If you’re not a parent, then the concept of “travel ball” is maybe foreign to you. If you’re not a parent, you can probably stop reading about this vehicle, as it’s not for you. Even if you are a parent, travel ball might not be for you. It’s sure as hell not for me.
For those who are unaware, travel ball is a form of youth sports that forces parents, willingly or unwillingly, to spend an inordinate amount of time and money taking their kid to play basketball, or baseball, or hockey, or whatever. This is little league on steroids (hopefully not literally) and exists because most kids playing, say, t-ball, are liable to spend most of the time in the outfield looking at planes. Those kids don’t need more reps.
Some kids do, and those kids all typically get put on one team that goes and plays the best players from somewhere else. That somewhere else could be 200 hundred miles away, which means that travel ball parents have to get up at some ungodly hour on a Saturday so they can sit around and wait for a game to start.
I have a friend who is a travel ball dad, and when soccer is in season, I barely see him. This doesn’t sound that much fun to me, and I feel pretty grateful that my daughter is not a southpaw, as I’d have probably pushed her more into softball. She is doing competition dance next year, and that’s already a lot, but it’s just once every three months.
If she were super into lacrosse and needed me to schlep out to New Hampshire every Friday night, I would do it. I would do it every weekend, even though I don’t care at all about the sport. I love my daughter very much, and I want to give her what she needs. Most kids want and, really, need some kind of thing that makes them feel good, that they can work hard at, that can teach them important lessons about life and teamwork and all that.
For me, it was theater, which was convenient for my parents, because they didn’t have to go anywhere, though I’m sure they would have if I’d have asked them. I had a cousin who was a travel ball softball player and her parents always seemed to be caught between being grateful to be a part of their kid’s life and a little overwhelmed by it all.
A key part of travel ball seems to be having the appropriate gear, because there’s a lot of gear. There’s everything your kid needs–bags, gear, clothes, snacks–and then usually another kid in tow who needs their own entertainment, clothes, snacks, et cetera. There’s often a large cooler to carry all the food, countless water bottles, and then chairs. So many chairs. I’ve seen a parent roll out what looked like an entire living room set, a la The Price is Right, at a softball game.
If you have the gear, you need the car, and for most of my youth, that was either a big old van or an eight-passenger mega SUV like a Suburban or Excursion. Vans have fallen out of fashion, and not everyone wants a truck-based mega SUV as a daily driver, or at least, not everyone wants to pay for one. This is why the large, three-row crossover has come to dominate.
Swapping from a Tahoe to a Traverse is a logical move, and you get nearly as much space in a package that’s a little easier to live with most of the time. It’s also a lot cheaper, and you’re going to need that money if you’ve got a travel ball kid.
The Basics
Engine: 2.5-liter turbocharged inline-four
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Drive: all-wheel drive
Output: 328 horsepower, 326 lb-ft of torque
Fuel Economy: 24 mpg hwy, 19 mpg city, 21 mpg combined
Base Price: $44,795 FWD LT
Price As-Tested: $61,290 RS AWD (including $1,895 destination charge)
Why Does This Exist?
It’s fairly well established that I’m a fan of the Chevy Tahoe. It is a vehicle that works quite well in specific situations. Transporting an entire family out and back to places is one of those, although this is not necessarily an efficient operation. Even with the 3.0-liter diesel, a Tahoe is expensive to get from one place to another. It’s also just plain expensive.
Minivans are having a bit of a comeback now, but in the waning days of the Bush Administration, they were suddenly uncool. With the exception of the Warner Brothers Edition Chevy Venture, none of the GM vans were particularly good or cool. Remember, GM went bankrupt after abandoning the cool dustbuster vans and putting out a quarter-assed replacement. Think about it.
Rather than failing at building another minivan, the Lambda platform arrived to give Chevy, Cadillac, GMC, Buick, and even Saturn a vehicle that could be a little more efficient than your average SUV without sacrificing size. We’re now in the third generation of the Traverse, and it’s more Tahoe-like than ever before.
How Does It Look?
The Tahoe-ness of the Traverse is immediately obvious when you look dead front at it. This era of GM vehicles has embraced the massive grille, in many cases offset from the rest of the vehicle with black paint. What’s amusing is that a lot of this grille isn’t even necessarily open as that isn’t required for cooling and harms the car’s aerodynamic profile. It’s just there to look cool.
Does it look cool? I’m not sure it looks cool. It looks big, and maybe tough. Dead-on, it looks like a Tahoe. In fact, the most obvious difference between this and a Suburban or similar is that it has the little swoop feature over the C-Pillar. This is what lets you know this is a unibody and not a ladder-frame vehicle.
It does a credible job of distinguishing the Traverse, I suppose, but it’s not a feature I love.
What’s It Like On The Inside?
In RS trim, the Chevy Traverse gets these nice little red accents on the seats, dash, and doors. That’s fun. Otherwise, this is pretty standard for modern GM products. There’s some harder plastic on the places you’re not going to touch, softer stuff for the places you will fondle often, and glossy bits elsewhere.
Every new GM vehicle seems to be embracing the large infotainment screen that blends into the gauge cluster, and I like this way more than the big screen just tacked somewhere in the middle of the dash. It’s a little more elegant and more usable. Here, the huge 17.7-inch screen provides a map large enough to help Robert Peary find the North Pole.
I tend to be a give me as many seats as possible kinda guy, but this thing is so large that I actually prefer the two captain’s chairs (two captains, what is this, Star Trek: Generations?). The back seat is also large enough that I, as an adult, didn’t hate being back there. Unlike the Outlander, you might actually put someone you don’t despise back here.
It’s Big
I don’t know if it’s obvious in this wide-angle shot, but the front captain’s chairs are up! Using the wide angle does exaggerate the space a bit, but not by much. You might be able to fit an entire hockey team’s bags back here.
With all the seats up, there’s 98 cubic feet of space. That’s huge. By comparison, a Toyota Sienna minivan has like 75.2 cubic feet of space with the third row down. I don’t know how many ways to say this, but … car big. The only other vehicle in this class that feels quite this cavernous is the Toyota Grand Highlander.
This is what you’re paying for, ultimately. You’re paying for a lot of space in a thing that looks nice in the Dairy Queen parking lot on the way to the Sheboygan Ice Hutch.
How Does It Drive?
Yeah, you’re not paying for how it drives. It certainly drives better than an old Suburban, or probably a Pontiac Montana. It’s impressive that Chevy managed to squeeze this much reliable power out of a four-cylinder motor, but the result seems to be a little bit of harshness. If you’re carrying a 12-year-old hyped up after getting three sacks, you may not notice the noise. In the rare quiet moments, though, it’s there.
Having driven a lot of these three-row SUVs lately, I wouldn’t say most of them handle particularly well. What I like about minivans is that the low center of gravity tends to make them a little extra fun. The upright, heavy Traverse imparts no joy. You have the kids for the joy, and you have the car to move the kids.
Hewing to historical precedent, the Traverse does have a rather cushy ride. In this way it reminds me of the Pontiac Aztek we owned, and only this way.
How Does It Drive Itself?
For about $61,000 delivered, the Traverse is a somewhat cheap way to get a big vehicle with three years of Super Cruise. This is a good deal. If you are engaged in travel ball and covering huge tracts of land, you’re not going to want to do all that driving yourself.
I’ve used an average radar cruise control with lane-keep assist to drive from one end of the country to another, and it’s better than going without (which I’ve also done). The best version of ADAS, in my mind, is Super Cruise. While some may swear by FSD, I don’t yet entirely trust it. Super Cruise works well on most highways and, even better, communicates clearly when it’s deciding to disengage.
At this point, trust is the most important thing to me. Raising a kid is a huge emotional and financial investment. I am not putting that investment in the hands of FSD.
What’s The Punctum Of Chevy Traverse?
It looks like a big thing, drives like a slightly less big thing, and doesn’t require signing of as big a check as a Tahoe. By comparison, a similarly spec’d Tahoe is $86,000+ out of the door. That’s a $24,000 premium.
Most people should probably not be driving Tahoes, especially absolutely blasted from standing out in the sun all day watching U10 soccer. Sometimes being a parent means finding the thing that makes your life at least 5% better without sacrificing your duty as a parent, and while there are nicer and faster and more efficient vehicles in this class, they’re not quite this big or, if they are, not quite this affordable.
Also, it’s a good color. Splurge for the good color.
All Photos: Matt Hardigree
Just say no to travel ball.
That is a lot of space, but I’m one of the few shoppers around who thinks that $60k is still a lot of money.
I feel like I could get more for my money in a minivan.
But that doesn’t matter for travel ball parents. When you’re living your life through the little league accomplishments of your pre-pubescent offspring, you’re a relatively insecure human who needs aggressive props to show the world how awesome you are.
The last ‘travel ball’ dad I’ve had the misfortune to know well was about 5′ tall and drove a Chevy 2500 that his wife (my co worker) was paying for as he was more often ‘between jobs’ than gainfully employed. He bought the 2500, but refused to haul or tow anything with it because it may get scratched. The same goes for the road trips so he and his son could chase all the balls they could grab in other area codes. They took the wife’s car (to save miles and damage on the truck).
I love the stellar outward visibility from the third row. What a quick and easy way to discover if your kids or friends are claustrophobic.
It’s like they are trying to bait and switch the third row passengers with how little glass there is back there compared to what it looks like from the outside.
This thing sounds like it checks a lot of boxes for my wife’s needs, she has a Grand Cherokee now, and wants something more roomy inside.
What are the vehicles that are actually Autopian approved in this class?
Edit: We do a bit of travel volleyball, not bad for gear, but the snacks and entertainment for 12 year old (volleyball player) and her 4 year old little sister are extensive. Mostly the little one.
Odyssey, Pacifica, Sienna, Carnival. BTFMVA.
Yawn.
Used ford expedition. Ford Flex if you Want something smaller.
Newest Flex would be 7 years old. Not sure I’d want to trust that for years of long distance travel with kids.
Breaking down during a road trip and limping your car to a NAPA right before they close to get your new fuel pump and fixing it in the parking lot builds character.
GH Hybrid is probably the cream of the crop but this seems like it makes a decent case for itself.
Huh, since when did images start appearing in HDR?
As someone who occasionally has to do work travel on weekends, I’ll add this vehicle being in the parking lot to my warning signs that the hotel you’ve booked is going to be overrun by travel ball participants.
I clearly don’t know, as I was hoping it had something to do with Union 76 bringing back its classic antenna ball promo bit. That was cool.
I’ve got some sympathy for travel-ball parents. My son played piano — both classical and jazz — and at least every other weekend there was a concert or gig. Year-round. Sometimes up to four hours away.
Classical concerts were easy because they always had a piano there already, but for the jazz gigs we had to bring the keyboard, stand, amp, and stool (and cart to roll them in, out, and around buildings). Did I mention he also played upright bass for a while? No complaints because he was good and it was always a pleasure to hear him play, but I was happy when he was old enough to drive himself around.
Our early-aughts Forester did the job perfectly. Enough space to fit two parents, one kid, and all his equipment. Thankfully, only one kid though.
After your first para, I was thinking “yeah, that sounds horrible, loading up a piano.”
i rented one a while back. It is ok-good. But.the looks kinda bother me. Snowplow grill. MASSIVE C pilar. But. why would you buy one? Quality will be bad. resale will be worse than the competition. And the Honda. toyota, mazda, kia, subaru versions are better in total. Heck. I d pick a Grand Cherokee before this.
We are Toyota people but I will say we’ve also had two Chevrolets and they were actually pretty reliable. Both made it past 200,000 mi before we traded it in and they really didn’t have any issues which surprised me
You’re 100% wrong on the Subaru being better. The Ascent is the worst 3 row on the market.
The Honda, Mazda, and Kia are also way smaller. A Grand Cherokee is only a 2 row; I’d still take this over the GCL.
Honestly, I think it would be down to if you have strong opinions on how it drives vs a Grand Highlander and then lining up expected costs. Chevy is stacking huge discounts on these and Toyota isn’t, so overall costs aren’t as clear cut and resale differences probably ends up being smaller than you think.
I have never seen one of these in real life.
One question. Did the kid want to do this, all on his own, with no coercion? Or is the father living through him, making up for his unsuccessful sporting ability in his youth? I see way too many kids these days over-scheduled. It’s no wonder they’re always burned out and doing horribly in school.
I wish I had done less sports as a kid, my parents forced me to do it. I wish more people would talk about the negative consequences of children’s sports.
I think most of those negative consequences come from the competitive leagues.
The rec leagues are much, much better.
i read the title and thought it had something to do with sitting too much
It’s humorous to me that this thing is available in RS trim. Sporty it ain’t.
The joke in Camaro world has always been that RS stands for really slow
I make the same joke about my wife’s Impreza RS. No, not the cool 90’s one. The new one…
what you really need is a minivan, sorry
The Sienna hybrid is awesome, of course. Kia has the Carnival hybrid out now too.
siennas are fantastic. got 33 mpg on a trip. super high quality
“what you really need is a minivan, sorry”
BuT wHaT wOuLd ThE NeIgHbOrS tHiNk?
I think David’s already found the right hack for travel ball – live in a big enough city that you don’t have to travel that far. I hear the karate tournaments in the San Fernando Valley are just that, not even all-city, the LA basin presumably has its own league so your mom didn’t have to strain her ’68 Chevelle wagon going over the Sepulveda Pass.
(Remember the article she wrote about regretting bringing her rusty Jersey car to California? Of course she did that before Daniel grew up to be Beau Boeckmann.)
The Valley certainly has enough people there to create a viable serious league. Add the people living on the other side of the hill and you add a few more million.
Isn’t he in NYC or the immediate area?
That’s Hardibro. DT’s in LA.
Or were you asking about Ralph Macchio irl? I think he does live in NJ and that’s why Daniel’s accent hadn’t faded at all despite supposedly having been in California since he was 14. I mean it would be one thing if it was his car dealer schtick (“Come to Joisey Danny’s, we’ll pump the gas foh ya’!”) but it’s not.
Does it have Apple CarPlay?
We dabble in seasonal travel ball with our kids, though games are never more than an hour or so radius thankfully. Still plenty of early weekend mornings though.
For $60k, I think you can do way better for a 3 row SUV. Our CX-90 PHEV stickered for that, and it’s an extremely pleasant place to be for longer drives. Not as much cargo capacity with the third row up, and the 3rd row is definitely tighter for adults, but it handles well for what it is, has effortless acceleration thanks to the electric torque, and it’s averaging just under 50mpg in real-world use.
Every article i read is about how hybrids are killing it. I guess GM is focused on the have too much money/don’t want new fangled technology crowd. GM is consistent.
BTW, the only answer to travel ball driving is a minivan.
GM invested pretty heavily into EVs at the cost of making any PHEVs or FHEVs. They did eventually get around to making an Equinox PHEV in China for about a year before it was canceled, and they launched a couple China-specific PHEV Buicks last year too. Even though the engineering is done, I don’t think they’d bring over the Equinox PHEV because the Equinox EV would be cheaper and it wouldn’t sell very well. They should be able to make a FHEV version with minimal effort if they wanted to.
Growing up, despite having an old minivan, we shoved everything into our tiny hatchback and away we went. Looking back: I think my parents were just being frugal, since kids are already expensive.
Over $60,000 for a 4 cylinder powered GM crossover that gets a measly 21 MPG combined and will be worth less than half of what you forked over initially by the time you’re done paying it off? Woof. Unless you’re one of those people that refuse to drive anything but American cars or you get an absolutely obscene deal on one (like $5,000+ off MSRP) I really, genuinely do not understand why one would choose a Traverse over the competition.
For the same price as this you could have a loaded Grand Highlander hybrid that gets mid 30s MPG, will be vastly more reliable, and will hold its value much better. Or you could get a fairly loaded Palluride hybrid that will offer similar MPG gains and have way more flashy doo dads.
…it’ll be worth like $8 after 4 years, but the GM won’t do much better. What’s that? You don’t give a rat’s ass about fuel economy and there’s no replacement for displacement? Why, it’s the Honda Pilot, that somehow gets slightly better fuel economy than this with a naturally aspirated V6. You can have a lower trim one that still has a leather interior for like $45,000 if you look around. Hell give me a Nissan Pathfinder over this….
I don’t get it, but people do buy lots of these things. The argument I usually hear is that they’re one of the most spacious vehicles in this class. That’s…fine I guess but I’d gladly give up a little space for mid 30s MPG….anyway the wife and I will be shopping in this class soon enough. She’s staunchly anti van (boooo) so it’ll have to be a crossover, and I see 0 compelling reason to do anything but buy a Grand Highlander hybrid.
Thank you
Let’s be honest, there’s no way the Traverse (even if you changed up the turbo to any number of cylinders or displacement) would maintain any dignity in a residual value battle with a Highlander.
The 21mpg number in 2026, however, is the shame it wears for decisions made. I actually can’t see it being worse than if they used an old 3800. Being a 300hp 2.5L Turbo, in a brick of a car, should have been the clue to add a mild hybrid to the party instead.
American manufacturers really, genuinely do not care about hybrids and they wouldn’t have cared about EVs either if it wasn’t for government intervention. They solely exist to upsell you into body on frame trucks at this stage.
yes. gm wouldnt exist without the massive pig ups and tahoes
They have no reason to innovate, they’re happy to lobby the government to create their walled garden.
The buff books hated on the 3800 for being “old fashioned” with its 1960’s design roots and OHV pushrod design. They were oh so wrong to hate on it. I bet we could have had a 300 hp NA version of it by now. Just like what GM did with the small block V8. And it would be the good old reliable torque monster.
Devil’s advocate: good luck finding a Grand Highlander. While these will be going for 20% off MSRP during Truck Month in July.
Near a major coastal city? Correct, but if you’re willing to travel a little it’s not that hard. I’d gladly take a short flight and roadtrip a new car back home to have a Toyota hybrid over a phoned in rental car from Ford or GM. Plus the potential cost delta will cover itself in gas savings and residuals in a few years…
All true. But, we’re not “most people”. We might intersperse our time here with making the math math on any new vehicle purchase before the dealer. Instead of being sucked into a rash decision by little Chaddy and Karen throwing a tantrum on the dealer floor when their tablets run out of power and Mom is getting flustered.
I doubt any of these will sell for $60k. With incentives, Costco discounts, etc, etc, I’d guess $45-$50k OTD. Then 0% financing for 48 months….None of which you will get on a Highlander.
Also you don’t have to get the RS model of this vehicle in the first place. The useful parts of this vehicle don’t live with the RS badge. You get this usefulness at the main LT level which is in the 40’s instead.
We’re shopping for a vehicle in this class also. Drove a Traverse RS, rough 4 cylinder and worry about GM reliability took it off the list. And the dealer won’t drop from the 61K price. Will probably end up with a Pilot or a slightly used MDX.
As someone who used to sell the GMC and Buick counterparts, the size is the reason but not what you might think. These exist and look like their Tahoe and Yukon counterparts because that’s the intended market.
Customers would come in and want a new Yukon Denali for $90k but could not remotely afford that. Cue the Acadia Denali for $65k and now the banks are approving them and they’ve got the same amount of interior space. Balling on a budget! Once Little Timmy goes pro, then they can buy their Yukon Denali!
I too would spring for the Grand Highlander Hybrid personally but that’s not the market buying these
Seems like a perfectly cromulent vehicle but I am…not the intended audience.
Aside from the harshness, does it seem like the I4 is really working hard?
::pulls on suspenders:: Now I’m no fancy, big-city engineer but putting turbo 4’s in these big, heavy crossovers just seems like a recipe for premature failure. Maybe I’m harboring some kind of preconception typical of North American car owners? Europeans have been putting tiny engines in moderately-sized cars for a long time.
Considering that Chevy’s got a 2.7Turbo-4 in a pickup, and Ford’s got a 2.7Turbo-6 – I don’t see the engine size being a case for discrimitation. I’ve a neighbour with the Ford that tows a camper all summer which, frankly, is more load than the typical Traverse owner will likely put to their car.
I think if we’re talking about premature failure, it’ll likely fall back to GM being GM.
The GM 2.7 seems to be holding up very well. Very little mentions of problems in the forums, other than it likes to burn a bit of oil (1 quart between oil changes).
I have one in my Sierra, it’s a crazy quiet engine. If I drive reasonably, it will never go above 2000 rpm. I get about 22-25 mpg highway at 65-70 mph.
Tows really well too, though it gets thirsty and you’ll likely be in the 8-10 mpg at 60 mph.
Actually pretty good. I’ve known several people that have had more recent GM products with those engines and they just don’t seem to have much of any issues whatsoever
The irony is that large displacement V8s are currently the GM powertrains that are failing in major numbers. I think this 4 cyl turbo actually has a decent reputation (so far).
Long-suffering travel-ball parent here – but the light is at the end of the tunnel.
One of the things I find really handy is a place to mount the laptop for work/calls. I have MacGyvered something with a phone mount, but shame more vehicles do not have something.
Also, be careful what you wish for with travel-ball, now starting to have to get on aeroplanes to travel Internationally…
Can you start censoring the fronts of these hideous vehicles, at least on the landing page? I don’t think we want to be scaring away viewers, or making anyone physically ill from seeing the latest fugly wares from gm, subaru, BMW, kia/Hyundai, Nissan/Infiniti/Mitsubishi, etc., even Toyota/Lexus. They make the SsangYong Rodius look graceful in comparison.
This Travesty in particular continues to live up (down?) to its nickname.
Have multiple travel-ball kids. Had a 2nd Gen Traverse (2018) that we really liked. Traded that in for a 2024 GMC Acadia (platform mate of the vehicle reviewed here) and gave up on it after ~20 months or so. The engine noise/harshness was unbearable. It was in the shop 6 or 7 times for build quality issues including a front spring that was installed upside down, rear headrests that wouldn’t fold and therefore you couldn’t put the third row down, brake sensors failing, coolant line leaking…you name it. It was a Denali, and the cabin was pretty nice, but we traded it in for a 2026 Honda Pilot Elite.
The only thing I miss is Super Cruise.
Yeah, for sure a Pilot is nicer. The travel ball soccer dad has one of those.
My kids are too little, but I was talking to my SIL about this on Mothers Day. They were taking their daughter 3 hours to play soccer, I think she’s 13? Thousands to join the league and apparently they aren’t even good. The other son was at a track meet in another state, while the middle child had just ran a community race… It’s just crazy.
This car, it’s good enough. Nothing stands out, looks like any other, probably drives like them too. Adding superdrive is the real big deal there, and would separate it from most others, especially since its actually pretty good at what it does. Still, 61k for it, as someone who grew up thinking a 60k car was only for the flagships, it’s hard to get my head around.
That’s nuts. Someone made a business out of youth sports, and the expectation that parents will pay for anything or they’re bad parents.
SIL said some of the coaches are JUST coaches. That’s all they do, is coach mid to low level youth soccer players, with delusional parents. And they live pretty well doing it.
As a parent whose kids don’t have enough interest in sports to be concerned about needing to travel ball, I’m thankful . . . but the biggest reason isn’t the time and inconvenience involved with travel.
It’s that the select kids that play in rec leagues are invariably jerks on the field. Maybe that’s normal / expected for select, but it takes a lot of the fun out of the rec league for kids that aren’t trying to be competitive.
I live in a rural area where the big cities are like 15k-30k people. Youth rec leagues have largely disappeared and only these travel teams are left. It leaves for a very inappropriate mix as far as passion for the sports and commitment levels. No one is happy. You are spot on, its two totally different interest levels and leads to conflict.
I’ve heard this and I think it’s really unfortunate. So many things seem to fall into that all or nothing category now.