Yahoo Autos 2017 Honda Ridgeline First Drive: The Pleasantest Pickup You Can Buy
The original Honda Ridgeline was, admittedly, a bit of an oddball. Produced for model years 2006-2014, Honda sold just over 250,000 of the Pilot-based four-door trucksters over those eight years-a number roughly equal to nine months of U.S. Civic sales. With an all-new Pilot out on the streets, Honda decided it was time for a new Ridgeline, one that, in theory at least, aims to take a larger bite out of the traditional midsize pickup truck market.
Start with the profile. Gone are the original Ridgeline's angled sail panels aft of the rear doors, replaced by a much more conventional right angle between the rear window and the bed. The rounded nose may be nearly identical to the Pilot, but from the windshield back the styling is all truck. The bed gains 3.9 inches of length (now 64 inches) and 5.5 inches in width (now 60 inches) over the previous generation, and with 50 inches between the rear wheel wells, a sheet of plywood will lay flat in the bed, though it'll hang a foot beyond the edge of the lowered tailgate.
The bed interior is made entirely of glass-fiber reinforced SMC composite, a UV-stable, scratch- and dent-resistant material that makes a bedliner unnecessary. The double-hinged tailgate, which flips down normally or swings to the driver's side, returns, and there's a weather-tight 7.3 cubic-foot trunk under a lift-up portion of the bed floor, sized perfectly for an 82-quart cooler. Payload capacity maxes out at 1584 lbs.
Don't let the rear fender panel-gap fool you: The new Ridgeline is still a unibody, the only pickup truck on the U.S. market built this way, with independent suspension at all four corners. And at Honda's drive preview in San Antonio, the benefits of this construction were made undeniably clear. On the road, the Ridgeline cruises in ultimate smoothness and comfort, cushioning away all road imperfections and cocooning you in a luxuriously quiet ride. Getting out of the Ridgeline and into one of the brand-new Toyota Tacomas or Chevy Colorados that Honda brought along for comparison was like stepping backward 30 years in chassis design. On worn Texas pavement, the Ridgeline absolutely erased the small-amplitude pavement ripples that juddered the Tacoma, and the body-on-frame groans that the two traditional trucks made over larger pavement imperfections were entirely absent in the Honda.
The Ridgeline's dynamics are equally car-like. On pavement at speed, the Honda feels planted in turns, with little body roll and a confidently low center of gravity. All models are powered by the same 3.5-liter i-VTEC V6 found in the Pilot and the Acura MDX, sending 280 hp and 262 lb.-ft. of torque to a six-speed automatic (the push-button nine-speed, optional on the Pilot, is not available on the Ridgeline). For the first time, Honda will offer the 2017 Ridgeline in front-wheel-drive guise on all but the top two trim levels; the optional Intelligent Variable Torque Management all-wheel drive system offers torque-vectoring that can slightly overdrive the outside rear wheel in a curve for sharper handling response.
All this adds up to a decidedly un-truckish driving experience. The top-of-the-line all-wheel-drive RTL-E model I drove felt equally quick as the Pilot (which does 0-60 in six seconds flat), with a subdued engine snarl. On a well-groomed off-road loop that Honda provided, the Ridgeline climbed muddy hills and scaled frame-twisting humps with absolutely no drama. Four drivetrain modes-Normal, Sand, Snow, and Mud-are available on AWD models, altering throttle response, shift points, and stability and traction control intervention, but left in Normal mode the AWD system can still react nearly instantaneously to any traction demands, even with a rear wheel dangling midair.
There's something a little disconcerting, though, about off-roading the Ridgeline. Looking out across a dashboard and hood shared with the Pilot, the sensation is less pickup truck, more minivan. On a winding dirt road, it was easy to feel the torque-vectoring all-wheel drive at work; matting the Ridgeline's throttle mid-corner actually tightens the driving line, the opposite of the tail-out antics of the unladen Tacoma and Colorado in 2WD. The Honda accomplished everything the traditional trucks could conquer in our brief, low-risk off-road jaunt, but it looked and felt like a newcomer in that environment.
Maybe that's not a bad thing. The Honda does all the tasks you'd expect of a midsize pickup, towing up to 5000 lbs in AWD trim or hauling an ATV in the bed without any drama whatsoever. And compared to the four-door Colorado and Tacoma, the Ridgeline offers significantly more cabin room for passengers and cargo alike (stow a golf bag under the Ridgeline's rear seat, or fold it away to haul a mountain bike or big-screen TV in the cab). And with that cooler cubby under-trunk and an optional sound system that plays music through the truck bed, the Ridgeline beats every other truck out there when it comes to tailgating-even offering a 400-watt in-bed AC power outlet that can power a flatscreen TV.
The second-gen Ridgeline is clearly the Honda of pickups. That's a compliment: It does everything that your average midsize pickup owners (and the vast majority of full-size truck drivers) demand, while eliminating just about every comfort and packaging drawback of a traditional body-on-frame, live-rear-axle 4x4. Honda says it'll do 19 MPG city, 26 highway in 2WD form (subtract one MPG each for AWD), and its spacious interior feels more Silverado than Colorado-sized.
Starting at just under $30,000 for a front-drive base model, and extending all the way to nearly $43,000 for the top-of-the-line Black Edition shown here, the 2017 Honda Ridgeline competes on size, price, and capability with the traditional truck players. What remain to be seen is whether that's a compelling combination for traditional truck buyers.
