>> Honda's CRV used to be a boxy little dork, not anymore and inside we find more evidence that this thing got kissed by the right princess as well. Let's check the tech.
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Now a CRV is an inexpensive SUV crossover and built to stay that way if I can borrow the old phrase. And here's how they do it. By not offering too much tech. Our vehicle has a navigation package added to it. I call it a package because it's more than just a nav screen. But let's start with that. The nav screen here is clear, bright, it's a good one to look at. More than that though, it's a good one to use. We like this interesting layout of extremely clearly labeled direct function buttons. It's not difficult to get where you want to go. And I don't just mean on the road, I also mean on it's menus and screens. Oh by the way, the system is a touch screen so getting around and entering your destinations is that much easier. Two minutes with this and you pretty much know how to use it. That's a good thing. Here's that little fiddly jog stick. I hate these and that's a bad thing. But we're seeing that more and more often in cars, especially from this company. Nice little zoom rocker switch here. I like this. That's really one of the most ergonomically sensible zoom buttons you'll find in cars these days. Here's a trick it does. You hit the open button right here, you don't see that all the time. Woo, here comes the screen. Now back here is a disk player for MP3 and WMA cd's. That's a good thing. Here's a bad thing. What? PC card. Are you kidding me? These things went out of favor five years ago. But Honda thinks that's gonna be the new wonder medium for carrying your music around. I tend to disagree but we'll leave it in there. That's part of the nav system. You can't add and drop that, it just comes with this roughly 2000 dollar option. Now if that single cd slot you see behind the nav screen has you nervous like, where do the rest of the disks go, they go down here. There's a 6 disk cd magazine changer down here in the console. So you can load this guy up, but your MP3 and WMA disks go up in the head unit. Kind of an interesting split of the cd drives. And the fun continues in the console. We've got an aux jack, kinda tortuously mounted against the front wall of the console down there. You can feel it more than see it. No iPod adapter however, you're gonna have to make due with your standard headphone out or your digital disks or your PC card or your XM radio. I didn't mention that but that's also on this navigation equipped CRV. In terms of audio output, this vehicle base without the nav unit has 160 watt, 6 speaker plus sub sound system. But, when you go to the nav option like we have, it becomes a 270 watt system, still 6 plus 1 but there's also an option to add 2 subs with a dedicated amp ala carte. One kind of audio you're not gonna find here, Blue Tooth. Not available from the factory. Regardless of which CRV you get, the motor power is the same. A 2.4 liter in line 4 with IV tech variable valve train. Bottom line, that engine puts out 166 horse, 161 foot pounds, nothing to write home about. Neither is the transmission. A pretty garden variety, 5 speed automatic is your only choice. Nothing shiftable about it except two and one, but you do get the rear view camera when you go into reverse and that's part of the nav package. Now pricing on the new 2007 CRV series is very model level specific. So you buy a certain trim level and that defines largely the tech that it has. Our vehicle is a 2 wheel drive EXL with nav package, 26,800. About the only tech option we could add would be back up sensors for another 520.
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