2004 Buick Rendezvous Ultra Road Test

Tempering my audio/navigation hysteria is the Rendezvous' high level of comfort allowing for a relaxed atmosphere. My

The Ultra's leather trimmed seats are wonderfully comfortable and supportive, without being hard or overly firm. (Photo: Rob Rothwell, Canadian Auto Press)

Ultra featured leather trimmed seats with suede-fabric inserts, a design theme that carried through to the stow-away third-row bench seat. Further spoiling the driver and front passenger are heated, 6-way power adjustable front seats. These are wonderfully comfortable and supportive, without being hard or overly firm. The seat bottoms are long and wide, providing a suitably sized surface to ensure long-legged folk receive their fair share of thigh support. In typical Buick fashion, the seatbacks are wide and accommodating, but offer little side bolstering. The third-row stowable bench seat accommodates two passengers, but they had better be agile as ingress and egress is best left to children or contortionists. Albeit

The "environmentally friendly" wood-like material imparts a taste of style to the Rendezvous' interior. (Photo: Rob Rothwell, Canadian Auto Press)

once in place, the comfort level is acceptable - although headroom may be problematic for the basketball crowd.

In the Ultra, a combination of wood and leather-wrap adorns the steering wheel, providing grip aplenty. The wood detailing continues onto the expansive center stack, and to a lesser degree the door panels, however, my Spidey-sense tells me that the elegant looking material is plastic-molded. Nonetheless, the "environmentally friendly" material imparts a taste of highbrow that complements the practicality of the Rendezvous' interior.

On a more practical vein, both second row captain's chair seatbacks fold forward creating a flat tabletop workspace and additional storage capacity. With the flick of a lever and a yank on the seats, they can be entirely removed resulting in an expansive cargo floor enabling the ingestion of a bountiful 2,919 liters (103.1 cu ft) of cargo.