They've been hauling around their Suzuki dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles in other people's pickup trucks for years. Not anymore.

Now, the 2 million U.S. owners of Suzuki's bikes, motorcycles and ATVs can get a Suzuki-branded pickup, too.

The 2009 Suzuki Equator is a rebadged version of Nissan's long-running Frontier compact truck. The Equator and Frontier are built at the same Smyrna, Tenn., assembly plant.

Available with four- or six-cylinder engine, in two- and four-wheel drive and in Extended Cab and Crew Cab body styles, the Equator is a competent truck with a starting price of $17,995 for a four-cylinder-powered Extended Cab model with five-speed manual transmission.

This is less than the $18,240 price of the base Nissan Frontier King Cab with manual transmission and same 152-horsepower engine as the Equator.

Suzuki loyalists will figure out that Nissan offers a few more items for the Frontier than Suzuki does on the Equator. For example, the Frontier is offered with both five-speed and six-speed manual transmissions, while the only manual in the Equator is a five-speed.

All the good parts of the Frontier are there in the Equator, right down to the thick turn signal stalks and nicely arranged gauges and controls.

In fact, if someone rode in the Equator without seeing the bold Suzuki grille with the huge "S" in the front, he might assume he's in a Frontier. The vehicle and passengers bounce over road bumps and bound over off-road trails.

With a good, minimum ground clearance of 7.6 inches in the rear-wheel-drive models, passengers ride well above things, clearing most rocks, small logs and other obstacles on the trail with ease.

In 4X4 Equators, the minimum ground clearance grows to 8.6 inches -- perfect for getting ATVs out to the woods.

The test Equator, a Crew Cab Sport 4X2, had mainstream steering, neither sporty-precise nor loose-wandering.

The Sport model has upgraded, 18-inch tires from BF Goodrich, and road, wind and engine noise came through enough that I adjusted the radio volume regularly. There's evidently not a lot of sound insulation.

There's good room in front -- 42.4 inches of legroom and about 40 inches of headroom.

Back seats in the Extended Cab, as expected, offer child-size legroom of 25.4 inches. The Extended Cab has two regular-size, front-hinged doors paired with small, rear-hinged panels.

The roomier interior came in the Crew Cab tester, which had four, front-hinged doors. Though the back-seat cushion was short, there was a commendable 33.6 inches of legroom back there.

The passenger compartment of either body style offers the same headroom for back-seat riders -- just over 38 inches.

Inside and out, there's a capable sense to the pickup. Because Nissan installs a bed liner as standard equipment in Frontier, the Equators get it, too. There are two lengths of pickup bed -- 5 feet and 6 feet.

The test truck had the only engine available for the Crew Cab. It's the 4-liter, double-overhead-cam V-6 from Nissan that delivers a strong 261 horsepower and 281 foot-pounds of torque.

The V-6 thrust the pickup into traffic with gusto and started some wheel chirp until the limited slip electronic traction control took over. Shifts were smooth with the five-speed automatic transmission.

Fuel economy isn't the best, though, rating just 15 miles per gallon in city driving and 20 mpg on the highway.

Better fuel mileage -- 19/23 mpg -- comes with the base 2.5-liter four-cylinder and five-speed manual, but the four-cylinder is available only in the Extended Cab.

There is some debate about whether the Equator and its sibling Frontier are compact pickups, particularly because the Crew Cabs stretch 17 feet from bumper to bumper.

The top Equator -- Crew Cab 4X4 -- weighs nearly 4,500 pounds, which rivals the weight of some full-size trucks. The impressive capability is there, too. Top payload for the Equator is 1,471 pounds, with a towing capacity of 6,500 pounds.

Most safety equipment is standard, including curtain air bags and traction control. There was no head restraint for the middle person in the back seat of the Crew Cab, and stability control comes only with the Sport trim package.