Honda Ridgeline reviews

2011 Honda Ridgeline Walkaround

The Honda Ridgeline's uniqueness starts with its appearance. With pickups, you need a cab and a cargo box, so form to a considerable extent follows function. Yet Ridgeline doesn't look quite like any pickup before it. The grille, the front end, the cab shape, the buttresses coming down off the rear of the roof to join the integrated pickup bed, all seem to have been deliberately designed to be different, and different can be good or bad. Styling has never been our favorite Ridgeline attribute, before or after the 2009 facelift.

At least the front end of the latest version has a bit more contour. The grille opening, once rigidly rectangular, now narrows a bit at the bottom as it dips into the top of the bumper; and is now boldly outlined in chrome instead of body-color plastic. The grille insert has been simplified: The Honda H still features prominently at the center, but rather than something that looked like an old television antenna, it is now flanked by a pair of flattened wings. These wings are black on the Ridgeline RT and show up against the black mesh grille mostly because of the difference in texture, a handsome, sophisticated touch. On Ridgeline RTS and RTL, however, the wings are painted silver, which to our eye spoils the effect, ultimately trading the previous weird grille for one that's just plain clunky.

Beneath that, the top bar of the bumper has narrowed (a necessity, given the deeper grille), and the bar below that is now recessed, emphasizing by default the bumper's corners. As before, each corner is opened by an air slot, but the new slots are much larger, more like rectangular scoops, and are half-filled by accessory lights on RT and RTS and filled up by fog lights on RTL.

At the rear, the taillights have been thankfully simplified; and a bold, black molding now defines the top of the bumper, dipping down under the license plate at the center in a way that suggests the business end of a Texas Longhorn. Honda calls the new look more chiseled. To us, it looks lighter, less bluff, less toy-like, more mature.

Ridgeline's unchanged profile still shows a lot of metal sculpting from end to end that conventional pickup trucks with separate beds don't have. The RT's wheel covers look reasonably like five-spoke alloys (at least from a distance) and don't detract from the Ridgeline's appearance. The RTL comes with real, rugged-looking 18-inch alloy wheels with two flattened machined surfaces on each of five spokes, while the RTS retains 17-inch alloys in a six-spoke pattern similar to what we've seen on Ridgelines since 2006.

The cargo bed is made of steel-reinforced SMC plastic, not steel with a sprayed-on or slipped-in liner. The bed is five feet long with the tailgate up, and six and a half feet long with the tailgate down, enabling it to carry two dirt bikes or a large ATV. A tubular aluminum cargo bed extender is available for longer loads. There are four large retaining chocks, one in each corner of the bed, to help secure large pieces of cargo; and a total of eight cargo tie-down points.

The two-way tailgate is unusual, but it works great. It will drop down in familiar fashion, top to bottom, and it also opens like a door, from right to left. There's a hidden latch on the lower right side and hinges on the left, so users don't have to lean across the tailgate to store or retrieve items in the bed or the storage trunk. The tailgate is retained by a conventional cable on the left and a patented, hidden retainer on the right.

The storage trunk, even more than the tailgate, distinguishes Ridgeline from other pickups. This covered, sealed and lockable bin beneath the bed works like the trunk in a sedan. It offers 8.5 cubic feet of secure storage, which according to Honda is enough space for a 72-quart cooler or three sets of golf clubs. The compact spare tire mounts forward of the storage trunk in a sliding, locking tray. The trunk is fitted with a drain plug for those times when ice turns to water, or when accumulated crud needs to be hosed out.