Current suburban fascia much more appealing than Yukon in my opinion; design decisions are made by committee with a lot of analysis/consideration given to target customers' tastes and preferences.
Sales numbers indicate that both designs find large amounts of takers - enough to drop a decent chunk of change on them.
The design of the third pillar, however, I totally agree with you. Not sure if the regulation is on the width of the pillar or the strength but current design completely shafts anyone in the third row (kids in my car) with having to look out the front windows/second row to see anything beyond a large wall of plastic - unless they're willing to crane their neck to a 90 degree angle to get a couple inches of outside view. For kids with carseats, the headrests even eliminates that extreme option.
While I appreciate safety, making a design choice like this that drastically inhibits rider comfort on 90% of rides (how often passengers in third row when vehicle driven) for something that will happen 0.0001% (1 in 10k rides - still hasn't happened to me in 20+ years driving) seems egregious.
I certainly wish they'd take notes from other makers on this one.
