Wendy and I flew to southwestern Oregon in early June. We needed a rental vehicle I could drive over to the coast and down to the Redwoods in northwestern California, and when I went hunting online, the cheapest rental at the Medford airport was what Budget described as a “Dodge Grand Caravan or similar”. That was fine by me, since I have enjoyed driving Wendy’s Honda Odyssey mini-van on our vacations.

Renting a vehicle on a vacation is an opportunity to experience something different than my 2014.5 Toyota Camry or Wendy’s 2019 mini-van. The most unusual rental for me was way back in the late 1980s when a girlfriend arranged for me to drive a Firebird Trans Am in Baltimore and Atlantic City. That was a hoot until the hood latch malfunctioned. We had to trade it in, and the replacement was a Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport station wagon, which was quite a contrast!

The last time Wendy and I rented a car was on our trip through Utah in 2018. We ended up with a Ford Fusion hybrid. While I loved its 45+ miles per gallon efficiency, the large battery reduced the trunk space so much that our largest piece of luggage had to be transported in the back seat, and the car could be sluggish. But it was interesting to drive a car that sometimes relied entirely on its electric motors and had regenerative braking.

Car rental agencies understandably can only approximate what you will get for their cheapest rates, and a mini-van is not what we ended up with in Medford. We were assigned a GMC Yukon Denali, which is a luxury full-size sport utility vehicle that sells for over $80,000.

We walked out of the airport to find a jet black vehicle that was 17’6” long, 6’9” wide, 6’4.5” high, and weighed over 5,500 pounds. That’s almost two feet longer, 9 inches wider, over 18 inches taller, and over a ton heavier than my own 2014.5 Toyota Camry.

I’ve driven full-size SUVs before; I’ve driven the Chevy Suburbans the school district has to transport small groups, a “People Mover” mini-bus, and I once rented a 15-passenger van to haul people around while at a conference. So I knew I could handle the big Denali, although parking it might be a challenge. One of the surprises of the trip was how easy it was to park the beast, thanks to one of its many luxury features.

The vehicle had many of the high-end features one finds on a Cadillac Escalade, and it was fun to discover them as I wheeled the beast along interstates, narrow winding mountain highways, gravel logging roads, and city streets.

Favorite Features

One of my favorite features was apparent once I pressed the Start button: a heads-up display (HUD) appeared on the driver’s windshield.

I loved being able to see my speed without glancing down, although I had no use for the off-road elements in the display showing 4-wheel drive mode and vehicle pitch angle, steering angle, and roll angle. The HUD also displayed the cruise control settings, and there were convenient controls on the dash allowing me to adjust the height and brightness of the HUD.

I discovered that other buttons on the dash left of the steering wheel were for the parking brake, lane assist, park assist, stop engine feature, traction control, hill descent control, and 360-degree surround vision system. That latter feature was splendid, showing on the large central display a 360-degree overhead view of the vehicle and its surroundings, with a larger view from any of the cameras, with both views showing guidance overlays.

It was wonderful how the cameras on the front, rear, and the two side mirrors were used to create the overhead view, making it easy for me to steer the beast into marked parking spots. Our vehicle didn’t have the additional Automatic Parking Assist feature for parallel parking, but we never needed it, either.

The other feature I appreciated was the power liftgate in the back, with a button you could press to lift it, another would lower it, and a sensor allowed you to wave a foot under the bumper to lift the gate.

Other Surprises

I was surprised by the heated steering wheel and how the seats not only had heat but also a fan that could push air through them for ventilation.

I wasn’t surprised to find that the vehicle had adaptive cruise control that would adjust its speed when following a slower vehicle, as I’ve grown used to that on Wendy’s mini-van. My older Camry just has old-fashioned cruise control, something I have to bear in mind when switching cars: my Camry would happily plow into a slower vehicle in front of me if I let it.

I also appreciated the lane assist feature, given the vehicle’s imposing size, while I deliberately de-activate that feature on Wendy’s mini-van as it is more annoying than helpful on it.

One can’t get good gasoline mileage on a behemoth like this, but it did manage to average over 20 miles per gallon. My 1978 Chevrolet Monte Carlo I drove for a couple of years in college could only get 17 miles per gallon in city driving and the low 20s on the highway, while my 2014.5 Camry averages about 28 mpg. One feature to save gas was the auto-stop function, which I first heard about a few years back. The engine would usually cut out when you stopped, restarting once you released the brake. Sometimes it would also start the engine in order to run the air conditioning compressor. There was a button to disable the auto-stop feature, but while it took awhile for me to grow accustomed to it, I left it on to save a bit of gasoline.

I see in the owner’s manual that the vehicle also has navigation on its center screen that can include guidance in the HUD, but I never tried using that feature. Instead, I just plugged in my Apple iPhone 14 Pro into the console and used CarPlay to access guidance from my TomTom GO app, which I routinely pre-program with various destinations before a vacation. One nice thing about the Denali was that it could do wireless CarPlay as well, while Wendy’s mini-van requires that you plug in the phone, although I always plugged in the phone to ensure it would stay charged.

I had fun trying out the various features on the vehicle. Although at first I wasn’t thrilled about having such a large rental vehicle, its features made it less annoying to maneuver than I had expected. I did feel a bit silly clambering up and down from the beast, and with just Wendy and me and our airplane luggage on board, the third row seats sat up and empty most of the time.

I would never contemplate buying such a vehicle; Wendy’s mini-van is all I would ever need for travel or cargo, and I was very glad to be back driving my Camry from the Tulsa airport back home. While I will avoid renting such a large vehicle in the future, it was a worthwhile experience.