at 5000rpm).

A nine-speed automatic swaps gears, and in the case of our two-wheel drive LT test car the drive went to the front wheels only.

The V6 gets the thumbs up for its stop-start fuel saving system and cylinder deactivation, plus good acceleration and the smooth power delivery you’d associate with a naturally aspirated engine, but a thumbs down for needing to rev hard to make that mumbo.

For 2019 the Q30 has had its list of engines trimmed from three to just one. The diesel and smaller 1.6-litre petrol engines have been culled, leaving a 2.0-litre petrol.

Thankfully, it’s a strong unit producing a once-V6-range 155kW/350Nm across a wide band from 1200-4000rpm.

It feels responsive and isn’t let down by a slick-shifting seven-speed dual clutch automatic transmission.

The new-generation A-Class equivalent, even in 2.0-litre A250 guise produces less torque with outputs of 165kW/250Nm, so for the money the Infiniti scores a solid serving of extra punch.

We were surprised by the Acadia’s fuel efficiency. After filling up the tank I drove for 136.9km on a combination of hilly country roads and peak hour evening city traffic and then filled up again – only 13.98 litres were used. That’s a mileage of 10.2L/100km. The official combined consumption figure is 8.9L/100km.

So, while the engine is big and not particularly new (it’s an evolution of the V6 built by Holden in Australia for the Commodore) it does have fuel-saving tech like cylinder deactivation and a stop-start system – which you can’t switch off.

Still, not the most fuel-efficient seven-seater – those with turbos and smaller capacity engines such as Mazda CX-9 are truly amazing in the way they can deliver grunt without getting thirsty.

Over my week-long test the Q30 returned a figure of 9.0L/100km. I was a little disappointed with this figure given much of the distance covered was cruising at freeway speeds. 

It’s made worse when you pitch it against the claimed/combined figure of 6.3L/100km (not sure how you could achieve that…) and the fact that I left the irritating stop-start system on for much of the time.

For a leader in the luxury hatch class consider the Lexus CT200h which makes full use of Toyota’s hybrid drive and pitches a fuel consumption figure of 4.4L/100km.

The Q30 has a 56-litre fuel tank and takes a minimum of 95 RON premium unleaded.

I drove the Holden Acadia back-to-back with the Nissan Pathfinder – you can watch the model comparison in the video above, but the upshot of that experience was important.

See, while I wasn’t a major fan of the Acadia driving experience when I first met the SUV at its Australian launch in 2018, when I drove it straight after the Pathfinder the difference was like night and day.

The Acadia is comfortable, from the big seats to the smooth ride. If you’re covering a stack of territory the Acadia makes a great highways cruiser and will chomp up big distances  effortlessly.

That V6 does need to rev hard, but it’s powerful and acceleration is swift, while the nine-speed automatic shifts pretty seamlessly. Noise cancelling tech keeps the cabin fairly serene, too.

Look, it’s not the most dynamic of SUVs and there was a bit of tyre chirp in the corners when pushed, but this isn’t a performance car and nor is it trying to be.

Small windows mean a cooler, tough look, but the downside is a dark cabin and occasionally visibility is limited by the A-pillars or out the rear windows.

A 2000kg braked towing capacity will rule the Acadia out for many thinking of pulling a large caravan or big boat. The Pathfinder’s 2700kg braked towing capacity is a strength of that SUV.

Do you need all-wheel drive? Nope, but it’s handy for dirt and gravel roads. Still the 198mm ground clearance with only front-wheel drive should see you get down bumpy roads that regular sedans couldn’t handle.

Thanks to its shared underpinnings with the A-Class the Q30 Sport drives largely like you would expect a premium hatch to drive. It’s just lacking a bit of character.

The engine is responsive, the transmission is fast and the availability of peak torque from just 1200rpm will lead to spinning the front wheels if caution is not applied. Power is no real issue.

Although Infiniti says it has tuned the Q30 in Japan and Europe, the ride has an undeniably Germanic flavour. It doesn’t feel quite as tight as the A-Class or 1 Series but it doesn’t feel as soft as the CT200h, so it strikes a decent balance.

The Q30 uses MacPherson strut suspension in the front and multi-link at the rear, more suited to a premium car than the torsion bar rear on the new Benz A 200.

The wheel has a nice amount of feedback, and thankfully doesn’t use the larger Q50’s strange ‘Direct Adaptive Steering’ which has no mechanical connection between the driver and the road.

If you’ve driven a decently-specified A-Class before the drive experience will feel familiar. The added ride height seems to remove a bit of feel from the corners, however.

There’s also the inclusion of three drive modes – Economy, Sport and Manual. Economy mode seems to be the default with Sport simply holding gears for longer. Steering-wheel mounted paddle-shifters could be used to mill through the seven gears in 'Manual' mode, although this didn’t add much to the experience.

The addition of active cruise control and adaptive high beams proved to be fantastic for reducing fatigue on long highway stints during the night, but the lack of a padded surface on the inside of the transmission tunnel proved uncomfortable for the driver’s knee on longer trips.

I persisted with the stop-start system to test it, but it proved slow and irritating. Under normal circumstances it would be the first thing I’d turn off.

Visibility was also a bit limited out the rear three quarter courtesy of the low, swoopy C-pillars.

The Q30 scores some decent active safety goodies alongside the usual refinements. Active safety items include auto emergency braking (AEB) with forward collision warning, blind spot monitoring (BSM), lane departure warning (LDW) and active cruise control.

There’s also Nissan’s signature ‘Around View Monitor’ 360-degree reversing camera which sounds more useful than it is. Thankfully there is also a standard reversing camera.

The Q30 carries a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating as of 2015 but has not been tested to the more demanding 2019 standards.

The rear seats also benefit from two sets of ISOFIX child seat mounting points. 

As previously mentioned, there’s no spare wheel in the Q30 Sport, so best of luck with the inflator kit if you end up with a flat in the outback.

The Acadia is covered by Holden’s five year/unlimited kilometre warranty.

Servicing is recommended every 12 months or 12,000km. Expect to pay $259 for the first service, $299 for the second, $259 for the third, $359 for the fourth and $359 again for the fifth.

As with all Infiniti products, the Q30 is covered by a four-year/100,000km warranty and a three-year service program can be purchased with the car. Pricing was not available for the 2019 Q30 model year at the time of writing, but its 2.0-litre turbo predecessor averaged $540 per service once a year or every 25,000km.

Credit where credit is due, the Q30 edges out the European competition by a year of warranty length and general service pricing. This market segment is still wide open for a manufacturer to take the lead offering five or more years of warranty coverage.