The video doesn't say, but it looks like Top Gear's Richard Hammond.

Part of what he said about the original Escalade was correct (garbage-interior, battleship-weight, Push-and-Pray brakes). But full-sized, truck-based GM products have improved tremendously since then...a significant part of that improvement came with the 2007 redesign of the interior trim and the formerly-lousy brakes. The references to senior citizens and Florida, though, IMO, were uncalled for......he himself (as with the rest of us) isn't getting any younger, and he himself will be old and retired some day. He also made (indirect) racial references to it being a Ghetto machine, which, though not entirely false, is far overblown as a stereotype.

 

Full sizes GM trucks have definitely improved and while I still don't care for them, whenever I get an Uber ride in a newish Tahoe/Suburban/Escalade they feel light years ahead of older models. In the case of the Escalade, the more conservative styling is a big plus for me. Today seemingly all the manufacturers are going for ridiculous in your face styling, so even the original Escalade doesn't seem to be that over the top, but when it first came out it was just tacky. Stereotype or not, it was ghetto.

 

 

Oy, that Escalade touchscreen.

I work with displays and we go to extensive efforts to eliminate glare and reflections, so a picture like that gives me a heart attack...

 

That looks really nice... but yes the glare does seem excessive

 

I this a touch screen? Seems like it has a **** controller on the center console similar to iDrive.

 

BMW's are touchscreen + iDrive. No reason this couldn't be the same

 

The instrument cluster is not a touchscreen but the others are, at least according to Car and Driver:

Source

 

That's the second gen Escalade, but yeah. The first one was so bad and rushed it might as well not have counted as it, lol.

The second gen Escalade he's driving there did have a bad interior but other than that was a solid truck and a massive success. It had the big 6.0 with 345hp which made it a beast. Nothing it competed with came close to catching it for power, and it won comparison tests.

And...yes, about Hammond. He and Jeremy Clarkson, they couldn't be more snotty towards Americans and the USA. Though I think it's envy. They clearly can't appreciate what something like that second-gen Escalade is for.

Hand me some tiny thing with 3 cylinders and I'll hate it and complain about it but still appreciate that's an ideal car for driving around London. Gas is like $6 over there and in Europe roads are narrow.

Pigs would fly before they'd ever get it. That was a solid, very powerful truck. Here with our massive country and huge roads, cheap fuel, insane amount of outdoorsy people with boats to tow (unlike there where it's cold and rainy 90% of the time), the Escalade fit the bill quite nicely.

I don't see any glare in the cluster. It looks to me like all the cameras are activated, etc.

 

Really? I'm seeing lighting glare on the top left of the instrument cluster and left screen, with reflections all over. I can imagine what would happen on a sunny day.

To be clear, I would define glare to be bright light, whether provided by or reflected off the screen.

 

^^^ no driver is going to be viewing the screen from an angle like that so i suspect those reflections are irrelevant.

 

Umm, the Brits have their Land Rover, and at that time maybe LRs weren't as powerful as the Escalade, they were elegantly styled, looked classy, and actually had offroad capabilities unlike the Escalade.

 

I don't agree at all. Correct that this isn't the view from the driver, but you don't have those kinds of reflections from the front right seat and not have any from the front left seat. I even get them in my GS with the sunroof open, and the GS doesn't have even a quarter of that glossy area.

 

And actually Hammond loves American cars lol

That Escalade was a pretty crappy truck.

 

His nickname is "Secret American".