The Mitsubishi Outlander offers a roomy and comfortable interior, a benefit of its long wheelbase. Getting in and out is easy. You neither have to climb up nor stoop down to get inside. The Outlander's h-point, what engineers call the distance your hips sit off the ground when you are sitting in the vehicle, was designed to offer easy entry. Once seated, you have a commanding vantage similar to that in a minivan. Once in, there's a good amount of headroom for taller drivers.

The seats use high-density foam padding and the standard cloth is nice. The driver's seat offers height adjustment and effective lumbar support. The available leather seats feel a little firmer than the cloth. The passenger seat and the back seat are comfortable and the vehicle feels confident, making it a good place to spend the miles.

We found all controls easy to operate. The instrument panel features an analog clock in the middle of a large, titanium-texture dashboard trim panel. The clock is easy to set and has a black face in the LS model and a white face in the XLS version. Instrumentation includes a large speedometer and tachometer. The XLS comes with lightface gauges, which we find much easier to read; besides, they match better with the titanium. At night the gauges glow with orange lettering on black faces; the clock looks a little incongrous with its orange on white. Heating and air conditioning controls are plain and simple, easy to operate. A variety of storage pockets is available. Rubber retainer bands hold things securely in the lighted glove box.

The rear seat is designed with additional lumbar support. It's split 60/40. There's no need to remove the headrests before folding the rear seats, which reveals an extended, though not perfectly flat, cargo area. There is 24.4 cubic feet of cargo room behind the rear seats, and 60.3 cubic feet with the seats folded down. The rear seat has three headrests and three sets of shoulder belts. It also has a fold-down center armrest with two cup holders.

A single rear liftgate makes getting into the cargo area easy. A thin, divided storage area beneath the cargo floor cover offers some convenient storage, and the cargo area includes grocery bag hooks and a 12-volt power outlet. The cargo floor is about 30 inches off the ground to ease loading and unloading. A rear cargo cover is available for the Outlander to hide valuables. Mitsubishi cleverly designed a place under the cargo floor to stash the cargo cover. Other SUVs don't provide a place to store the cargo cover (other than your garage), so it takes up space and is subject to damage when removed to load cargo.

NEXT - Driving the 2005 Mitsubishi Outlander