Holden Captiva LTZ diesel 2014 new car review

It feels a bit weird putting 2014 in this review because the Captiva 5 started life in 2006 and has only had a couple of minor upgrades during the last 8 years. We first drove it in 2007. It’s a testament to how progressive the Captiva was when it first came out.

We get to jump in and out of new cars every week and they usually progress over time, but looking back at my photos from 2007 it is obvious that the Captiva is stuck in a time warp. The steering wheel and most of the dashboard and central binnacle are exactly the same, as are the instrument wands and that orange screen that looked dated when it first came out. In fact, it’s bordering on retro, which means it should be trendy very soon.

The reason the Captiva still sells like it’s the newest thing in the world is because the base model LT starts at under 37 grand, and there’s not a whole lot of competition. If you want the LTZ, though, you’ll need to fork out $46,490 and therefore it’s good to look at the alternatives.

The Nissan Qashqai TS is probably the closest and it’s both dynamically a bit better and has some better interior features, for over $3500 less. However, it isn’t a four-wheel drive, and the seating isn’t leather.

In the Captiva you don’t have to put up with the slightly irritating surging CVT gearbox that the Qashqai comes with; you get Holden’s trusty 6-speed automatic ‘box with Active Select (lets you change gears yourself) and Active Shift Control (analyses your driving and adjusts change up/down points as necessary). It does the job well.

I always try to leave when there’s no traffic around so that I can get a good, uninterrupted run across the hills, and I achieved that. The Captiva’s suspension was much better than, for example, the Renault Koleos (read review here) which I drove a couple of weeks ago. There were no complaints from my passenger of it feeling like a listing ship despite some fairly spirited cornering.

There is the whole suit of safety features including 4-channel antilock braking, active rollover protection, brake assist, electronic brakeforce distribution, traction control, self-levelling suspension and six airbags. It scores 5 stars in the ANCAP crash test.