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Honda Pick-me-up
Honda’s new pickup is tough, but a
pleasure to drive; truck spacious,
but as clever as an MPV; powerful,
but easy on the environment. So is
the Rideline a major leap forward,
or a sinful watering down of the
pickup ideal? We fly to New
England for a 700-mile drive of the
world’s first white-collar pickup.
“Mom, look at that cool truck! Can
I go look closer? Please?”. But
Mom had shopping to pack and
places to go, so her 10-year-old
son didn’t get to press his nose
against the car we were driving -
Honda’s first ever pickup. But, at
that moment in Fall River,
Massachusetts, one more future
truck buyer had become Ridgeline-
conscious.
We just had to drive it. After all,
over here you can buy pickups from
all the major Japanese
manufacturers – Toyota, Nissan,
Mitsubishi, Mazda – but not Honda.
Indeed, bar the odd hairy sports
car, the company has made its pile
from selling white-collar, earth-
friendly cars like the Jazz and Civic
to older folk. Even its 4x4, the CR-
V, was as far away from pecker
flexing as you can get in that genre.
So when last January it introduced
a truck concept that looked like it
had been chiselled from a slab of
Yankee steel by renegade Detroit
metalworkers, the world took
notice. The attention intensified
earlier this year when it reappeared
as a production version that, unless
you’d had the concept image taped
to your steering wheel all year,
looked exactly the same.
Honda isn’t the first to push the
envelope on truck design – just
witness Mitsubishi’s startling new
L200 and its Raider equivalent in
the States. But crucially, they both
still pull on standard-issue truck
underwear. Honda on the other
hand rejected the usual body-on-
frame chassis and leaf spring rear
suspension in favour of a Discovery-
style unibody/frame crossover and
– the horror! – independent rear
suspension. The Ridgeline still had
the loading capacity, but now it
drove like – whisper it – a car. All
the rough-hewn workmen expecting
to star in the brochures and TV ads
were rejected in favour of weekend
dads touting kayaks instead of
chainsaws. The world’s first white-
collar pickup was born.
This got us thinking. Could the
Ridgeline work hard enough to
convince a chunk those pickup
buyers who push the Ford F-150
into America’s top sales spot (car
AND truck) into swapping it? Or
would all those concessions to
comfort just lead to all Ridgeline
owners getting black-balled at the
weekly Victory Highway truck-meet
for being pinko pantywaists?
So we flew to America, picked up a
new Ridgeline from Honda at New
York’s JFK airport, and headed into
New England for a week to find out.
New Britain
We figured New England would be
perfect Ridgeline territory. It’s
rugged and rural, yet sliced through
with some of the most urbane cities
in the US. There’s a strong blue-
collar tradition left over from the
old textile mills, but there’s also a
raft of new money in high-tech
towns like Boston and plenty of the
old stuff in blue-blood hang outs
such as Newport in Rhode Island
and Cape Cod.
There’s also the British tradition,
the name being a dead giveaway.
How much so becomes obvious
when negotiating the town of New
London in Connecticut, built on the
mouth of the Thames (pronounced
with the th as in thanks) just
downstream from Norwich (sorry,
nor-which) and New Britain. Of
course this was also the place that
fermented the uprising against the
old country, but it was sparked by
harsh taxation from the UK
government, so it was perhaps
understandable.
Maybe it’s why the US government
is so reluctant to get tough on
petrol taxation; which is definitely
why we’re driving a 255bhp 3.5-litre
V6 petrol (the only engine option)
and not a 2.2-litre diesel. When
not having to deciphering the chaos
of roads that lead from JFK airport,
we instantly register the turn of
speed from this engine. The
double-cab Ridgeline is only
slightly bigger than our pickups
(almost exactly the length of the
newest Navara), but a 0-60mph
figure of 7.9sec is something us
Brits can usually only dream of.
That and the smooth,
instantaneous power delivery
underscored with a rich gargle from
the exhaust. Of course fuel
economy is worse, but the 21.5mpg
we averaged isn’t too many miles
adrift of, say, an L200 Warrior.
Having the latest high-tech engine
helps – indeed the Honda is
ranked as an ultra-low emissions
vehicle (ULEV) by the eco
stormtroopers at the California Air
Resources Board. It’s a measure of
noxious exhaust emissions rather
than CO2, but to get that rating it
still has to be 50 percent better
than average.
That helps underscore Honda’s
kindly tree-hugging image, built up
by selling innocuous saloons and,
lately, petrol-electric hybrids. The
Canadian-built Ridgeline goes even
further to atone for its beefy
presence by recently clocking up
the highest crash test rating in the
US, a first for a four-door pickup.
But this is a truck, right? Not a
community awareness project. It
definitely felt all truck heading into
the maelstrom of Manhattan. To
stay swimming with the tide of
yellow taxis that sweep you up and
down the avenues of this island
home of chewed up tarmac, you
need to be high and commanding
and the Ridgeline measured up. It
also soaked up broken roads that
would have sent fearsome
shudders through the ladder-
framed chassis of an F-150/Ram.
In fact that view down the almost
totally flat bonnet remained
peerless, right up until you had to
park the thing. The trick I
discovered was: park until you
think you’re about to hit whatever’s
in front, then advance another four
feet.
Mack menace
We lost our status as king of the
road as soon as we hit the test of
nerves that is the I-95 Interstate, a
shoreline ribbon of motorway that
all New England-bound traffic is
forced onto. There we were
menaced by Macks with grilles the
size of barn doors, all running
millimetres from the 17in alloys
and threatening to squelch us into
the similarly close-up concrete
reservation. Think US roads are
roomy? Try driving this one in a
Civic.
Escaping that to pull up outside the
equivalent of the transport café –
the ubiquitous, chromed-up New
England diner, we felt self-
consciously posh in the Ridgeline.
For a start we had the $34,600 top-
spec RTL version with sat nav,
which added leather and heated
front seats. But even the $27,700
RT is well-specced with cruise, air
con, five-speed auto and electric
windows. Despite that, the interior
doesn’t shout “car”. No good ol’
boy will complain about the column-
mounted auto shifter or the foot-
operated handbrake. The cliff-like
dash is simply laid-out (or was
without the nav) and there’s slew of
useful cubbies, including the
cavernous centre console.
If anywhere is the spiritual
homestead of the Ridgeline, it’s
the picturesque sailing ’n’ fishing
town of Newport in Rhode Island.
Enter over the world’s largest
humpbacked bridge and you’re in a
place where hauling boats or gear
takes on the regularity of dog-
walking. The Ridgeline has a good
payload maximum of 703kg (even
without leaf springs), a useful
towing max of 2268kg, just slightly
more than the Toyota Hilux, and a
decent torque figure of 252lb ft to
take most of the strain. But anyone
who’s had to dump messy kit in the
boot will love the Honda’s ace – the
under-bed trunk. This is a
waterproof lockable compartment
under the bed floor that’s as big as
a supermini boot and comes with a
drain plug. That means you can
also throw ice in there and use it as
a beer cooler at a BBQ. Access is
not a problem – instead of
swinging the tailgate down, you can
also swing it out. We loved this
feature, and it more than makes
up for the fact you can’t get a
hardtop for it (although there is a
hard tonneau cover).
Slow start
So they must be walking out the
door, right? Not according to
Newport’s Honda dealer Saccucci,
whose sales manager Mike Lyga
reckons buyers are still sizing it up.
“Everyone who has driven it has
loved the underfloor compartment
and the way it drives, but it’s not
selling as well as expected,” he
told us. “It could be that everyone’
s waiting to see who buys it. Scion
[Toyota’s youth brand in the US]
had that problem in that it was
aimed at young people but was
bought by older people because
they liked the price and simplicity.”
However signs are that the
message is getting through, and
Honda are reporting a surge in
sales. A solid win in a Car and
Driver magazine group test against
the likes of the Nissan Frontier
(aka new Navara) and the Chevy
Colorado (aka the Isuzu Rodeo)
must have helped, but people are
also seeing past the looks. “I
agree about the UGLY part,” replied
one contributor to the Ridgeline
Owners Club web forum. “That kept
me away for a month, but once I
drove it, I had to have one.”
Raw countryside is ever present in
New England, either along the miles
of shoreline or in the rocky, wooded
interior. If you wanted to diss
Ridgeline drivers, this is where you
get them: off-road capability. There’
s no low-range ratios, or switchable
two/four wheel drive, just an
electronic brain that sends power to
whichever of the four wheels isn’t
coping. Otherwise it’s 70 percent to
the rear. Whatever its drawbacks,
we didn’t manage to lose grip,
either on dusty gravel or when
purposefully booting it on a rain-
streaked corner.
In fact anytime on the road it’s
difficult to fault the Ridgeline. Apart
from a massive blindspot in the
drivers’ mirror, the drive is safe,
comfortable and entirely relaxed.
There’s even decent steering
response – oh so rare in this
category – and while it does roll a
fair bit in corners, it’s well controlled
at the limit.
As Mike Lyga at Newport Honda
says: “some people will always
drink Bud, just like some people
will always buy a Ford F-150”. But
for everyone else wanting an open
bed and an easy life, there’s the
Honda Ridgeline.
BOX
Accessorize this
Honda may be new to this, but it
has got one aspect spot on: the
accessory list. The brochure runs to
25 pages and it’s got the lot for
anyone wanting to personalise their
new truck (although it’s not like you’
ll ever be ignored in standard-issue
clothing). You can trim the interior,
swap the grille, buy a cargo tray for
the flip-up rear seats or fit a A-
frame-style guard to the front.
There’s roof-rails, air deflectors,
side steps, towing accessories, and
fender flares. Hold in that quad
bike with the bed extender, or
strap on a kayak with a specially
designed roof rack. The cargo net
controls the bed load (as does the
twin-position bed extender, come
to that), and you can split up the in-
bed trunk with a divider. There’s a
hard tonneau cover, but the glaring
omission is a hardtop.
BOX
Want one?
Classic Amcar will sell you a top-
spec Ridgeline RTL for £31,750
plus vat. The problem is: you won’t
be able to reclaim that vat,
because, try as they might, the
Oxfordshire-based importer couldn’
t get it classified as a commercial
without making expensive
modifications to the rear
suspension, despite its decent
loading carrying abilities.
Call: 01869 601028 or visit www.
teslaynengineering.co.uk/amcar/
Spec
Ridgeline RTL
Price: £31,750
Engine: 3.5 V6, 24v
Power: 255bhp
Torque: 252lb ft
US official mpg: 16/21
Test mpg: 21.5*
0-60mph: 7.9sec
Length: 5253mm
Width: 1976mm
Bed length: 1524mm
In-Bed Trunk: 241 litres
Payload: 703kg
Max Towing: 2268kg
* measured using Imperial (ie
British) gallons
pleasure to drive; truck spacious,
but as clever as an MPV; powerful,
but easy on the environment. So is
the Rideline a major leap forward,
or a sinful watering down of the
pickup ideal? We fly to New
England for a 700-mile drive of the
world’s first white-collar pickup.
“Mom, look at that cool truck! Can
I go look closer? Please?”. But
Mom had shopping to pack and
places to go, so her 10-year-old
son didn’t get to press his nose
against the car we were driving -
Honda’s first ever pickup. But, at
that moment in Fall River,
Massachusetts, one more future
truck buyer had become Ridgeline-
conscious.
We just had to drive it. After all,
over here you can buy pickups from
all the major Japanese
manufacturers – Toyota, Nissan,
Mitsubishi, Mazda – but not Honda.
Indeed, bar the odd hairy sports
car, the company has made its pile
from selling white-collar, earth-
friendly cars like the Jazz and Civic
to older folk. Even its 4x4, the CR-
V, was as far away from pecker
flexing as you can get in that genre.
So when last January it introduced
a truck concept that looked like it
had been chiselled from a slab of
Yankee steel by renegade Detroit
metalworkers, the world took
notice. The attention intensified
earlier this year when it reappeared
as a production version that, unless
you’d had the concept image taped
to your steering wheel all year,
looked exactly the same.
Honda isn’t the first to push the
envelope on truck design – just
witness Mitsubishi’s startling new
L200 and its Raider equivalent in
the States. But crucially, they both
still pull on standard-issue truck
underwear. Honda on the other
hand rejected the usual body-on-
frame chassis and leaf spring rear
suspension in favour of a Discovery-
style unibody/frame crossover and
– the horror! – independent rear
suspension. The Ridgeline still had
the loading capacity, but now it
drove like – whisper it – a car. All
the rough-hewn workmen expecting
to star in the brochures and TV ads
were rejected in favour of weekend
dads touting kayaks instead of
chainsaws. The world’s first white-
collar pickup was born.
This got us thinking. Could the
Ridgeline work hard enough to
convince a chunk those pickup
buyers who push the Ford F-150
into America’s top sales spot (car
AND truck) into swapping it? Or
would all those concessions to
comfort just lead to all Ridgeline
owners getting black-balled at the
weekly Victory Highway truck-meet
for being pinko pantywaists?
So we flew to America, picked up a
new Ridgeline from Honda at New
York’s JFK airport, and headed into
New England for a week to find out.
New Britain
We figured New England would be
perfect Ridgeline territory. It’s
rugged and rural, yet sliced through
with some of the most urbane cities
in the US. There’s a strong blue-
collar tradition left over from the
old textile mills, but there’s also a
raft of new money in high-tech
towns like Boston and plenty of the
old stuff in blue-blood hang outs
such as Newport in Rhode Island
and Cape Cod.
There’s also the British tradition,
the name being a dead giveaway.
How much so becomes obvious
when negotiating the town of New
London in Connecticut, built on the
mouth of the Thames (pronounced
with the th as in thanks) just
downstream from Norwich (sorry,
nor-which) and New Britain. Of
course this was also the place that
fermented the uprising against the
old country, but it was sparked by
harsh taxation from the UK
government, so it was perhaps
understandable.
Maybe it’s why the US government
is so reluctant to get tough on
petrol taxation; which is definitely
why we’re driving a 255bhp 3.5-litre
V6 petrol (the only engine option)
and not a 2.2-litre diesel. When
not having to deciphering the chaos
of roads that lead from JFK airport,
we instantly register the turn of
speed from this engine. The
double-cab Ridgeline is only
slightly bigger than our pickups
(almost exactly the length of the
newest Navara), but a 0-60mph
figure of 7.9sec is something us
Brits can usually only dream of.
That and the smooth,
instantaneous power delivery
underscored with a rich gargle from
the exhaust. Of course fuel
economy is worse, but the 21.5mpg
we averaged isn’t too many miles
adrift of, say, an L200 Warrior.
Having the latest high-tech engine
helps – indeed the Honda is
ranked as an ultra-low emissions
vehicle (ULEV) by the eco
stormtroopers at the California Air
Resources Board. It’s a measure of
noxious exhaust emissions rather
than CO2, but to get that rating it
still has to be 50 percent better
than average.
That helps underscore Honda’s
kindly tree-hugging image, built up
by selling innocuous saloons and,
lately, petrol-electric hybrids. The
Canadian-built Ridgeline goes even
further to atone for its beefy
presence by recently clocking up
the highest crash test rating in the
US, a first for a four-door pickup.
But this is a truck, right? Not a
community awareness project. It
definitely felt all truck heading into
the maelstrom of Manhattan. To
stay swimming with the tide of
yellow taxis that sweep you up and
down the avenues of this island
home of chewed up tarmac, you
need to be high and commanding
and the Ridgeline measured up. It
also soaked up broken roads that
would have sent fearsome
shudders through the ladder-
framed chassis of an F-150/Ram.
In fact that view down the almost
totally flat bonnet remained
peerless, right up until you had to
park the thing. The trick I
discovered was: park until you
think you’re about to hit whatever’s
in front, then advance another four
feet.
Mack menace
We lost our status as king of the
road as soon as we hit the test of
nerves that is the I-95 Interstate, a
shoreline ribbon of motorway that
all New England-bound traffic is
forced onto. There we were
menaced by Macks with grilles the
size of barn doors, all running
millimetres from the 17in alloys
and threatening to squelch us into
the similarly close-up concrete
reservation. Think US roads are
roomy? Try driving this one in a
Civic.
Escaping that to pull up outside the
equivalent of the transport café –
the ubiquitous, chromed-up New
England diner, we felt self-
consciously posh in the Ridgeline.
For a start we had the $34,600 top-
spec RTL version with sat nav,
which added leather and heated
front seats. But even the $27,700
RT is well-specced with cruise, air
con, five-speed auto and electric
windows. Despite that, the interior
doesn’t shout “car”. No good ol’
boy will complain about the column-
mounted auto shifter or the foot-
operated handbrake. The cliff-like
dash is simply laid-out (or was
without the nav) and there’s slew of
useful cubbies, including the
cavernous centre console.
If anywhere is the spiritual
homestead of the Ridgeline, it’s
the picturesque sailing ’n’ fishing
town of Newport in Rhode Island.
Enter over the world’s largest
humpbacked bridge and you’re in a
place where hauling boats or gear
takes on the regularity of dog-
walking. The Ridgeline has a good
payload maximum of 703kg (even
without leaf springs), a useful
towing max of 2268kg, just slightly
more than the Toyota Hilux, and a
decent torque figure of 252lb ft to
take most of the strain. But anyone
who’s had to dump messy kit in the
boot will love the Honda’s ace – the
under-bed trunk. This is a
waterproof lockable compartment
under the bed floor that’s as big as
a supermini boot and comes with a
drain plug. That means you can
also throw ice in there and use it as
a beer cooler at a BBQ. Access is
not a problem – instead of
swinging the tailgate down, you can
also swing it out. We loved this
feature, and it more than makes
up for the fact you can’t get a
hardtop for it (although there is a
hard tonneau cover).
Slow start
So they must be walking out the
door, right? Not according to
Newport’s Honda dealer Saccucci,
whose sales manager Mike Lyga
reckons buyers are still sizing it up.
“Everyone who has driven it has
loved the underfloor compartment
and the way it drives, but it’s not
selling as well as expected,” he
told us. “It could be that everyone’
s waiting to see who buys it. Scion
[Toyota’s youth brand in the US]
had that problem in that it was
aimed at young people but was
bought by older people because
they liked the price and simplicity.”
However signs are that the
message is getting through, and
Honda are reporting a surge in
sales. A solid win in a Car and
Driver magazine group test against
the likes of the Nissan Frontier
(aka new Navara) and the Chevy
Colorado (aka the Isuzu Rodeo)
must have helped, but people are
also seeing past the looks. “I
agree about the UGLY part,” replied
one contributor to the Ridgeline
Owners Club web forum. “That kept
me away for a month, but once I
drove it, I had to have one.”
Raw countryside is ever present in
New England, either along the miles
of shoreline or in the rocky, wooded
interior. If you wanted to diss
Ridgeline drivers, this is where you
get them: off-road capability. There’
s no low-range ratios, or switchable
two/four wheel drive, just an
electronic brain that sends power to
whichever of the four wheels isn’t
coping. Otherwise it’s 70 percent to
the rear. Whatever its drawbacks,
we didn’t manage to lose grip,
either on dusty gravel or when
purposefully booting it on a rain-
streaked corner.
In fact anytime on the road it’s
difficult to fault the Ridgeline. Apart
from a massive blindspot in the
drivers’ mirror, the drive is safe,
comfortable and entirely relaxed.
There’s even decent steering
response – oh so rare in this
category – and while it does roll a
fair bit in corners, it’s well controlled
at the limit.
As Mike Lyga at Newport Honda
says: “some people will always
drink Bud, just like some people
will always buy a Ford F-150”. But
for everyone else wanting an open
bed and an easy life, there’s the
Honda Ridgeline.
BOX
Accessorize this
Honda may be new to this, but it
has got one aspect spot on: the
accessory list. The brochure runs to
25 pages and it’s got the lot for
anyone wanting to personalise their
new truck (although it’s not like you’
ll ever be ignored in standard-issue
clothing). You can trim the interior,
swap the grille, buy a cargo tray for
the flip-up rear seats or fit a A-
frame-style guard to the front.
There’s roof-rails, air deflectors,
side steps, towing accessories, and
fender flares. Hold in that quad
bike with the bed extender, or
strap on a kayak with a specially
designed roof rack. The cargo net
controls the bed load (as does the
twin-position bed extender, come
to that), and you can split up the in-
bed trunk with a divider. There’s a
hard tonneau cover, but the glaring
omission is a hardtop.
BOX
Want one?
Classic Amcar will sell you a top-
spec Ridgeline RTL for £31,750
plus vat. The problem is: you won’t
be able to reclaim that vat,
because, try as they might, the
Oxfordshire-based importer couldn’
t get it classified as a commercial
without making expensive
modifications to the rear
suspension, despite its decent
loading carrying abilities.
Call: 01869 601028 or visit www.
teslaynengineering.co.uk/amcar/
Spec
Ridgeline RTL
Price: £31,750
Engine: 3.5 V6, 24v
Power: 255bhp
Torque: 252lb ft
US official mpg: 16/21
Test mpg: 21.5*
0-60mph: 7.9sec
Length: 5253mm
Width: 1976mm
Bed length: 1524mm
In-Bed Trunk: 241 litres
Payload: 703kg
Max Towing: 2268kg
* measured using Imperial (ie
British) gallons