More Than Just Flexible
by David Finlay (09 Feb 05)

It took several years for any other manufacturer to follow Fiat's lead (with the Multipla) of offering an MPV with six seats in two rows of three. Honda finally released its own interpretation late last year with the FR-V, and there can be no doubt that it has done an exceptionally good job.

As you have perhaps read in the past, the seating arrangement is very flexible. The centre seat in each row can be moved back by several inches as required, and in the case of the front seat this is particularly useful. Large adults can't sit in it when it's set to the normal position because their right knees will take up the space occupied by the gearlever when the driver wishes to engage second gear, and the seat also has to be moved to allow the fitment of a baby chair without having it too close to the double-width passenger airbag.

Moving that seat crucifies the legroom available to the centre rear passenger, but it can all be regained by moving his or her seat back too. Even when this is done, there is still a lot of luggage space available, and - importantly - the occupant is still nowhere near the extreme rear of the vehicle and therefore not unduly susceptible to back-end shunts.

The FR-V does not feel particularly wide when you're driving it, yet three large adults can sit quite comfortably side-by-side. Legroom is (or at least can be made to be) very generous in all six seats, and despite the fact that the FR-V is relatively low in MPV terms there is also plenty of headroom. Honda's genius for packaging has once more served it well.

It is not, of course, practical to take six people and all their suitcases on a long holiday, but even with all the seats taken there is still 439 litres of room left over for luggage. That extends to an impressive 1049 litres when the second row is stowed away. The slight downside to all this is that it has been achieved by using a space saver spare wheel - not my ideal scenario, but certainly more encouraging than having a puncture and finding that all you have on board to deal with it is a couple of bottles of foam.

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