What You Crave; Little HONDA ute just keeps on truckin'.(Auto File; small sport utility vehicles)(Product/Service Evaluation)

Facing ever-stiffer competition Honda doesn't appear to have lost its commanding hold on the mini-ute segment. Even the noteworthy Ford Escape, which successfully challenged Honda's top spot earlier, has fallen slightly behind the Japanese model in sales. At this writing, the CR-V's year-to-date sales have outpaced last year's performance by almost 30,000.

We attribute much of the little sport/ute's success to a second-generation model that improves on the original in almost every measurable way, from styling to performance to utility. Not surprisingly, owners who responded to our AutoFile survey seemed happy overall with their CR-Vs. But we did find some things during track testing worth noting.

Through the slalom, our test CR-V, an EX model equipped with four-wheel drive and a five-speed manual, displayed a tendency to bog down during the quick maneuvers required to navigate around the cones. The steering assist felt artificial and had a disquieting propensity to load up with an unnaturally heavy effort. This occurred simultaneously with the rear end getting quite loose, and the result was a series of aborted runs. In the end, we did manage to turn in a best top speed of 40.7 mph, which is comparable to the 41.2-mph speed turned in by the 200-horsepower V6 Escape we tested last year.

On the skidpad the CR-V tended to understeer quite a bit, and it displayed a high sensitivity to throttle changes; together, these penchants produced a rather less-than-smooth 0.73 gs of lateral acceleration.

In a straight line, however, the CR-V performed better, even if its 160-horsepower, 2.4-liter i-VTEC four feels somewhat underpowered on the street. Its four-wheel-drive system did throw us for a couple of loops, namely, that on some launches we got initial front-tire spin while others produced initial rear-tire spin. The CR-V turned in a best 0-to-60 mph time of 8.16 seconds, with the quarter-mile coming in at 82.4 mph in 16.27 seconds. Not great, but not awful, either, especially considering the ...