Good information. I’ll have to check and see if I have the noise cancellation already installed. That would probably be a good first step. I’ll also go do some research into the tires and see if I can do any better than the OEM Michelin’s. They’re low mileage but about 5 years old so I wouldn’t mind replacing them if it made a noticeable difference.
Thanks for the input. Might start looking at a Lexus. The Lincoln might be the trick too. Thankfully, I don’t need to hurry. It’s not exactly the best time to be car buying.
I doubt tires are the answer if it's always been loud. I've had many sets of Michelin tires and never experienced an increase in noise over the life, as long as the alignment is good. Try this....go out to the vehicle and run your hand over the tread of the tire in both directions. Look closely at the edges. Do you feel a difference in in one direction over the other? Take a real close look at the tread. Does the tread appear to have a sawtooth appearance, especially at the edges? If yes, the tires will definitely be loud. If not, the tires are not the first place I would look. In an effort to improve mileage, GM has really cut back on the weight of the sound deadening materials. Pull the back seat and see what's there. Probably not much. There's plenty of options to add sound deadening material, but honestly I wouldn't bother. BTW years ago, I was also a big GM guy, but those days are long gone for a variety of reasons.
I just went through an extensive search looking for a new vehicle. I immediately discarded most of the domestic brands that have small turbo charged engines powering larger vehicles. Ford and GM just haven't done a great job with turbocharger longevity and there continues to be expensive issues down the road with most of them. Also, generally speaking, you just don't get the immediate low end torque on a smaller turbocharged engine as compared to a larger naturally aspirated engine
So, my search was narrowed down to looking only at naturally aspirated SUV's without CVT's and that came with a spare tire.
That shortened the list real quickly and unfortunately ruled out BMW. I've always been a Toyota and Honda fan. I liked the Lexus RX350 and almost bought one, but I just can't get past the (horrible IMO) look of the front ends. The Highlander was ok, but wasn't real comfortable to me, was longer than what we need and the short supply negates getting any kind of a deal. Jumping over to Honda, we have the Pilot, Passport and the Acura MDX. We didn't need anything as long as the Pilot and didn't need third row seating so that ruled that out. Now we're down to the Passport and MDX. Beneath the skin they are close cousins sharing basically the same engine and transmission. Both are very quiet on the highway and the top level stereos are just absolutely incredible. The heated and cooled seats, the heated steering wheel and the wireless phone charging are nice features as well. Comparing the Passport Elite (highest trim level) to the MDX, I'd be happy with either one. One consideration was that, especially on long road trips and high crime rates, I don't want to stand out in any way, and prefer to blend in with the crowd, not showing any sign of having money. So with that and the much higher price of the MDX compared to the Passport, we went with the Passport Elite after finding the right color at a dealer that we were able to negotiate $3800 off MSRP with no ridiculous add ons or fees. Then the 2.9% finance option didn't hurt either. Extremely happy with the vehicle so far. Very quiet even at 80 to 100 MPH. Impact harshness on extremely rough road could be better, but that's the only room for improvement that I can find so far. I'm sure this could be dramatically improved with smaller diameter wheels and higher profile tires, but that would come at the expense of the existing sharp handling.
Good luck on your search. And the winter months, at least in the Northeast, isn't a bad time to shop around as the cold weather usually keeps dealer showroom traffic down.