There’s still room for one more, and Honda, of all people, is the one filling that slot.

The Honda Ridgeline pickup will hit showrooms in about a month, and Honda aims to sell about 50,000 of them this year year, while hoping to double that in future years. Honda officials readily admit that after insisting for a decade that they’d never build an actual pickup truck, now they are saying, "Here’s our truck."

The shifting marketplace and the increasing profits from trucks are more than enough motivation for a corporate mind-change.

But Honda hasn’t missed on many of its ideas so far, always creating clever vehicles with the highest technology, build quality and clean efficiency, and the Ridgeline seems to be another direct hit.

The Ridgeline is a full-four-door pickup, with styling that is daring and bold enough to defy the conservative look of Accords and Civics, as well as the aerodynamically astute look of Acura RSX, TSX, TL, RL and MD-X models.

For power, Honda always has taken on the argument of enlarging displacement by using superior technology, but tweaking the 3.5-liter V6 to be able to run with the numerous V8 and larger V6 engines of competitors and still be clean for emissions, was a big task.

Meanwhile, recognizing that virtually all trucks are compromises, with some being better off-road, others better on-road, some with suspensions designed for full loads, and others for light-load comfort, the Ridgeline aims to combine all those assets.

The people buying trucks will be the ultimate jury, but the gathered automotive media were pretty unanimous in being impressed at the introduction of the vehicle at a resort and ranch in the La Jolla, California, area near San Diego.

(Those of us who are hardy Midwesterners might wonder where this place, pronounced "La Hoya," is located, and hopefully we all figured out that was the Spanish pronunciation of La Jolla.)

Anyhow, cynics asked how Honda could possibly compete with full-size pickups with huge V8s, using that slick little V6 that has variations powering the Acura MD-X luxury SUV and RL luxury sedan.

Honda officials didn’t make any outrageous boasts, and they insisted their intention is not to replace the F150 – Ford’s benchmark full-size pickup – but that we should wait until the demonstration drives to see for ourselves.

Honda had a Ford F150 available, with a 5.4-liter Triton V8, and hooked it up to a 5,000-pound trailer next to a Ridgeline with an identical trailer. Nobody was surprised that the F150 out-drag-raced the Ridgeline, but everyone was surprised at how slight the margin was.

And the last remaining critics were silenced when the same two vehicles were run through a slalom course, where, typically, the trailer felt like it was wagging the dog a bit with the big pickup, yet the Ridgeline performed with sports sedan stability and agility.

Earlier, we visited Vessels Ranch, where thoroughbreds and quarterhorses are bred and raised, and where an off-road course was carved into the hillsides, through sandy gulches and small streams. The Ridgeline breezed through it.

The 3.5-liter V6 turns out 255 horsepower at 5,750 rpms, and 252 foot-pounds of torque at 4,500 rpms, and preliminary estimates are for 21 miles per gallon highway and 16 city. It is the first pickup truck with an engine that meets Level II of the ULEV (ultra low emission vehicle) and Bin 5 pollution standards.

Its five-speed automatic is reinforced, and is coupled with Honda’s VTM-4 all-wheel drive, a system that runs front-wheel-drive until load or slippage calls for torque shift to the rear, then calculates and shifts up to 70 percent of the torque to the rear.

For extreme conditions, you can lock the rear axle so that all four wheels churn together.

Honda says it spotted an opening in the crowded truck segment for an all-new and different type of pickup. Under cross-examination, though, Honda officials admit that if they hadn’t found a self-styled niche, they would have still built a pickup, maybe a better Tacoma, or something similar. Instead, they claim to be filling a niche that their market research says is there.

Dan Bonawitz, Honda’s vice president of planning and logistics, said that with all its SUVs, Honda would sell 500,000 trucks in 2004, after having none to sell in 1994. Light truck sales account for 54 percent of all U.S. sales, and that is expected to rise to 58 percent, while car sales are expected to drop to 42-46 percent.

Bonawitz also explained that among the 3-million total pickups, conventional 2-door models decreased 8.6 percent in the past year, while 4-door models have increased 9.5 percent, and "new variations" of cab design have increased 40.8 percent.

"Eighteen percent of all Honda owners also own pickups, and almost 25 percent of CR-V owners also have pickups," Bonawitz said. "Until now, Honda owners have had no choice but to go outside of Honda to buy a pickup."

Extensive market research went into the clean-sheet design of the Ridgeline. Among both Honda owners and potential pickup buyers, the research showed a strong interest in what they wanted in a pickup, and the priorities were family needs, commuting, hauling kids and kids’ stuff, hauling home-improvement products.

They also denoted a weakness of current pickups as the inability to securely store things, poor fuel efficiency, and limited interior comfort, particularly for five or six occupants.

"So we wanted to create our own benchmark," said Gary Flint, Honda’s large project leader. "We had to retain our core values of safety for everyone, being environmentally responsible, offer outstanding value, quality reliability, and be fun to drive.

We also wanted a strong image, the ability to haul a lot of cargo, all-wheel drive, good driving position, storage, and with a focus on family needs.

Plus, from our sedans, we had to have comfort, refinement, ergonomics, and good fuel economy.

"We also wanted to make the Ridgeline maneuverable, able to carry at least five passengers, and be kid-friendly, while still being fun, durable, capable of running off-road, and of hauling dirty cargo. So we created a recipe, offering a new approach for active families."

The result is a truck that is 207 inches long – 1.5 inches shorter than an F150, but with greater interior room. Large rear-seat knee room and seatback angle that is the same as the front buckets are standard, with the capability of storing 2.6 cubic feet under the rear seat, and to flip up the bottom cushion in all or part of a 60/40 split.

A mountain bike will easily fit, upright, back there, meaning you don’t have to worry about it getting ripped off when you put it in the bed and stop at a store or restaurant.

The pickup bed is truly a work of art. The composite design took a battering without being marred from a front-end loader dumping 600 pounds of boulders into the bed as we watched.

Grooves in the floor of the bed are designed so that owners of 3.4 million Honda motorcycles will find the tires fit perfectly. At 49 inches wide (the F150 is 50 inches), a 4x8-foot sheet of plywood rides flat in the 5-foot bed, which goes to 6.5 feet with the tailgate down.

The tailgate itself is a work of art. It opens by folding down, and 300 pounds of weight can rest on it without a problem, and it also will open to the side, which is perfect for allowing easy access to whatever you want to load or unload.

The primary feature of the bed, however, is the trunk. At a touch, the rear floor section will tilt up, revealing an 8.5-cubic-foot trunkspace. It is large enough to store extra large duffel bags, three full sets of golf clubs, a stroller, or a 72-quart cooler, and you can get a divider and cargo hooks as well.

The best part is that the trunk lid/bed floor is completely sealed, so you could haul a load of dirt in the bed, and none of it would get into the trunk. The crowning touch is that you could simply fill the whole trunk with ice, and when you pull up to a picnic or camping site, or to tailgate, pop the trunk and you have the perfect cooler.

A drain plug is also standard. Also, when you lock the doors, the trunk locks as well. A temporary spare also is stashed in the trunk, although a full-size one will fit there.

In design, Honda knew that a unibody was best for body rigidity and safety, but a body on frame is best for towing and cargo. So even though it took 93 percent new and exclusive parts, an integrated frame with boxed frame rails and seven cross-members of high-strength steel was designed and fastened to a unibody structure.

The finished Ridgeline is 2.5 times stiffer in bending rigidity and 20 times stiffer in torsional rigidity than "other midsize pickups," Honda says. The bed is sheet-molded composite, so it won’t corrode or suffer "ding" damage, and it has three cross-members under it.

An independent rear suspension tracks well and aids handling and comfort. Rubber isolation points on the subframe help to quiet vibrations. The suspension system designed for the Pilot SUV has been reinforced totally, measuring a 30-percent increase in strength, and the result is lateral response g-forces and slalom speeds far better than the F150, Titan, Tundra or Colorado pickups.

Driving position is excellent, as is the switchgear, except for the headlight switch. I don’t like the turn-knob on the left side of the dash for headlights, when every vehicle on the planet seems to have pull-push switches, or twisting the end of the directional-light stalk, to operate the lights.

We’re nitpicking, here, however.

Along with antilock brakes on the four-wheel discs, the Ridgeline has electronic brake distribution, and brake assist for emergency stops, as well as traction control and vehicle stability control, and a full complement of airbags and curtains, and it earns five-star crash-test ratings, with special attention to crash compatibility to make smaller vehicles and even pedestrians safer in collisions.

The Ridgeline has passenger-car-level interior noise, with a navigation screen, audio upgrades that include rear-seat DVD screen and wireless headphones, and it starts out well-equipped with standard features in base RT level, at $28,000, while an RTS that adds alloy wheels and a six-CD audio, and the top of the line RTL adds heated leather seats with a base price of $32,000.

Whether Honda is accurate in its assessment of what it calls this available niche in a "morphing" truck market, the Ridgeline seems certain to be a sellout.