Honda Odyssey offers serious minivan competition for Voyager
The very term, minivan, seems to be owned by Chrysler Corporation. Everybody thinks of Voyagers and Caravans when the term minivan is mentioned, even though the Volkswagen Microbus was around long before Chrysler “invented” the segment of our automotive lives.
While the sport-utility craze and the popularity of pickup trucks prevails, Minnesota still buys more minivans than anything else in the truck line, and the vehicles still make the most sense when it comes to sheer conveyance of people from Point A to Point B.
Just about the same time as SUVs took off, every other manufacturer around was trying to come up with a means of challenging the popular Chrysler minivans for their profitable giant’s share of the minivan segment. Most of them were good, some were very good. The Ford Windstar worked, and the Nissan Quest, and the rebadged version called the Mercury Villager, and Toyota’s Sienna also was a prime challenger, while General Motors revised and revised again before coming up with competent competitors.
But it may not have been until Honda came out with the Odyssey three years ago that Chrysler had a genuine challenger for the unquestioned top spot among minivans.
After a couple years on the market, suddenly all the car magazines and the critics hesitated before automatically listing the Caravan as the best minivan. Then a few put down the Odyssey as being the best.
It is interesting that both Car and Driver, and Automobile, two of the better and seemingly more objective magazines, named the Odyssey as the top minivan last year. So for 2001, Chrysler completed its latest rejuvenation of its minivans — the Voyager, Caravan and the latest and elitist Chrysler Town & Country version.
With Plymouth being phased out, the Plymouth Voyager is now called the Chrysler Voyager, and it is the less luxurious version of the upscale Town & Country. Having driven them at their introduction, and gotten a later test of both the Town & Country and a more recent Voyager LX, it is easy to report that these are, by far, the best minivans Chrysler has ever built — tight, lean, powerful and with excellent handling and interior accommodations.
Then I also got a chance to test drive the 2001 Honda Odyssey, which throws open the question anew, which is better? I recently wrote a more thorough test report on the Town & Country, although I was disappointed that it was the base model of the brand. It seems that we now have some interesting contradictions in terms in this segment — from “extended minivan,” and now “base model luxury minivan.” The base-version luxury minivan now has some degree of overlap with the fancy-version base minivan.
In the November Car and Driver magazine, a comparison was done on five top minivans, and the Voyager LX was voted first by the C-and-D staff, over the Mazda MPV, the Toyota Sienna, the Nissan Quest and the Chevrolet Venture. Notable by its absense was the Honda Odyssey, and when later letter-writers assailed the magazine for not including the Odyssey, the editorial report was some doubletalk about wheelbase and length of vehicles and defended its seeming copout selections.
The brand-new February Automobile magazine lists its staff’s votes for the all-stars of the automotive world, and it names the Odyssey as the best minivan for the third consecutive year. That magazine’s version of a copout came up front, when two different editorial columnists took issue with the vote of the whole staff and said they liked the Chrysler Town & Country best.
Whatever, the intriguing part of it is that consumers win, when competition pushes such vehicles to the upper reaches of excellence. The test-drive vehicles both cost about the same, with a base price in the $23,000 range, and an as-tested price of nearly $29,000 for the Odyssey EX, and nearly $28,000 for the Voyager LX.
INSIDE AND OUT
From the outside, the Honda Odyssey EX looks unchanged, with a Honda/Acura familiarity about the grille and front end, and a breadbox efficiency to the rear end, with uninspired slim, horizontal taillights wrapping around. The front is low-sloped and stylish, and it almost seems to be a Honda tendency — from the sportiest cars through the sedans — that the front end is stylish and the rear end is pretty boring.
The Voyager LX is different, although subtlely changed from the old style. At a glance, it might be hard to distinguish, but if you had them parked next to each other, you’d notice a distinct improvement in stylish lines sweeping up from the egg-crate grille. The headlights are not only much improved in brightness, but they are neatly styled into the upward sweep of the body contours. The stylish theme continues around the side, and the rear also has a top tuck of a spoiler above the tailgate.
Subjective or not, we can score style points for the Voyager, even if it is mostly due to the fact the Voyager is all-new, and the Odyssey is in its third year.
Moving inside, there also are some differences, some more significant than others. Both have comfortable, supportive seats, with three rows of seats, buckets in the first two. While the controls and switchgear are strictly a matter of choice and personal preference, let’s say they both work efficiently.
The Voyager clearly wins the cupholder battle, as Chrysler contends with anyone on that count, putting holders front, rear, side, and in the backs of seats that can be folded down. It almost reaches the absurd point where, if you fold down all the seats, you can find enough cupholders to serve over a dozen occupants, but, of course, you might only be able to seat two in that form.
The biggest difference might be the third row of seats. Chrysler came out with a new wrinkle a couple revisions ago, where you can unlatch the rear seat, tilt it up on its own little descending wheels — as if it were a small airplane on landing gear — and roll the seat away, for stashing in the garage. If you roll and wheel away all the seats, you have a conveniently flat floor from the front buckets all the way to the tailgate. Very impressive.
However, Honda came out with an ingenious idea of its own. Behind the third seat in both vehicles there is a generous storage area for such things as a couple of duffel bags or suitcases, golf clubs, or several sacks of groceries. But that area in the Odyssey has a deep well, which dips down below floor level, and provides even more storage area.
“Aha!” we might hear Chrysler backers say, because having a flat floor might be useful in some circumstances.
However, Honda is not one to let usable space go unused, and came up with a novel concept of its own. The third seat can be flipped, with one touch of a latch, and rotate on its axis to be rear-facing. One more flip, and the whole seat tumbles down into that cubicle and disappears, leaving a flat floor above it.
“Aha!” we might hear Honda backers say, because they can create their flat floor and there’s no need to be crushed when you remove the removable seat, because you don’t need to remove it.
Both have two sliding side doors, operable by remote switches on the key fob, and both have power tailgates, although the Chrysler version is far more sensitive to stopping when it touches any object while closing.
One last item that is impressive in the Odyssey is that there are cupholders, but there is no console between the front bucket seats. However, there is a strange-looking panel on the inside edge of the seat cushion. Pull it up, and it clicks snugly into place as a console-like tray top that can hold small items. Being able to fold it out of the way, combined with the column-mounted automatic shift lever, means mom or dad can actually walk through, between the front buckets, and rearrange things — or kids — during a trip.
On the center dash panel, there is a large bin, with a cupholder located below it, and above it is Honda’s very impressive navigation-system screen, which can find your home or destination by address, map, voice or perhaps other mysterious methods.
So Honda wins the interior competition, by slightly more than the margin by which the Voyager won the exterior.
PERFORMANCE
Once we get past appearance and liveability, driveability becomes the most important factor in choosing a vehicle, and the Voyager and Odyssey both have strong capabilities in the performance department, starting with the wintertime stability of front-wheel drive.
The Voyager LX was equjipped with the 3.3-liter Chrysler V6, which is a cast-iron block, aluminum head design with what the automakers like to call “overhead valves.” Now, all engines have overhead valves, but those caught back in the pushrod world when progressive companies were off into overhead-camshaft alternatives, realize that “OHC,” or “DOHC” looks pretty impressive on the overhead-cam, or dual-overhead-cam engines, so they needed some initials. So the 3.3 is an “OHV” (but not OHC) in design, which means it’s a pushrod engine with one intake and one exhaust valve.
Chrysler is ahead of a lot in going to more sophisticated car engines, but in its trucks it sticks with the strong and solid pushrod powerplants. The 3.3 has a lot of power, with 180 horsepower at 5,000 RPMs, and 210 foot-pounds of torque at 4,000 RPMs, and an engine limit of 5,600 RPMs.
Honda, always at the forefront of progressive engine design, has a single-overhead-cam 3.5-liter V6 with two intake and two exhaust valves, and it cranks out 210 horsepower at 5,200 RPMs and 229 foot-pounds of torque at 4,300 RPMs, with a redline on the tachometer of 6,300 RPMs.
Without question, the Odyssey has the more sophisticated powerplant, and when you stand on both of them, the low-end power of the Voyager gives way to an out-of-breath feeling as the revs climb, whereas the Odyssey winds up and sings as the revs climb.
If that gives the Odyssey a more sporty-car feel to the engine’s flexibility, remember that Chrysler has a 3.5-liter overhead-cam engine coming as an option, although possibly only in the costlier Town & Country, and it could plunk one of those little 2.7 DOHC V6s into the minivan and hike it to 200 horsepower.
But as they stand, the Odyssey has the sportier performance, and a 0-60 time of under 10 seconds. But Chrysler makes up for that with greatly improved suspension that provides a firmer, sportier feel. In fact, while the Voyager didn’t come equipped that way, the Caravan has a Sport package that improves on the already firm normal suspension.
The other interesting variable between the Odyssey and the Voyager LX is that the Chrysler minivans come in various assortments of equipment, while the Odyssey has some option packages but nowhere near the choices. The Chryslers come in short wheelbase or “grand” versions with extended wheelbase, they come in sport suspension, with various engines, and they can even be had with all-wheel-drive.
However, as they come, the Odyssey comes with the high-tech engine and most of the features in base form, while the most base version of the Voyager makes you want to delve heavily into the option list. If the Odyssey gets the edge in EX form, it moves up to the midst of the best Chrysler minivans, which means you might be able to outflank it with more costly options, but you may have trouble contending with it in base form.
[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The Chrysler Voyager has gotten a complete renovation for 2001 models, mostly noticeable by the stylish treatment of the front end and the vastly improved headlights.
2/ The Honda Odyssey has a distinctive grille, similar to the Accord or Acura sedans, and it houses a lot of high-tech and occupant-friendly interior features.
3/ Inside the tailgate, the Voyager has fold-down and removable rear seats, leaving a flat floor for cargo hauling, while the Odyssey has a deep well behind the third seat, which can be rotated to face the rear, or tumbled into that well to disappear from view.
4/ The Voyager interior has been upgraded on the new model to keep up with the increasing demands of competition.
5/ The Odyssey has a folding tray that snaps up or down between the front bucket seats, allowing for passage between the seats to the rear.
6/ From the rear, the Odyssey has a simple plainness in keeping with Honda’s concept of subdued styling.
Test of blown tires on Explorer adds to the SUV rollover puzzle
The ongoing controversy about the Ford Explorers, and their tendency to go out of control and roll over — particularly when equipped with certain Firestone Wilderness tires — continues to gather intrigue virtually by the month.
As has often been stated in this column, we don’t know what’s going on with the Ford/Firestone hassle, but we do know certain facts. Among those are that sport-utility vehicles are inherently taller and therefore less-stable in abrupt maneuvering than lower-center-of-gravity cars. The problem with the misconception about safety and security in SUVs is because you feel as if you’re in a fortress, which is comforting for a family, and you overlook the problems with instability.
But several things always have troubled me about the whole thing. First, all SUVs from midsize and larger are faced with that law of physics about taller vehicles being tippier, so the Explorer thing might be the tip of the iceberg. Having driven virtually every SUV ever built, I must say that I find the Explorer pretty close to midstream. It is more stable than some, and considerably more stable than the bigger, heftier SUVs, and yet it isn’t as agile and some others.
The bigger point, however, is why should these Explorers all roll over? Why should over 2,000 rollovers and over 100 fatalities have occurred in Ford Explorers with Firestone tires? How many competitors’ SUVs have suffered the same problems and manufacturers paid off the victims and thus prevented the media scrutiny that has stricken Ford?
But the biggest factor is that we’ve all had flat tires. You don’t want them, and they always come by surprise. But if you’re driving along, and a tire suddenly blows out, you generally react quite predictably and DON’T lose control.
If the blowout happens in front, you can have a scary moment, because the front wheels do the steering, and a sudden loss of air pressure can cause your vehicle to swerve abruptly, and you have to be a competent driver who is reasonably focused on driving to catch it and maintain control. But usually it’s just a momentary flash of danger, and you catch the wheel, counter-steer, and slow down in a straight line as you make your way onto the shoulder.
If the blowout happens to a rear wheel, it’s no big deal. You feel a bit of a drop in height and you may hear it, but there isn’t even a tendency to pull you either way, you simply slow down, retain control, and come to a safe stop on the shoulder.
I must say, that in the total number of blowouts I’ve ever experienced, I was fortunate to have never been threatened with losing control of the vehicle I was driving.
That’s what is so troubling about the Explorer-Firestone thing. I mean, the Firestone Wilderness ATX tires that were involved in a disproportionate number of these incidents did not necessarily have blowouts. The predominant number of troublesome tires came from a plant in Decatur, Ill., which was having some labor-management problems. But what happened to those tires was a weird separation of tread layers.
You’re driving along, and the outer tread comes loose from the carcass of the tire, and peels right off the tire. In some cases, the bare tire blew, but in a lot of them, the tire didn’t even blow, but rolled along on the carcass, still filled with air.
The problem, however, is that these tread separations are linked to blowouts, which are linked to Explorer drivers losing control, going off the road, and rolling the vehicle over. The vast majority of SUV accidents are one-vehicle crashes, usually involving loss of control and rollovers. I have theorized that it might be true that most of these out-of-control SUVs might be driven too aggressively, such as at speeds of over 80 miles per hour on the freeway, and then a swerve of avoidance that sets off an out-of-control attitude of over-correcting a top-heavy vehicle.
So it was with great interest that I read a column in the January Car & Driver magazine by editor-in-chief Csaba Csere. He also was bothered by the intriguing questions of the Explorer situation, and he and his staff did something about it. The magazine does numerous test-drives on a variety of vehicles every month, and, as he explained, some have had wheels break and tires blow, some at high speed. But never has there been a loss of control, he wrote.
So Car and Driver went out and purchased a 1994 Explorer from a used-car lot, and they fixed up a gizmo that would fasten onto the wheel and tire, and could be remotely controlled by a model-airplane device. The device would penetrate some vents into the tire, effectively blowing it out, and they could then reverse it, and reinflate it.
They ran tests at 30 mph, then 40, then 50 and 60. The device was placed on the left rear tire, because, Csere reported, that’s where the most problems had been reported. At each speed level, the air was blown out of the tire, and the driver had no problem stopping, safely and securely, in a straight line, with minimal swerve-control needed.
When they finally got up to the target of 70 mph, the result was the same. They tried it again, and videotaped it, and in the last test the driver removed his hands from the steering wheel and held them, palms up, in view of the bystanders. The tire blew, and the Explorer slowed and was brought to a stop, without even pulling enough to cause the driver to reach for the wheel until he also applied the brakes hard.
So the puzzle continues. Is the Explorer inherently dangerous? I don’t think so — when not driven over-aggressively. Are the Firestones inherently faulty? Apparently only some, from one factory. Are drivers likely to make colossal blunders in contributing to a loss of control? I would guess that yes, in this era of changing CDs, fiddling with the trip computer, adjusting the volume of the audio system, playing with a cell-phone, and generally driving with something other than firm, dedicated focus, you might be jolted into an over-reaction that could be a serious mistake.
But if I had to pick one outstanding characteristic, I would guess that in most cases, the SUVs that have problems are those that are driven too aggressively — at well over 80 mph on the freeway, for example — and then a small twitch becomes a major problem when you have to correct for it. Week after week, I make at least two runs between Duluth and the Twin Cities, and I would estimate that I observe over a dozen SUVs passing me at something over 85 mph.
The safety and security delivered by SUVs in heavy-duty work, or even around town or on trips to the grocery store, are inversely proportionate to the speed of the vehicle. It’s easy to see why someone who feels supremely safe and secure at 20 or 30 mph, would assume that it’s just as safe at 70. Then they get in a hurry, and 80 or 85 is easily achieved with the great power of those engines. And that could be where the mystery can be solved.
But at moderate speed, in moderate duty, you should be able to blow three of your four tires and not do anything worse than slowing down and stopping in a straight line.
Take a drive to Bovey, but keep one eye on the surprising sky
You never know what you can see when you take a drive to some nearby Up North town. Even if it’s a town you’ve been to dozens of times.
There is nothing like a little drive to clear your head. It is a perfect time for introspection, and it seems as though you can solve all sorts of problems when you’re driving along in the isolation of your private vehicle.
Because I like to drive, I put a lot of miles on a vast assortment of different test vehicles. But the enjoyment never goes away, and there are always surprises awaiting you.
Maybe it’s a town you know well, maybe it’s one you’ve never been to. Maybe you haven’t lived Up North for that many years, and you’ve put off the chance to cruise to a nearby town and just take in the sights and sounds. Or maybe you’ve never heard of it.
How about Bovey, Minn.?
About a week ago, I was driving up to the West Range, that area of tiny towns linked near the western end of the Iron Range. Bovey was to be a stopover for a light dinner, although I didn’t realize how close I was to Bovey when suddenly I got a glimpse of something really unusual up ahead.
It was up just above the treetops, but now I couldn’t see it. I drove a little faster as I reached for my camera bag, on the rear seat floor, with the same controlled haste that an Old West gunfighter might have reached for his holster.
Rounding another curve, I got another glimpse. There was something weird, up in the sky, and it seemed to be coming down.
Could it be someone sky-diving with a parachute? Could it be a home-built aircraft? Could it be a prehistoric pterodactyl? Or maybe just one of those jumbo Up North mosquitoes that adorn souvenir t-shirts?
Finally, in the deeping sky near sunset, we got a good look at it. Some guy was riding a small device that looked mostly human, and part propeller and wheels, with a parachute above, sailing gracefully over what we should call suburban Bovey.
It was Doug Maki, flying his motorized parasail. He descended, crossing the highway ahead of us, just clearing the power lines along the highway, and coasted down, down, down to a landing on Trout Lake. Let’s call it frozen Trout Lake.
We pulled off to a rest area, where we were advised that the beach was closed. Too bad. We were thinking of climbing over the snowbanks and taking a dip in the ice and snow-covered lake. But we watched as Maki and a friend packed up the parachute after an afternoon of what must have been exciting — and awfully cold — flying around Bovey.
We turned onto Hwy. 169 to go through Bovey, and I saw yet another strange thing off on the horizon. It was flaming yellow-orange, and it appeared to be peeking over the trees atop one of the mine dumps, those ridges of taconite mine diggings adorning so many Range towns. We drove on through and crested the hill on the eastern end of Bovey, and there it was — a full moon.
Because it was only about 5 p.m., the sky was still so light from sunset that it created a particularly unusual sight, with the full moon seeming larger than real, rising in a sky that wasn’t yet totally dark.
We drove back into Bovey and stopped at the Good Time Pizza Café, not only a good place to eat, but one of very few places to eat between Grand Rapids and Hibbing.
It’s a friendly, comfortable little restaurant, split level, with sort of a mezzanine on one side. The day’s special was chicken fettucini Alfredo, although the daylong toll on the homemade chicken noodle soup left us fighting over, and finally dividing up, the last cupful.
A good high school hockey game down the road, in either direction, isn’t the only attraction in a West Range town, and the traditional hockey phrase — “Keep your head up!” — might be the best advice for seeing something special in the sky on a drive to Bovey.
Master of miniatures, Suzuki goes after full-size SUVs with XL-7
If you remember the Suzuki Samurai, then one drive — indeed, one LOOK — at the new Grand Vitara XL-7 will make you realize how far down the road Suzuki has traveled, both literally and figuratively.
The Samurai was a fun, inexpensive little beast that was very Jeep-like in aim. When young folks bought them and took them out on the West Coast beaches, and drove them like sports cars, they tended to flip over. Consumer Reports did a big study, and declared them unsafe, but when the pressure was on, the magazine admitted that it made them run through a slalom that was much tighter than for any other vehicle, causing it to become instable.
But the impact of the controversy hurt Suzuki, and killed the Samurai. Suzuki restyled its snub-nosed little SUV and renamed it the Grand Vitara, after making it longer, wider, more stable, and a bit more powerful. It enhanced its performance by offering a V6 engine as well as the basic 4-cylinder, and the Grand Vitara has sold well.
I recently test-drove a Grand Vitara with the V6 and it was impressive, if still a bit tall and susceptible to strong cross-winds on the freeway.
More recently, I got to spend a week with Suzuki’s latest upgrade, the XL-7 version of the Grand Vitara.
To read Suzuki’s information, you might think the XL-7 is a gigantic SUV, but in reality, Suzuki has been so outstanding in designing and building small overachievers — from its sensational motorcycles to cars like the Sprint and Esteem and Grand Vitara — that the XL-7 merely thrusts Suzuki into the compact SUV marketplace against the likes of the Honda CR-V, the Toyota RAV4, and the new Ford Escape/Mazda Tribute.
In this segment, the key ingredient, after effective performance, is price. The XL-7 starts at $20,000 in 2-wheel-drive form, and at $21,000 in 4-wheel-drive. Fully loaded, the top model comes with automatic transmission, sunroof and CD player, and lists for $25,094.
The Grand Vitara itself starts at $18,399 in 2-wheel-drive, and at $19,599 in the most base 4-wheel-drive form. Obviously, anyone in the Up North snowbelt who buys an SUV without 4-wheel-drive capability deserves the slippery, slithery problems that are awaiting.
BASIC DIFFERENCES
The XL-7 looks a lot like a Grand Vitara that has been stretched, and that’s pretty close to what happened in its development. Suzuki takes the Grand Vitara and stretches the wheelbase by 12.6 inches, and the overall length by 19.1 inches, and installs a larger V6 under the hood to create and equip the XL-7. That makes the XL-7 183.7 inches in length, which is 18 inches longer than the 2000 RAV4, 10 inches longer than the Escape/Tribute, and 6 inches longer than the CR-V.
Somehow, it doesn’t seem that large from a handling view, maybe because it has the same 70.1 inches of width. Its length seems to merely add stability, and provides 73 cubic feet of interior capacity with the second and third row of seats folded down.
That’s right — a third seat. The extra length means that the front bucket seats are comfortable and roomy, with the major improvement coming in second-row room. You could be pretty large and still find the second seat comfortable, even for a trip. The third row seat, however, is best used by kids, the smaller the better. Access to the second row, and even the third, is made easier because the rear doors are much larger, 12 inches wider at the top than its competitors, according to Suzuki.
What must be understood, though, is that while adults like a lot of room, and more as they get older, youngsters enjoy having a kid-sized seat. And that’s what the rear-most XL-7 seat is. That third seat is standard in even the most basic XL-7. Behind it, there is still some stowage room, and a cargo net. I left it folded down, though, for greater room to haul stuff.
The versatility of an SUV is what should be the major selling point, and the XL-7 means that Suzuki has a larger weapon, with more versatility, than its more-compact Grand Vitara.
The body structure is reinforced, with the same high-tensile steel used in the ladder frame applied to the three side pillars, and steel reinforced posts and side-impact beams offer further protection to the usual airbags that complement the seat harnesses. The front and rear crush zones and impact-dissipating bumpers.
Liquid-filled engine mounts eliminate vibration, and great attention to sound-deadening was paid in calibrating the suspension bushings.
In the Grand Vitara, the V6 is a 2.5-liter with dual-overhead-cams and 24 valves that turns out 155 horsepower at 6,500 RPMs and 160 foot-pounds of torque at 4,000. The XL-7 has an expanded 2.7-liter DOHC V6, all aluminum, also with 4 valves per cylinder, and its power output increases to 170 horses at 5,500 RPMs and 178 foot-pounds of torque at 4,000. It also uses a two-stage timing chain, instead of a belt, which eliminates the worry of replacement at about 65,000 miles. Separate coils over each spark plug eliminates ignition wires, too.
The bigger XL-7 weighs 3,703 pounds, and you can add 45 pounds if it has a sunroof, which the tester had. The power was well-suited to its size, however, and it performed very well in acceleration and had no difficulty holding 70 miles per hour on cruise control on the highway. Handling also was impressive, and while it seemed a bit twitchy in its quickness to respond to steering imput, it was predictable and precise once you got used to it.
Driving position is good, the instruments are easy to read, and the test XL-7 had a CD player and audio system that seemed bass-heavy no matter how you dialed it. The 4-speed automatic transmission is an option, and it has a second shift lever to lock it into 4-wheel-drive high and low, which is the device that separates vehicles actually meant to go off-road from the many pretenders. It can be engaged at any speed up to 60 mph.
The XL-7 has a 3,000-pound towing rating.
As for complaints, we continually found a weird fresh-air leak on the passenger side up front. That may be welcome in summertime, but it can be a problem when it’s 10 above. Changing the heat slides to allow fresh air in and engaging the air-conditioning with the heat turned up solved it, but all other positions seemed to vent refreshingly brisk air on the front passenger’s feet.
Also, Suzuki changed the rear-axle ratio to get more acceleration out of the XL-7, and may have compromised fuel economy in the process. Driven hard, the XL-7 got 18 or 19 miles per gallon, so taking it easy should allow you to reach 20 with ease. But I’d settle for a little less spunk off the line in exchange for 24 or 25 miles per gallon.
OUTSTEPPING THE TRACKER
One of the interesting collaborations in the auto industry is between General Motors and Suzuki.
Corporate giant GM had to make a tough decision a couple decades ago, on how to meet the market segment of efficient small vehicles with small engines. Of course, it wasn’t competition that drove this quest, so much as emission and fuel-economy rules. A company must average out the gas-mileage of all members of its corporate fleet, and for every small and efficient engine a company produces it may then build a huge, gas-guzzling engine for the much more profitable large vehicles and sport-utility vehicles.
To meet the challenge from Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and other imports, Chrysler built the Neon, Ford downsized the Escort and then built the Focus, and General Motors created the Geo segment. Geo included vehicles built by Toyota (the Prizm), Isuzu (the Spectrum) and Suzuki (the Metro and later the Tracker). It was obvious GM calculated that it would be cost-effective to collaborate and use Japanese engines to take on Japanese imports.
So, it would fight the Toyota Corolla with the Prizm, which is a rebadged — and slightly altered — Corolla, and to challenge the micro-car segment with the Metro, which is a rebadged Suzuki Sprint. The Metro is a very good tiny car, with great fuel economy, and it first came with a 3-cylinder, 1-liter, single-overhead-camshaft engine right out of the Sprint. What the majority of Metro buyers didn’t realize is that the Sprint also came in a sensational souped-up version, with a larger, dual-overhead-cam, 4-cylinder and suspension and interior items that made it a GTI-version Sprint. Alas, that version is no longer available.
We all know what happened with the SUV craze, and GM is right up there among the leaders in the highly profitable large and middle SUV bracket, with the Suburban and Blazer, and various brand-specific spinoffs of them. And the Tracker met the demand for the smallest SUV.
The Tracker began life as a Suzuki Samurai, then turned into the larger and stronger Grand Vitara. The Tracker, which started as a Geo and then moved under Chevrolet auspices, became a rebadged Grand Vitara. It was a nice, little SUV, but underpowered, as was the first Metro. Suzuki, however, had kept a similarly neat little secret, and had a small V6 in the Grand Vitara, while offering only a 4-cylinder in the Tracker.
For 2001, the Tracker can be obtained with the Suzuki V6 for the first time. But Suzuki still has its uniqueness squirreled away in the new Grand Vitara XL-7, because, a Suzuki official told me, there are no plans to make the XL-7 available to GM.
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ Suzuki enters the “real-world” size SUV segment with the Grand Vitara XL-7, all-new for 2001.
2/ The XL-7 is basically an elongated Grand Vitara, with much more seat room, larger rear doors, and even third-row seating.
3/ Cargo capacity is good, with foldable second and third seats, and a roof rack that will hold another 100 pounds.
4/ Suzuki still makes the basic Grand Vitara, which is a strong-performing compact SUV, shorter by 19 inches than the XL-7.
Mercedes gives SUV strong dose of sporty power in ML430
The first time I got to drive a Mercedes ML430, it was at an event to introduce the new 2002 Mercury Mountaineer, driving hard around a parking-lot autocross course to compare handling. The new Mountaineer did a great job of stable handling, so good that it was flatter and firmer than the ML430.
However, the ML430 was so fast, I almost overran the lane-changing signals, simply because I had been able to accelerate so swiftly that I flew into the lane-change area barely able to swerve to the right and get through the pylons.
Now, however, I’ve had a chance to live for a week Up North with a Mercedes ML430, and the vehicle sets some high standards for pleasurable sport-utility vehicle driving. Bring on those blizzards — I was ready.
The M-Class Mercedes has a distinct look, not at all similar to the square-ish mode of most SUVs, but more steeply angled in front, much more aerodynamic, and kind of stubby both front and rear. But it fulfills its objectives of being a personally satisfying luxury SUV, and it is a blast to drive, and just to live in — handling icy streets, hilly terrain, curving rural highways, and freeway cruising, all with ease.
It also is expensive, with a base price of about $45,000, and a sticker up closer to $47,500 for the ML430, although the quite similar ML320 is about $10,000 less expensive.
Ridiculous as it sounds, going over $40,000 for an SUV has become close to commonplace in today’s luxury-SUV marketplace.
As it stands, the ML430 competes with the Lincoln Navigator, Cadillac Escalade, BMW M5, and Lexus LX470, and it’s price is quite similar to the Navigator and the BMW, but substantially less expensive than the others.
If you demand something that is more rugged off the road, or will tow a houseboat more easily, then some of those other, bigger luxury vehicles might be more your fashion. But if you want luxury and sports-car-like acceleration and fun, plus quickness and agility with surprising off-road capabilities, the Mercedes does the job.
STUNNING ORIGIN
It wasn’t that long ago, when German automakers were content to build exceptional cars, particularly of a sporty or luxury mode, but the very thought of any of them building something remotely resembling a sport-utility vehicle seemed, wellÂ…foreign.
Now, of course, Mercedes, BMW and Audi all have off-roadable vehicles that fit into the upper crust of the SUV world. Interestingly, in order to build true SUVs, Mercedes and BMW came to the U.S. to build their plants, closer to the customers, presumably.
Mercedes was first. And when Mercedes first built its revolutionary M-Class SUVs, they were introduced to a cluster of media types at the Road America race track at Elkhart Lake, Wis. We journalists were paired up, and placed with a race driver for a day-long series of laps around the 4-mile road-racing course. I had raced there, taken a race driver school there, and knew the course pretty well.
We got to drive everything in the Mercedes stable, sleek sports cars, convertibles, and all the wonderful sedans. We had the chance to drive hot laps, and to run our choice of cars through a tight little autocross course in the paddock. On the infield part of the track, Mercedes and some off-road experts had dug a course for us to test the M-Class SUVs, climbing hills, going through all sorts of nasty, steeply tilted terrain.
The fellow I was paired with and I were assigned to a driver who identified himself as the younger brother of Indy Car race driver Eddie Cheever. The concept was that he would drive one hard lap around the 4-mile circuit, then each of us media bozos would get a lap. We drove a flashy roadster, then we drove a couple of impressive sedans. I was looking for a particular sedan before we left the road-course portion of our day, but when we came around to the pits, it was out being driven by someone else.
“Let’s take the ML320,” said Cheever.
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” I said.
So we took the ML320 out on the road course. Cheever tore out of the pits, around Turns 1 and 2, and over the hill on the first of three long straightaways. Actually, some small bends on those straights are counted as turns, so as we went down the hill, the 90-degree left-hander was Turn 6. We came flying down the hill, and Cheever hammered the brakes and downshifted the automatic. I glanced at the speedometer, and we went into that turn at 120 miles per hour.
We did that a couple more times on the lap, too. The ML320 leaned a lot in the turns, and, of course, we pretty much figured we might not be around for lunch several times on Cheever’s lap. Then it was my turn. Off I went, going hard into Turn 1, 2, 3, etc. As I sailed over that hill and down the other side, I, too, was going hard. Focusing on the proper late-apex line through the turn, and downshifting, I didn’t brake until the last moment, then I swung into Turn 6.
I made it smoothly, but Cheever was heckling me, because I had only been going 110 as we went into that turn. “ONLY?” I responded. I suggested to Cheever that on my first lap around any course in a vehicle I had never driven before, I had a built-in mindset of being cautious. In previous race settings, that also was my method — I might go quite cautious on the first lap while I tried to focus on the vehicle’s behavior at every turn. Then on the second lap, I might go about as fast as I’d ever go. Nevertheless, I had to drive at my comfort level on Lap 1, not his.
Besides, 110 miles per hour into a 90-degree turn in an SUV is something I had never comprehended doing, and if I hadn’t experienced the ML320’s amazing limits from the passenger seat with Cheever driving, I never would have considered pushing it as hard as I did.
Late on, the ML320 did an impressive job of digging through huge holes in the terrain, even pulling itself through from a stop position when only one of its four tires had clear traction.
Now, years later, I still remember that day vividly. There are not a lot of SUVs I would dare drive on a race track, and certainly not at 110 through a turn. But the then-new Mercedes M-Class had made a lasting impression on me. It wasn’t neck-snapping in dead-stop acceleration, with its 3.2-liter V6 engine, but it was more than adequate, and it just kept on a-revving as the speed rose.
Flash forward. The new ML430 is an example of what Mercedes can do if the competition, such as BMW, Lexus and the herd of luxury U.S. SUVs, decide to put huge engines in their SUVs. Instead of the V6, the ML430 has a 4.3-liter (actually 4,266 cc.) V8, with the unique Mercedes design that has three valves per cylinder — two intake and one large exhaust valve — with a single overhead camshaft on each bank. It is all aluminum, with a large-bore/short-stroke design.
Consider than General Motors can get 255 horsepower out of its 5.7-liter V8 in the Suburban, Tahoe, Escalade, etc., and Toyota gets 230 horsepower out of the Lexus LX470’s 4.7-liter V8. Mercedes engineers have wrenched 268 horsepower out of its 4.3 V8, with a solid 288 foot-pounds of torque. The ML430’s horsepower peak is 5,500 RPMs, which is quite high, but shows the revving capabilities, while its torque peaks at a mere 3,000 RPMs, meaning its power comes on strong and soon at low end, and keeps building to an RPM range beyond many competitors.
It will go 0-60 in 8 seconds, a time at which most rival SUVs are rasping and still trying to stay close. Only the BMW X5 can rival the Mercedes acceleration, although the new Audi allroad certainly can, as well.
CREATURE FEATURES
With the blunt design where many have a huge overhang, the ML430 is 180.6 inches long — a foot shorter than the Lexus LX470, two feet shorter than a Navigator, and almost two feet shorter than the GM SUVs. It also is considerably narrower and with a lower roof by several inches compared to most of its competitors. But towing capacity is 5,000 pounds, and interior room for occupants rivals its bigger and heftier competitors.
At 4,500 pounds, the ML430 is 1,000 pounds lighter than the GM Tahoe/Escalade types, and more like 1,300 pounds lighter than the Navigator, and it understandably is much more agile, while delivering 18 miles per gallon highway and 15 city, according to EPA standards, which is two or three miles per gallon better than most competitors.
Obviously, the BMW X5 is the prime competition for the ML430, and is probably the reason for the V8 stuffed under the hood. In that competition, the ML430 also loads up the inside with impressive features.
The thickly padded steering wheel feels good in your hands, the leather seats and the light woodgrain on the dash and console are stunning. The middle of the center dash houses a computer screen, which can be used for everything from a CD programmed map to your next location to simply telling you what station the Bose audio system has tuned in, the controls for a built-in cell phone, or where the fan is blowing climate-controlled air.
The 5-speed automatic transmission can be hand-shifted, and the 4-wheel disc brakes beat most rivals easily in stopping distance. Safety characteristics are everywhere, but the convenience items know no bounds.
The tires are 275/55R-17-inch. A cupholder folds out from the dash at the extreme left and right, which makes great sense because your coffee cup doesn’t obscure the radio or heat-air controls. Seats are leather, and heated, with a lockable bin under the passenger seat. Mercedes proves the depth of its engineering by the attention paid to such a simple thing as the windshield wipers, which are simply the best.
The ML430 was outstanding in snow, on ice, or on dry pavement. While the suspension is bolstered with stabilizer bars front and rear, it is compliant and flexible, which allows a surprising degree of body lean on tight turns, but never suggesting even the hint of instability. Besides, if it could be stable at 110 — or 120 — going into Turn 6 at Road America, you realize that it is over-qualified for making real-world turns on the road.
[[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The Mercedes ML430 would make the ideal vehicle for shuttling fishermen through the haze to the ice-houses.
2/ Low overhang and short front with steeply angled hood give the ML430 occupants unexcelled visibility.
3/ The rear end provides a frosty finish to the bold, overall styling of the ML430.
4/ Light-colored wood and rich leather give occupants a strong taste of luxury, with refinements everywhere.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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