Honda Odyssey EX - 2005 Review

In 2005, we traded up from a teensy 2000 Toyota Echo that was still getting 38 mpg and zipping along with gusto because we were expecting Baby #2. My first day behind the wheel, it took 10 minutes of slow creeping to back out of my driveway. Terrified doesn't describe it.

But once on the road, I experienced total elation. I felt so ... BIG. Much bigger than those puny sedans way down below me. Hah!

Okay, so maybe that's not what you want to know about a minivan. But I figure you can check out all that stuff about Drive Train and whatnot from a brochure or the Honda website. I'm here to tell you the stuff that you won't get anywhere else:

All you really need to know about the Honda Odyssey EX

1. Swing wide, sweet chariot

I'm an okay driver. Pretty straight shot most days. But takeoffs and landings do me in, and my car has the dings, dents and scrapes along its sides to prove it. Just don't get behind me when I'm parking and we'll all get along fine.

With fancier models, you can get the little camera to see stuff in back of you. That wouldn't help me judge how to squeeze around tight spots in parking garages, but anything helps.

Seriously, though, this has the turning ratio of an aircraft carrier, and was obviously designed for those vast suburban expanses. In the city, you can count on this baby to be nimble in traffic, but forget squeezing into that microscopic spot on a side street.

2. Moms gone wild!

On those occasions when your li'l darling needs that extra something, when the car's gentle motion won't lull her to sleep, when her piercing cries have rattled strip mall windows a mile off, you know you need to whip out your special friends, a.k.a. the Booby Twins.

Somebody with large hooters--or a wife with same--designed this car for the frantically lactating. You can easily unlatch the tray between the front seats, clamber into the back, wedge yourself into the half-seat in the middle row, and insert one of your C-cups into baby's mouth before you can say "Mother's Milk."

(Note: It is a good idea if someone else is driving while you do this.)

Of course, that half seat is wildy uncomfortable unless you're a contortionist. Still, it just about fits a booster seat for those carpooling emergencies.

3. Are we there yet? Do we care?

You could spend all day just adjusting the driver's seat with its electronic controls. Oooh, a little lower, no, up a bit, right there, yes! Yes! Ahhh ...

We drove this baby cross country from California to Chicago and then to Connecticut (we have a penchant for place names with a "c"), and we pretty much lived in it.  With enough cup holders, a tray, stereo speakers here, there and everywhere, separate environmental controls every which way you turn, getting to your destination is anticlimactic.

Though why they call this a "mini" van beats me. It's about the size of an indoor swimming pool.