From the November 2001 issue of Car and Driver.
In May 1996, I drove a prototype CR-V to the U.S. 500 Indy-car race at Michigan International Speedway. This particular Honda had come straight from Japan, with right-side steering and a dash littered with the sort of symbols a large chicken might inadvertently peck in the dirt. It drew gawkers – including CART aces Bobby Rahal and Jimmy Vasser.
“I’m thinking of getting one just like this,” gushed Vasser of my little CR-V.
“Me, too,” informed Rahal. “Except mine will be quite a lot nicer.”
“Yours is gonna be, what, red with a five-speed manual?” asked Vasser.
“No, no,” corrected Rahal, pointing at the steering wheel. “I’m getting one that doesn’t belong to the post office.”
As it worked out, the CR-V would figure in both drivers’ lives, though not mailmen’s. It enriched Rahal, who owns a Honda dealership, and it annoyed Vasser, who owns a Toyota dealership. Since then, the CR-V has evolved into a gold mine on wheels – the bestseller among entry-level SUVs in ’98, ’99, and ’00. That dominance might have continued, too, were it not for the arrival of Ford’s pesky Escape, which recently whupped the CR-V right out of first place by a heady margin. The Escape, you may recall, also won our dwarf-SUV comparo last March – in which, alas, the CR-V finished fifth. Honda knew this was coming, of course, and has thus been readying a second-generation version, different in detail if not in substance and execution.
For starters, the 2002 CR-V’s four-cylinder engine generates 160 horsepower versus the ’97 CR-V’s wimpy 126 and the ’99 CR-V’s 146. Plus, it now bats out 162 pound-feet of torque – more torque than horses, you’ll notice – at a relatively low 3600 rpm. How? More displacement, up from 2.0 liters to a pot-walloping 2.4. It’s now among the largest of modern four-bangers and possessed of a reciprocating mass commonly known to do three things: (1) shake the car on startup, when one of those largish slugs fails briefly to fire; (2) shake the car at idle, especially with the air-conditioning compressor at max drag; and (3) shake the car at all other times.
Honda has somehow avoided all three, in part due to a pair of balance shafts that are integrated within the oil pump; in part due to four beefy engine mounts, two of them liquid-filled; and in part due to engineers who spend their spare time hanging around guys like Rahal and Vasser.
Step-off is no longer a high-rev, clutch-slipping affair. In fact, you can launch in second gear with only 1500 rpm on the clock. Shift from first to second at six grand and you’ll bark the tires. There were plenty of 90-degree city turns that, taken in second gear, caused the old engine to lug. Now there’s enough torque to negotiate about half of those turns in third. Course, Jimmy Vasser wouldn’t.
The second-gen CR-V scoots to 60 mph in 8.4 seconds. That’s a second quicker than its forebear and comfortably below the 9.9-second average we logged among those 11 automatic Lilliputian utes last March. It’s also 1.8 seconds quicker than an automatic Toyota RAV4, the vehicle that 28.3 percent of CR-V buyers “cross-shop” first. Still, the major payoff is this Honda’s newfound perkiness for the first couple of seconds in each of the lower gears, where it’s now way happier to lunge and squirt its way into holes in traffic.
It’s also bigger, though not by much—an inch longer and 1.3 inches wider. That’s still enough to induce noticeable new roominess inside—2.7 extra inches of rear legroom, 3.6 inches of front shoulder room, and a cargo volume up 4.8 cubic feet. The pewlike rear bench is now a contemplative perch for three. It’s slightly raised so that you can see over the front riders’ noggins, and the middle man can stretch his legs between the front seats, at least when the flip-down coffee table is at half-mast. Throughout the cabin, the floor is as flat as a telemarketer’s pitch. What’s more, the 60/40 rear seatbacks can be folded flat without removing their headrests — an engineering feat for which a Nobel category should be created. With the rear seats folded, the cargo bay is 55 inches deep and 38 inches at its narrowest, seven cubic feet beyond what a Ford Escape offers and sufficient to swallow my hugely desirable Univega Land Rover One.
One advantage of diminutive SUVs is their acceptable handling, and this revised CR-V is no exception. For one thing, the classic Honda shifter offers the sort of short, light throws you’d praise in a Prelude. Beyond 50 mph, the newly relocated steering rack now locks onto straight-ahead like Thor gripping lightning bolts. There’s surprisingly little roll for a vehicle nearly as tall as a Toyota Sienna, such that the pilot begins making odd pronouncements: “good pedals for heel-and-toeing,” for instance, which isn’t a phrase commonly associated with SUVs. The ride is firm but rarely choppy. And with its new rear discs, this CR-V can stop from 70 mph in 192 feet.
The radio is mounted high—two inches above the dash, in fact—so that it’s always in your line of sight. The glass in the cargo door now pops open independently. A liberal load of sound-deadening “melt sheets” has mitigated wide-open-throttle roar by 6 dBA. There’s again that damnably cute fold-out picnic table capable of serving a hungry family of one. And there’s a new pistol-grip hand brake that pulls out of the center stack like some sort of railroad siding switch. It frees up floor space, but it’s a high-effort device that sometimes requires both hands. It’ll be hell to explain to teenage parking valets, who’ll think it’s part of a lavish video game.
Prices aren’t firm, but Honda’s best guess is $19,440 for a front-drive LX; $21,440 for an automatic four-wheel-drive LX; and $22,940 for the manual EX tested here. The latter includes four-wheel drive, ABS, side airbags, a sunroof, alloy wheels, and a CD changer.
This round-two CR-V may not exactly drip with personality—it’s still a tad more functional than fun—but it’s improved in all areas that matter, and it certainly represents guilt-free SUV ownership. It is the anti-truck: a unibody passenger car on stilts, an errand hopper with a kind of lean quick-wittedness, great visibility, 23-mpg observed fuel economy, and 8.1 inches of ground clearance in case you attempt that treacherous trek onto a baseball diamond to retrieve Jimmy’s catcher’s mitt.
Plus—did we mention this?—it’s built by Honda.
Counterpoints
I had two problems with the original CR-V: its wimpy motor and its goofy, gawky styling. Problem one is duly resolved, with sufficient torque to chirp the front tires in third gear and to generate a tiny bit of torque steer, even in this four-wheel-drive version. Remarkable. The restyle is less convincing. Oh, there are butch bull-bar cues molded into the plastic bumper; the plastic grille’s shape suggests it was welded of robust chrome steel tubing; and the continuous swath of A-pillar, roof-rail, and taillamp plastic suggests a Land Rover Defenderish exoskeleton. I just don’t buy any of it. The look still says veggie burger when I’m in the mood for a Brawny Lad. —Frank Markus
So how much power is enough in the cute-ute biz? The new CR-V delivers useful gains in horsepower and torque, and even though the second generation is a smidge heavier, the gains are tangible when the driver tramps on the throttle. Other upgrades: more room, more refinement, more clever storage touches, better access to the rear cargo area, better handling. And the integration of the emergency brake into the center of the dashboard is one of those why-didn’t-anyone-think-of-this-before design innovations that are uniquely Honda. Still, with 200-hp hot rods such as the Ford Escape charging around out there, the question persists: Will 160 horses be enough? —Tony Swan
Everybody thinks of the Honda CR-V as a compact SUV — one of the first that popularized that category. And it quickly became the class sales leader because the CR-V is not that small. In its original form, for example, the CR-V had a bigger back seat than did a three-door Chevy, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, or a Toyota 4Runner. With this newest version, Honda has slightly expanded the CR-V’s excellent package, slipped a far more muscular engine under its hood, and tightened up its ride and handling. All of this has been accomplished without losing even a single mpg, which should be enough to keep the CR-V near the top of the sales heap. —Csaba Csere
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com
