And even with eight passengers you have a good carrying capacity behind the rear seat for luggage and anything else you may want to carry. You have a vehicle that is slightly larger than a van, but if you use three banks of seats in a minivan there's no carrying capacity behind the rear seat. In a full-size van there is capacity, but it's close to the Suburban's. For 1997, the Suburban has been redesigned in the instrument panel and dash. It now has dual air bags and a good sized glove box.
Instrumentation is complete.
In between the front seats is a nice console with cupholders and a fold-up clipboard that is convenient for holding a pad for notes. There are also cupholders in the dash. The console also has the standard big hole in it to carry anything you need. Our tester was the four-wheel drive version. We had an opportunity to test the four-wheel drive in some mushy snow we had on the last day of our test.