Carquest Premium Cabin Air Filter: Cleans Air by Reducing Pollen and Dust

First the good stuff. The filter seems well constructed, and was a perfect fit in the space provided behind the glove box in my 2014 Chevy Volt. It slid right into the slot, a nice snug fit. Air flow doesn't seem to be negatively affected. However, a nice surprise is that my HVAC system fan noise has been reduced. Nice! I guess that hollow space was causing some amplification before. One small annoyance: as the filter is a a flat rectangular object, it could go in either straight or flipped over. Unfortunately, there was no instruction sheet or anything printed on the box. I had to seek information about the proper orientation elsewhere. There was an air-flow direction arrow printed on the filter, but no information about which way it should point in my car. Not a crisis, but kind of inconvenient. For what it's worth, based on others' experiences, I put the filter in with the arrow pointed 'down' which seems to be what most people have done with gen-1 Volts.

Love Advance Auto and I buy a lot of parts for our 3 cars. This filter was listed as fitting my 2013 Ford Escape, but it was literally impossible to get it installed. The rubber circular gasket on the "throat" of the filter was too narrow by 1-2 millimeters, and I ended up returning it without leaving the parking lot, and re- installing my dirty Ford filter, which fit perfectly. Whether there is a bad batch that is out of spec, or Motorcraft is going too far with a "one size fits many" on this part, I can't know, but without a heat gun or a rubber mallet, neither of which should be needed, this particular filter could not have been installed. It may fit other Ford Escapes or Fusions, but I ended driving to the dealership and paying $10 more for a filter that fit correctly. Better luck next batch?