Once inside, the Concorde reveals a roomy cabin. The cab-forward concept puts a tight squeeze under the hood but maximizes passenger space. There's lots of room inside. Concorde comes standard with an eight-way, power-adjustable driver's bucket seat with a manually adjustable lumbar support. (A front bench seat is available as a $100 option that increases seating to 6 passengers; it comes packaged with a column shifter instead of a console shifter.) The standard bucket seats provide good back and lateral support and the detailing of the fabric is world class. Leather seating surfaces are standard on the LXi and are part of a $760 package on the LX that includes cast-aluminum wheels.

The rear seats are spacious and comfortable. There's a cavernous 18.7 cubic feet of trunk space. The trunk hinges fold cleanly out of the way instead of intruding into the trunk compartment and crushing your cargo. A pass-through compartment provides an easy way to carry skies in the trunk. The lift-over height is high, however, which makes loading up a week's worth of groceries or heavy items a bit more work.

If there's a downside to the Concorde's sleek exterior styling it's the fact that visibility is slightly reduced. It takes some time to get the feel of the front end to know precisely where the out-of-sight front bumper is. And it takes a bit of getting used to the view out of the small rear window, too. Fortunately, it comes with big side mirrors.

For 2000, a new instrument cluster features bright trim rings around the instruments that greatly improve the appearance. The instrument panel is covered in material that is soft to the touch. Controls are easy to operate. We like having the compass, outside temperature gauge and map lights that come with the available overhead console, which also features a trip computer.