It’s a little hard to get worked up over another, attractive, competent crossover sports utility vehicle.  It’s like a big breakthrough in deodorant research. If you don’t stink too badly, it probably did its job.
Little utes are like that. They are practical…some are fairly attractive…and, well, that’s it.
The Honda CRV has been around for some time now, and like all it’s mini-ute bretheren, it isn’t so mini any more.
The newest CRV is a lot like the last one. It is a nicely chiseled little trucklet, with a roomy interior and cargo area. Thank you Honda, by the way, for not pretending there’s room for a third row of seats back here. There’s not, and that means a big cargo bay.
There is only one engine choice, a 2.4-liter twin-cam four cylinder with 185 hard working horses driving all four wheels.  This is not to say it drives them very fast. 0-60 miles per hour comes up in 8.5 seconds, and returns 23 miles per gallon in the city, 33 on the highway.
On the road it is nice…and, well, that’s it. I wouldn’t call the handling great, but it’s perfectly capable. In fact, perfectly capable sums up the whole thing. I realize this is a sort of ho-hum review, but look at the vehicles in this category.
They are all sleek little boxes with fairly puny engines, designed to carry a small family and its stuff from point A to point B without guzzling too much precious middle-eastern go-juice. They are station wagons for the 21st century, and when was the last time you saw an old family truckster and sighed…ah, a Ford Country Squire.
I thought not.
The CRV does it job with typical Honda workmanship and it all starts at $23,000.  For a Honda truck, that’s frankly a pretty good price.