Your Attention, Please; Midsize Mitsubishi ute endeavors to stand out from the car-based crowd.

Byline: BOB GRITZINGER

So here we are, just a mile into a sunny morning drive, when our friend from the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department flips on the overheads and directs us into a side street to ask why we made such a mess of driving through the last traffic signal. (``Would you believe we were just trying to find the right route to the local food bank, officer? No, really...'')

Is this the kind of attention Mitsubishi was seeking when it decided to build a midsize sport/utility vehicle that would stand out from the crowd? We think not, but nonetheless the Japanese company's fourth SUV entry, the Endeavor, strives to accomplish that feat amid a sea of similar, boxy, car-based utes.

``The Toyota Highlander and Honda Pilot are good, but they tend to disappear in the parking lot,'' explains Mike Krebs, vice president of product strategy for Mitsubishi Motors of North America. Endeavor, with what Krebs calls a ``brash geo-mechanical'' look and ``traffic-parting nose,'' was deliberately designed to avoid that problem.

That's good, because Mitsubishi does have to worry about getting literally run off the road by the boatloads of car-based SUVs in the market or headed our way in the next decade. By its own estimates, Mitsubishi projects a 70 percent increase in the number of car-based SUVs, accounting for some 40 percent of the SUV market, in the next 10 years.

That's why, only six months after the debut of the smaller, entry-level auto/ute Outlander, Mitsubishi finds itself back in the limelight, premiering the larger Endeavor. It aims to slot between the truck-based utes, the base Montero Sport and the top-of-the-line Montero, at least on pricing, size and rugged looks. We'll buy the pricing argument, but how a car-based crossover fits ``between'' two truck-based models otherwise escapes us. It seems clear Mitsubishi has two trucks and two crossovers, and Endeavor is the larger of the latter pair.

What you get with Endeavor is much of the same Holy Grail every automaker has been pursuing in car-based sport/utes aimed at the urban buyer: utility and power, a commanding view of the road and all-wheel drive combined with a cushy ride, better handling and an easy step-in height. Mix in some almost Jeep Cherokee-like exterior styling with a luxury-lined interior and your Endeavor is complete.