2017 Honda Ridgeline
Honda's next crack at the civilized pickup looks more pedestrian—and promising.
by Jared Gall of www.caranddriver.com
First Drive Review
It’s not as if the first-generation
Honda Ridgeline
was ahead of its time. It made its debut in 2005, just as gas prices
were transitioning from “Whoa, this is getting a little expensive,” to
“WTCrap is going on here?!” Not only was it
not ahead of its
time, it was one of the timeliest automotive introductions in history.
There could not have been a better occasion to bring out a more
civilized, more efficient pickup. We named it a
comparison-test winner, then ordered one for
40,000 miles of fawning.
That Honda’s reimagined pickup seated five far more comfortably than any
of its crew-cab contemporaries and rode incomparably better should have
kick-started a revolution. And it nearly did. In barely over a month at
the beginning of 2008,
Toyota and then
GMC
debuted similarly conceived unibody pickup concepts. GMC’s erstwhile
chief told us then that he expected the entire compact-truck market to
go unibody.
But after the tumult of that year, the automakers backpedaled to the
safety of familiarity. Toyota continued churning out the Tacoma, General
Motors kept on building the Chevrolet Colorado and the GMC Canyon, and
the Ridgeline faded into obscurity, tumbling from 50,193 sales in 2006
to a low of 9759 in 2011 before getting canned after the 2014 model
year.
Good Idea, Weird Idea
But the Ridgeline was a good idea—a good idea packed with weird ideas:
the dual-action tailgate, the in-bed trunk, the flying-buttress cab, and
the dramatically sloping edge topping each bedside. Many of those good
and weird ideas remain in the new generation, but Honda reversed course
significantly on the one that it most blames for the Ridgeline’s subpar
sales: exterior design. What used to be adventurously overstyled now
looks far more conventional, a Pilot with the roof lopped off aft of the
second row.
The structure is shared with
the Pilot crossover—and related to the underpinnings of
the upcoming next-generation Odyssey—but
nearly every major component is beefed up to handle pickup duty.
Engineers tell us the front structure is 17 percent stronger than that
of the Pilot, while the rear is 31 percent sturdier. The Ridgeline’s
maximum payload of 1584 pounds virtually ties that of the
segment-leading and recently redesigned Colorado, while its 5000-pound
tow rating brings up the rear of the class. (And that’s only for
all-wheel-drive models; front-drivers are rated to tow 3500 pounds.)
Engines of Change
Our experience with the nine-speed automatic transmission in the Honda
Pilot hasn’t been entirely satisfactory. So we were pleased that Honda
has employed a six-speed in the Ridgeline. With the nine-speed, shifts
vary in quickness and smoothness as speed builds, whereas the six is
consistently swift and seamless. With 280 horsepower and 262 lb-ft of
torque, the 3.5-liter V-6 tops the outgoing truck’s engine by 30
horsepower and 15 lb-ft. It’s smooth and unobtrusive, a perfectly
acceptable if uninspiring engine for a mid-size pickup. Honda predicts
best-in-class acceleration, but we’ll see. The Ridgeline is proof that
unibody doesn’t mean light as much as sturdy means heavy. The company
claims—and our experience so far bears out—that the Ridgeline is stiffer
than its competition, but the result is a curb weight of 4500 pounds,
heavier than the GM twins,
the Nissan Frontier, and
the Toyota Tacoma. The last
Chevy Colorado we tested was a touch lighter and carried 25 more horsepower.
Honda claims best-in-class fuel economy of 19/26 mpg city/highway and 22
combined for front-drivers and 18/25 city/highway and 21 combined for
models with all-wheel drive. But that requires interpreting the class as
omitting GM’s
gasoline and
diesel four-cylinders, both of which better the Honda V-6.
Got Baggage? Ridgeline Has Cubbies
As before, the interior of the Ridgeline positively embarrasses the
competition. It feels enormous and comfortable front and rear. The
flip-up rear seat remains, providing yet another yawning,
weather-protected storage cavity when raised and hiding up to 2.9 cubic
feet—enough for at least one golf bag—beneath seated passengers. The
primary storage location, the bed, now is four inches longer than
before, at 64 inches, which makes it longer than those of the crew-cab
Tacoma and the short-bed Colorado but 10 inches shorter than a long-box
Chevy. And the Ridgeline is the only truck in the class that can take a
four-by-eight-foot sheet of building material (or a four-by-eight-foot
medieval triptych) laying flat between the wheel wells. Of course,
you’ll have to drop the tailgate to accommodate an eight-foot load, so
invest in some good plastic wrap.
It’s also the only truck in its class with a bed that doubles as a giant
speaker. In top trim levels, six so-called “exciters” are mounted
behind the bedsides. If you think of these as speaker magnets that use
the panels to which they’re affixed as cones, you’re pretty close. The
upside is that they’re waterproof and impact proof. The downside is that
the sound quality is a little low-fi, and bass is nonexistent. Which,
if you have any friends who tend toward techno, is not a downside at
all. But for doing what one does with a truck bed—standing around
leaning on it—it’s a good means of reproducing country music. Honda
expects that you’ll use the 400-watt power inverter that upper trims
have in the truck bed to power a big-screen TV at tailgate parties,
during which the bed speakers should wow all of your inebriated
neighbors.
Different Blokes
Neither does any competitor have the Ridgeline’s clever tailgate that
either drops like a regular truck’s or swings open to the driver’s side
like an old-fashioned station wagon’s. Nor do they have the Ridgeline’s
in-bed trunk beneath the load floor. And most important, none of them
come anywhere close to the Ridgeline’s ride quality. All it takes is one
bump in the Honda to realize that GMC guy from 2008 should have been
right. According to Honda’s research, less than 10 percent of mid-size
truck buyers ever tow more than 5000 pounds. Therefore, less than 10
percent need anything beefier than a Ridgeline.
The Honda Ridgeline enjoys a ride that no live-axle, body-on-frame
vehicle could dream of. It’s all lightness and composure, carlike body
control and smoothness. Here, too, the distinction between
light-truck-duty Ridgeline and even-lighter-duty Pilot is appreciable.
Whereas the Pilot can wallow and feel a little sloppy, the Ridgeline’s
firmer tuning gives it a more controlled ride. The soft brake pedal and
light steering are perhaps a little too smooth, but at least their
operation is progressive. And in this segment, vague controls are a norm
that only the Colorado and Canyon deviate from.
Listening to Honda’s engineering team rattle off their list of
best-in-classes, we couldn’t help but detect a hint of exasperation in
their voices. They might as well have said, “For the love of God,
people, buy our truck!” Tech features are another area in which the
Ridgeline’s more civilized roots place it ahead of the class’s top
sellers. Adaptive cruise control, forward-collision warning and
automatic braking, lane-departure warning and assist, and blind-spot
monitors are all available. There’s also Apple CarPlay and Android Auto,
but no matter how much tech you pack in, we’re a long way from
accepting Honda’s touchscreen infotainment system, which is organized
about as logically as the tiles on your Samsung Galaxy’s home screen
when you turned it on for the first time in the store.
The March of Profits
The 2017 Ridgeline will go on sale this June. The RT, RTS, Sport, RTL,
and RTL-T trim levels are offered with either front- or all-wheel drive
(an $1800 upcharge), while the RTL-E and Black Edition are strictly
all-wheel drive. For $30,375, the entry-level RT includes a rearview
camera, keyless start, a tilting and telescoping steering column, and a
seven-speaker stereo with Bluetooth, auxiliary device, and USB
connectivity. At $32,415, the RTS adds keyless entry, remote start, and
tri-zone climate controls. The $33,915 Sport nets black exterior trim,
red footwell lighting, and gray-painted wheels.
Luxury starts creeping in with the $34,680 RTL, which gets leather seats
(heated in front), with 10-way power adjustability for the driver and
four-way for the passenger. An acoustic windshield cuts interior noise
to let occupants hear those little motors work.
Tech begins to arrive at $36,830 in the RTL-T. That one includes an
8.0-inch touchscreen navigation/infotainment system with Apple CarPlay,
Android Auto, satellite radio, a second USB input for the front and two
USB charging ports for rear-seat passengers, and Honda’s LaneWatch
blind-spot camera system. But the full complement of safety tech doesn’t
come into play until the $42,270 RTL-E. Here, the Honda Sensing system
includes adaptive cruise control, lane-departure prevention, blind-spot
monitors, and automated emergency braking. Additionally, you get blue
ambient lighting, a heated steering wheel, a sunroof, a power-sliding
rear window, and truck-bed audio, plus eight traditional speakers and
the 400-watt in-bed power inverter. Like the RTL-E, the $43,770 Black
Edition is fully loaded. But it’s as sinister as a Ridgeline can look
(until accessory lift kits become available), with black paint, exterior
trim, and wheels as well as a black headliner and red ambient lighting.
No matter how it’s outfitted, the Ridgeline is a no-brainer of a truck:
unmatched in smoothness and comfort, and full of innovation well beyond
its unibody construction. It deserved far more sales than it netted in
its inaugural generation. Here’s hoping this one realizes its full
potential.
Source (with a bunch more photo's);
