Despite its swoopy styling and fastback pretensions, the new Honda Crosstour is officially described by the company as a crossover utility vehicle, or CUV. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck”¦ For all intents and purposes, the Crosstour is a station wagon.

No problem there. All things considered, station wagons offer a pretty decent combination of usable space, economy of operation, and affordability. That’s why they’ve been around since the 1930s. If you’ve got a family—or even if you’re an empty-nester—and need some extra elbowroom but don’t want to horse around with an SUV or a minivan, a station wagon could be just the ticket.

Based on the Accord platform and officially classed as an Accord variant, the Crosstour shares almost no body parts with its sedan counterpart, but it does utilize the same V-6 drive train. At this point, there’s no four-cylinder version. Displacing 3.5 litres, the V-6 develops 271 horsepower and 254 foot-pounds of torque, which makes it one of the livelier models in this category”¦whatever that is. The Toyota Venza, which must be considered a direct competitor, is good for 268 horses, although performance-wise these two are pretty much neck and neck. Transmission is a five-speed automatic only, and you can choose from all-wheel drive and front-wheel drive; my tester had the former. This system is about as inconspicuous as these things get, and unless you get caught in deep snow or gravel, you probably won’t even know it’s there. Incidentally, this is Honda’s Real Time AWD system, and not the SH-AWD system used in some of its Acura products. There’s a substantial difference.

The Crosstour has only one trim level—EX-L—and the front-wheel-drive version starts at $2,000 less than the AWD model. Unsurprisingly, the AWD version is a little thirstier than the FWD one: 8.0 litres per 100 kilometres on the highway compared with 7.2 litres. My test car also had the navi package, which includes a back-up camera and steering-wheel-mounted controls. It’ll run you another $2,000 on top of that if you get it with all the goodies.

Because all Crosstours are EX-Ls, even the base FWD version comes well equipped. For the just-under-$35,000 starting price, you get a full leather interior, a dual-zone climate-control system, tilt/telescoping steering, heated front seats, XM Satellite Radio, and the usual power mod cons. Basically, the Crosstour has the same trim level as the top-of-the-line EX-L Accord sedan. Storage capacity is a healthy 1,453 litres with the back seats folded, and the back door is a one-piece affair that opens up like that of a hatchback. (By way of comparison, Honda’s CR-V SUV has about 2,064 litres of space.) The back seats fold down 60/40, and there’s a nifty removable storage compartment under the rear deck. A nice touch.

In fact, in virtually all departments, the Crosstour has a nice touch. It has that ineffable drivability factor that Honda has been building into the Accord almost since it was introduced to the North American market—in, what, 1976?—and is uncomplicated and undemanding behind the wheel. The V-6 is a titch on the growly side, but nothing extreme. If I had to pick nits, I’d say that the Venza V-6 is smoother and has a more refined power delivery, but it’s a close call either way.

I have mixed feelings about the Crosstour’s styling. To my eyes, the back end is too prominent and, well”¦it has a big booty. The eye is drawn to the back of the car, and the whole effect is uncoordinated and kind of awkward.

It’s not easy to design a proper-looking station wagon—as Toyota found out when it introduced the short-lived Camry wagon back in the mid 1990s—but Honda has put an Accord wagon on the North American market before, and for its time the old version was a nice-looking vehicle.

Carmakers seem to have an aversion to the term “station wagon”. Maybe it’s because it conjures up corny visions of Ward Cleaver taking Beav and Wally to the ball game. But Europeans have no such phobias, and their equivalent, the “estate wagon”, has been a popular model designation across the pond for decades. Honda, in fact, has had an Accord wagon in the U.K. and elsewhere for years. It’s better-looking than the Crosstour in almost every way.

But there isn’t much else to kvetch about here. Like just about everything that comes from Honda, the Crosstour is driver-friendly, nicely built, reasonably nimble, and competitively priced.