For years Honda pleaded poverty whenever the question of serious SUV development came up. "Why don’t you have a family-sized vehicle that will keep us from having to buy Explorers and Durangos?" formerly loyal customers asked. "We are a small, poor company," Honda executives would answer, doing their best to sound like the consumptive ragamuffins from a Dickens novel. "We don’t have the resources to do everything." Meanwhile, Honda’s chief rival Toyota was introducing a new SUV seemingly every other week. Yet, Honda wasn’t letting the market pass it by, it was waiting for all of the puzzle pieces to fall into place.

Honda’s first SUV, the Acura MDX, was built on the same Global Truck Platform that spawned the Odyssey minivan. The MDX proved to be worth the wait, but was directed more at the Chardonnay and canapé crowd than the connoisseurs of Happy Meals and juice boxes. But, now that the Pilot has landed, SUV-craving Honda families can fly home. The third member of the Global Truck Platform team has the same 3.5-liter VTEC V6 engine (17/22 mpg), fold-away rear seat, and flat floor as its brothers, plus the 4WD system used on the MDX. It’s not as stylistically adventurous as the MDX, sharing a strong family resemblance with Honda’s CRV, but it’s also not offensive to the more conservative Honda buyer.

Off-road the Pilot is remarkably capable. Its BorgWarner-designed 4WD system attacks steep hills and clambers out of deep muddy troughs with aplomb. Frame-twist obstacles, designed to let only two wheels touch the ground at any given time, didn’t faze it, though anyone willingly taking his family through similar territory should have his head examined. Of course, the vast majority of Pilot owners will never traverse terrain more challenging than an asphalt parking lot, but they can take comfort in the fantasy of fording a rushing stream if they wanted to.

But the real story of the Pilot is its interior. Honda engineers endeavored to combat typically inefficient SUV packaging by putting a lot of interior space in a short package. (The Pilot is about 4-in. wider than an Explorer, but only 188-in. overall.) This gives the Pilot class-leading interior volume (90.3 cubic ft. of cargo space with the second and third row seats folded flat) tucked into an exterior envelope that is more conducive to easy parking and errand-running than its competition. The Pilot has a big maneuverability advantage over behemoths like the Suburban and Expedition, and interior space the Explorer, Trailblazer, Durango, et. al. only wish they had. There is plenty of leg room for the front and second row occupants, but the foldaway third seat is strictly for kids. For those trips to Home Depot, the third seat folds down to accommodate 4ft. x 8ft. sheets of plywood or drywall laid flat – the only SUV in this class that can boast that capability.

The interior design is simple and functional. The front row center console provides plenty of storage room, and has a clever built-in cell phone cradle with a 12-volt outlet for charging said telephone. In the second row, the upscale EX model offers a fold-down kids’ activity center that secures messy items like those ubiquitous little plastic containers of honey mustard dipping sauce. For an additional $1500, a rear entertainment center with a DVD player and a fold down screen is available. (Since the DVD system is only available on EX with leather models, customers who want to placate their children with movies on long drives must spring for an additional $1250 for the leather seats!)

The Pilot is Honda’s vehicle to retrieve the Accord and Civic owners who reluctantly defected to the domestic makers in order to get a big SUV. This sizeable group will appreciate that the quiet, conservative Pilot gives them an easy way to re-enter the Honda fold. But other OEMs may not appreciate that this vehicle also will draw its share of first-time customers away from their offerings, a process they know only all too well.