The design of the
Hyundai Entourage cabin is comparable to that of the
Honda Odyssey. It looks like the engineers spent some time checking out the Odyssey. Like the Odyssey, the Entourage has a tray between the front seats that folds down. Even the inside door handles for the second row seats seem the same. The Entourage's third row folds flat into the floor, another feature shared with the Odyssey. And in the Entourage, a spring-loaded mechanism makes it easier to pull up than the third row in the Honda Odyssey.
The basic controls are pleasingly simple and easy to operate.
The leather upholstery on the Limited model contributes to the feeling that the Entourage is aimed at some pampering and not just day-to-day transportation.
The Entourage's second row uses individual captain's chairs, each of which can be moved forward or rearward seven inches. That is a helpful feature that allows some flexibility with legroom and cargo capacity.
Flexibility is a good thing for anybody planning to sit in the third row. The third row is designed for small to mid-size children. It is worth noting that Hyundai measures what appears to be a generous 34 inches of third-row legroom with the second-row captain's chairs in their forward-most position. The reality is 27 inches of third-row legroom if the people in the captain's chairs insist on pushing all the way back.
Hyundai rates the cargo capacity behind the third row at 32 cubic feet. That's about twice the size of the trunk of a mid-size sedan, but such calculations typically involve stacking stuff to the roof. With the third row folded flat, the cargo capacity is rated at 80 cubic feet.
The Entourage has active head restraints that are designed to reduce neck injuries by moving forward to cushion the head in a rear-end crash. In crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the Entourage moved ahead of all the other minivans by getting a "Good" rating in the rear-impact crash test. The Honda Odyssey got a "Marginal" rating for rear impact while the Toyota Sienna and Nissan Quest got "Poor" ratings. All four earned "Good" ratings in frontal and side-impact protection. next page