Road Test
Unlike the hard-core off-road truck guys, we are not at all convinced that a contemporary sport-ute needs to be hard-core off-road-capable. Nor, for that matter, does it need to be a truck. We proved that to ourselves when an Acura MDX dusted a seven-ute troupe in a dirty-driving face-off late last year ("Designer-Ute Smackdown," December 2000). The MDX, it will be recalled, has a high percentage of Honda Odyssey minivan DNA in its makeup.
Our heretical convictions were reinforced when a Toyota Highlander - a Camry at its core, remember - defeated a pair of sure-'nuff trucks, a new Ford Explorer and an equally new Chevy TrailBlazer ("Two Trucks and a Car," June 2001).
So here's yet another of these changelings, the Buick Rendezvous, a so-called crossover vehicle that purports to straddle the increasingly foggy boundary between minivan practicality and sport-utility image. And suddenly, we find the unwinking clarity of our response to the MDX and Highlander getting blurry. Is this concept - trucks that aren't really trucks but sorta look like trucks and perform at least some truck duties - truly the wave of the future?
The answer is yes - and no. It depends on the duty applications assigned to the vehicle by its owner, and even more on the execution of the concept.
Let's scrutinize that last part first.
Like the Acura MDX, the Rendezvous can trace its genetic heritage to a front-wheel-drive minivan family, GM's Chevy Venture, Pontiac Montana, and Olds Silhouette. Although it can be argued that the lineage of the MDX, descended, as noted, from that Odyssey minivan, is far less plebeian than that of the GM triplets, the Acura and the Buick both have major minivan strengths beneath their quasi-SUV exteriors: plentiful interior volume and three-row seating.
We should note here that the Rendezvous does have an immediate ancestor: the Pontiac Aztek.
The Aztek was the first SUV wannabe spawned by the GM minis, utilizing a modified version of the minivan platform with the addition, in all-wheel-drive editions, of a subframe-mounted independent rear suspension system - upper and lower control arms with a toe-control link, coil springs, and an anti-roll bar. Rendezvous buyers get that rear suspension whether they opt for the CXL with standard all-wheel drive or the CX with front drive standard.
The Rendezvous has about the same wheelbase - 112.2 inches - as the standard versions of the GM minivans, almost four inches longer than the Aztek's, and almost six inches longer than the wheelbase of the MDX, a vehicle cited by Buick as a key competitor. At 186.5 inches, the Rendezvous is almost an inch shorter than a standard Pontiac Montana minivan, 4.4 inches longer than the Aztek, 2.0 inches shorter than the MDX. At 73.6 inches, it's 1.6 inches wider than the minivan, and about the same width as the Aztek, although the MDX is 2.7 inches wider still.
Why are all these numbers important? Because there's a big difference between the listed cargo capacities, 109 cubic feet (Rendezvous) versus 82 (MDX). Part of this can be attributed to seating design. The middle-row captain's chairs in our top-of-the-line six-seat CXL test vehicle (a center bench is also available) are removable, whereas those in the MDX are not. Although this gives the Rendezvous an uneven load floor, since the rearmost seat doesn't fold down flat, it does expand maximum capacity.
Aside from its huge center console, the interior of the Rendezvous is pure minivan, particularly in six-seat configuration. The console eliminates the traditional minivan front-seat pass-through so treasured by parental enforcers over the years - "You two do not want to make me come back there!" - and you can't get the child-mesmerizing back-seat video feature available in the Venture, et al., but the column shifter and relatively low step-in suggest the rational space efficiency of a small van. This is true even of the rear seat, which looks as though it's compromised by the severe angle of the rear hatch, but there's plenty of headroom.
