Ridgeline takes Honda to new heights
With rare exceptions, press-review vehicles are primped to near-perfection. God forbid a journalist should live with a dent or ding.
The Honda Ridgeline pickup was a different kind of bird, however; some awful abuse had scarred its bed with a thousand bumps and bruises.
“Oh, yeah; I think this one may have been at the press launch,” offered the fellow who delivered it.
Oh, that.
This was, it appears, the very Ridgeline into which Honda had dumped 1,100 pounds of rocks to demonstrate the durability of the Ridgeline’s steel-reinforced, fiberglass-composite bed and the strength of its suspension.
It seems Japanese makers can’t get into the truck market without first proving their macho cred. But more than that, Honda has a special challenge — it’s never before built a truck. It even sat out the compact-truck craze, when its competitors sold little trucks for all they were worth.
But that’s Honda; except for its bold and early leap into hybrids, it plays its cards close to the vest. The Ridgeline is another matter, though; Honda’s new rig defies convention.
Like Subaru’s Baja, the Ridgeline is a duckbill platypus-blend of a little of this and a little of that. Based on a steroidal interpretation of the platform that underlies the Acura MDX and Honda Pilot and Odyssey, the Ridgeline marries the comfort of a crossover-SUV with the utility of a small truck.
Its cabin comfortably accommodates five adults, with abundant leg- and headroom for back-seat passengers. The seatback angles comfortably, unlike the mercy-seat arrangements found in many crew cab trucks and it easily folds up, allowing sufficient room for a mountain bike, says Honda.
There are even three child-seat anchors, rather than the requisite two.
Appended to this entirely civilized cabin is a diminutive, 5-foot bed, which grows to 6.5 feet with the tailgate down and bed extender in place. Its size begs the question of mission.
What do you do with a bed that small?
Honda sees it as a lifestyle issue. The Ridgeline is meant not for any of the burly trades — construction, pipefitting or what-have-you — or even for suburbanites who cart their yard leavings to the landfill. It’s purpose-built, Honda says, for the “growing population of consumers purchasing trucks to support their active, outdoor oriented lifestyles.”
Case in point: a groove cuts across the floor of the bed, perfectly positioned to accept the front tire of a motorcycle, or the front pair of an all-terrain vehicle. Bonus points if it’s Honda-built, of course.
The bed floor is elevated to eliminate intrusion of the fender wells. Absent fender wells, the bed will accept a load of 4-by-8-foot sheets of plywood. But the raised floor produces another benefit, as well — a lockable and weather-tight, 8.5-cubic-foot stowage compartment beneath the bed floor.
With its plug and drain, it even doubles as a gigantic, portable ice chest. Beer drinkers will instantly grasp the significance.
There are tie-down cleats galore, a special bed-lighting package and a tailgate that drops down, as in a conventional truck, or swings open sideways for easier loading of heavy objects.
The bed is unconventional in another respect; it’s an integrated part of a molded one-piece structure that also includes the cabin.
This is, in fact, a big part of the Ridgeline story.
Excellent as it is, Honda engineers knew the MDX/Pilot platform wasn’t sufficiently sturdy to handle the duties of a truck. So they beefed it up with a pair of steel rails running its length and a series of seven steel cross-members.
Thus strengthened, the platform then became part of a unibody structure that incorporates the cab/bed unit. Voila! A modified unibody with a boxed-frame chassis, making the Ridgeline a hybrid, of sorts, of car and truck design.
Unlike most pickups, which use solid rear axles, the Ridgeline has a four-wheel independent suspension. This makes for car-like ride and handling, but normally all-independent suspensions are not considered rugged enough for the chores of a truck.
The half-ton Ridgeline performs fairly well as a truck. It’s rated to carry 1,500 pounds of cargo and people and has a tow rating of 5,000 pounds. Neither number will have Big Three trucks shaking in their treads, but Honda’s probably right — it’s enough capacity for most light-duty needs.
There’s only one Ridgeline model, with three trim levels. Prices begin at $28,350, including destination, and our uplevel RTL-with-Navigation tester clocked in at $35,155.
All-wheel-drive is standard, as are traction control, stability control and four-channel anti-lock brakes, the first use of a four-channel system in a truck.
There are side-impact and curtain-style airbags and the Ridgeline is the first four-door pickup to earn NHTSA’s 5-star safety rating for frontal and side-impact collisions. It also aced the rollover tests.
Power is provided by a 255-horsepower, 3.5-liter V-6 engine with variable valve control, and is routed though an excellent five-speed automatic transmission — it’s the kind of gearbox you forget about until it does something remarkable, such as hold a lower gear on a grade until the exact, ideal moment to make the shift.
In fact, the Ridgeline is so sophisticated and refined that the driver easily loses track of the fact he’s piloting not a sedan, but a half-ton pickup, albeit one with limited capabilities. Acceleration is smooth and insistent and the ride and handling package are superior. The Ridgeline is sedan-quiet and smooth on the highway and is stable and controlled in the curvy sections.
They say there’s a vehicle for everyone these days, an axiom to which the Ridgeline adds further evidence. You may not plan to haul 1,100 pounds of rocks, but if you do the Ridgeline will handle it with style and composure.