Many a good adventure begins with a harebrained idea. Mine was to jump a $47,000 Honda crossover.
The notion surfaced when a Honda rep bragged how the 2016 Pilot,
a glorified minivan without sliding doors, could handle the Rubicon
Trail. I’ve banged over the 20-mile-long High Sierra spine-scrambler and
assured him, no, it could not. In fairness, the conversation took place
as we trundled a Pilot up a steep dirt mound in a demonstration of the
crossover’s Intelligent Traction Management system. I couldn’t imagine a
Ford Windstar clearing the grade.
With
traction control set to Sand, we crested the rise as Honda’s man told me
some of the development work on the multiterrain system occurred in
Dubai. I eyed the hump and imagined taking it much, much faster. Had
anyone tried to jump a Pilot, Baja style? Now that might prove how tough
the crossover really is.
Weeks later, Honda delivered a Pilot Elite,
having replaced the 20-inch citified rubber with 18-inch Pirelli
Scorpions, a tire with more all-terrain bite. I headed west from New
York toward the wilds of Pennsylvania and the Poconos.
The
Pilot got its first taste of black-veined dirt in the former coal
fields of the Anthracite Outdoor Adventure Area. The pay-to-play site,
6,000 acres in Coal Township, is some 60 miles north of Hershey. The
Keystone State is laced with dedicated off-road sites, some operated
with official hours and welcome centers, such as Anthracite, and others
by seasonal permits. Anthracite opened in 2014 and has a spiderweb of
trails that range from mud bogging to rock crawling. It is economical
too: An annual pass starts at $120.
I needed seasoned operators in the form of genuine off-roading
Pennsylvanians Dale Esbin and his 15-year-old son, Jake. Dale is an
old-school dirt hound and all-around outdoorsman, and Jake possesses
natural talent, having ridden four-wheelers since he was 5. The Esbins
would be good judges of the Honda’s outdoor, mud-splashing,
boulder-grinding worthiness.
They had their doubts about the Pilot. After all, it had shiny green
metallic paint, a standard panoramic glass roof, second-row heated
captain’s chairs, and room for seven. The Pilot’s subtext is
almost-luxury, the owner a comfortable dad whose likeliest foray
off-piste is into the bunker at his favorite nine.
Before we found out, Dave Porzi, Anthracite’s director of operations,
led us on a recce around the property. “I grew up riding around these
mountains, but it got to the point where I wouldn’t come out here
anymore, with all the shooting and boozing and druggin’ going on,” he
said. “But the county commissioners had the idea of turning this former
coal land into an economic engine for the area, where we could sponsor
responsible recreation and conservation.”
Mining has gone on here since at least the 1930s.
The county hauled away heaps of tires and trash and filled in open pits
and mine shafts. “The land was abused for so many years with illegal
activity,” he explained, “we were told that anything we do would be an
improvement.”
I expected black, dead land
filled with tailings but instead found lush hills and thick copses of
trees turning gold and red, with large birds cartwheeling overhead.
Porzi nodded at a massive black pipe sticking out of the ground,
indicating a bat cave deep below. “If you knew what was underneath us,
you probably wouldn’t drive over it,” he said with a laugh. “There are
800-foot shafts which lead to gangways that lead to even deeper shafts.
They open up sometimes. … ”
The i-VTM4 system distributes torque between
front and rear axles and allows a surprising amount of slip when set to
Mud or Sand. The Honda Pilot works much like the Range Rover Evoque,
forgoing a real off-roader’s twin differentials for a traction-based
system that modulates throttle mapping, rear-torque bias, and slip.
Go
ahead, crash the Pilot through those deep, black mud pits at 15 mph—or
even more than 35 mph. Damn the rocks and plastic fascia. It makes a
great splash and gets anybody riding right behind you—particularly if
that person’s in an open-air vehicle such as the Pioneer and
Rancher—tremendously muddy.
The Pilot was tough. It actually liked the dirt
and the rocks. In fact, it was more comported than many a burly
off-roader or pickup truck I’ve driven in similar situations.
The
jump, however, looked dubious. I couldn’t find a scooped-out hunk of
earth, like a cauldron, to drop into and shoot back up and out of. I
settled on a modest berm and a 40-mph approach. I cleared rocks from the
path, checked my seat belt, and hoped for the best.
You get a particular feeling when you’re in the
air, when you know all four wheels are off. In this instance, it was
interrupted abruptly by a loud concussive bang—a pyrotechnic in the seat
belt—and a terrible cinching around my abdomen. Then I landed. The
landing wasn’t bad, but the Pilot automatically dialed emergency
services as a voice from a cockpit speaker said, “Crash detected.”
No,
the Pilot doesn’t really like to jump. Honda engineers later told me
they’re not sure what happened: Vehicle sensors knew all four wheels
were off the ground, and perhaps there was enough roll to indicate a
flip was imminent, triggering the explosive seat belt. Whatever the
case, neither the airbags nor the seat belt functioned afterward.
Was it spectacular? Not so much. It wasn’t high—a
foot, maybe two, skimming over the earth. But the jump was a goodly
distance, perhaps 20 feet, long enough for the car’s brain to think
something was wrong before the wheels touched down. I drove slowly to
where the Esbins waited, my gut aching and gunpowder polluting my nose.
Dale asked if I would try again.
“No,” I conceded. “Once was enough.” It turns out you can jump a Honda Pilot. But it is a certifiably harebrained idea.
Source (with a ton of more pictures);
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