Six adults can ride in comfort with 48 cubic feet of cargo space left behind them. For shorter trips, like going to a restaurant, the Excursion can seat eight people, or nine if you order the front bench instead of the bucket seats.

Remove the third-row bench seat, and the Excursion can easily carry five people and a lot of gear. Removing the third-row seat is easy: Flip the seatback forward, yank a bar at the foot of the seat and pull the seat toward the rear of the vehicle; it glides along on rollers. The seat weighs 75 pounds, but in short order I pulled it out and threw it into the back of another SUV on a cold Montana morning.

Set up as a two-seater, the Excursion can carry an outlandish amount of cargo. A sheet of plywood slides in easy and lays flat on the floor. Two people could sleep in comfort on the huge, flat cargo area. Believe it or not, we managed to fill an Excursion. We were finishing a three-day float-fishing trip. As planned, the river guide in charge of setting up camp had arrived at our vehicles ahead of us. He quickly stuffed all of the supplies from base camp and enough fishing equipment for eight people inside. When he was done stuffing, only seating for two remained and the rear-view mirror was rendered useless. Granted, he could have packed more efficiently, but he was grateful for such a large storage container.

After reorganizing the equipment and putting some of it into another vehicle, six of us piled into the Excursion and made the long trip back to town. Cruising along steadily with this load, the Excursion demonstrated its virtues of size, stability and power. I was surprised when this cynical group of fishermen sang its praises.

The Excursion comes with a nicely designed interior. The dash is attractive and well designed and all of the controls are easy to find and operate.