With its all-new GMC Terrain, General Motors has thrown fresh sheetmetal at a segment that is hot but becoming crowded. Its floating roof and C-shaped LEDs flanking the headlights are elements intended to separate the Terrain from its boxy past, if not from the rest of the compact-SUV pack. But it’s on the inside where you?ll find one of the more ambitious decisions made by the Terrain team for the all-new 2018 model that made its debut earlier this month at the Detroit auto show.
At the bottom of the center stack rests GMC?s new Electronic Precision Shift (EPS), a row of buttons and switches replacing a traditional shift lever or steering-column-mounted stalk for controlling the nine-speed automatic transmission. Park, neutral, and low are all selected by pushing buttons, while reverse and drive are engaged by pulling up on switches that resemble some power-window controls. Giving consumers a new way to shift an automatic transmission seems especially bold given recent events, including a federal investigation into some of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles? rotary shifters and a voluntary recall by the same automaker of joystick-like, electronically controlled ?monostable? shifters supplied by ZF. Earlier, in 2012 BMW recalled more than 45,000 7-series cars with an electronic transmission-control system that could cause cars to shift into neutral rather than park and potentially roll away.
The console shifter on a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The Dodge Charger and Chrysler...