The 2021 Honda Ridgeline Is the Truck For Non-Truck People

this is the 2021 honda ridgeline and it's the pickup truck for people who aren't really into pickup trucks if you're looking for the toughest most capable truck out there this isn't it but if you're looking to dip your toe into the pickup truck pool the ridgeline might be the truck for you before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my enthusiast car auction website we've had some amazing sales recently including this lexus lx 470 which sold for 62 500 a recent record sale price for a 100 series toyota or lexus model we also recently sold this mybox 62 for over 90 thousand dollars and this perfect nissan 300 zx went for almost 36 000. if you're looking to sell your cool car from the modern era cars and bids is the place to do it you'll find the most interest and the most money for your cool car and if you're looking to buy a cool car cars and bids has amazing selection with daily auctions check it out at carsandbids.com i've borrowed this ridgeline from honda of el cajon which is my local honda dealership here in the san diego area honda of el cajon has all of the latest honda models of course and they're great to work with and they have the new ridgeline which is just starting to arrive in dealerships across the country check out honda of el cajon by clicking the link in the description below so let's talk ridgeline the original one came out back in 2006 this is the second generation version which debuted for the 2017 model year now it's been updated for 2021 with some big changes the most noticeable is a new front grille designed to give it a tougher appearance but there's also a new off-road looking package which comes with these bronze wheels and some fender flares to add more style but it's not fooling anyone the rich line is fundamentally different from other trucks in that it's built on the same platform as the honda pilot crossover suv meaning it's not as tough or as rugged as the toyota tacoma or the jeep gladiator but it also drives less truckee than those trucks and it gets better gas mileage think of the ridgeline as a crossover suv that happens to have a truck bed for truck buyers who don't quite need as much truckiness from their truck and today i'm going to review the 2021 ridgeline and show you what it offers first i'll take you on a tour of this truck and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a doug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the 21 ridgeline by discussing some of the changes for 2021 starting up here with the grill which has been updated to give it a bolder more aggressive more mean look honda has become very aware of this new trend in trucks and suvs of off-roaders being really popular but the problem is honda doesn't really have any vehicles that fit in with this trend so they've tried to take the vehicles they have and make them seem off-roadier and this grille is one example and another example is the off-road package that this ridgeline has you can see some of the stuff here this package costs 2 800 extra one of the things it includes is these bronze wheels which i think actually look really good they do make the truck look more off-roady focused now in the center of the wheels it says hpd you might be wondering what is that well you've heard of trd toyota racing development this truck has hpd honda performance development that's kind of an embarrassing copy frankly but that is the off-road package of this truck the hpd package and it also includes these fender flares these plastic flares over the fender again to give the truck a more aggressive meaner bolder look also included in this off-road package this graphic on the side that literally says hpd honda performance development to make your truck seem even cooler it's kind of a weird thing honda knows trd is very popular so this sort of mimics that but there's no lift kit there's no chunkier tires you just get mostly cosmetic stuff like they're trying to be off-roady but they just don't really know how but next up beyond the somewhat questionable off-road package with the ridgeline there are some neat features with this truck one of them is the tailgate you can open it like a normal tailgate just pull the handle and it goes down pretty standard or you can see the word release is printed on the bumper sort of subtly hidden on the top of the bumper there that's because there is a second release right above that you pull on that and then the tailgate opens like a door so you have two different ways you can open the tailgate depending on which one is most convenient for the type of stuff you're about to throw back there unfortunately you don't have the ability to open the tailgate from the key fob like most modern pickups do press a button it falls down they don't have that on the ridgeline but they do have these two trick tailgate openings instead and the ridgeline's next interesting quirk comes inside the bed itself you can see when you open this up it looks like just a standard pickup truck bed nothing too unusual except that this part actually opens up like a trunk you have this little latch here you can pull it and then it pops open and then you have a trunk within your bed like you would have on a regular sedan you can put stuff in here keep items in here if you don't want them exposed to the elements or potentially stealable when they're sitting in your open bed that's a pretty cool feature and it gets even cooler than that because this in-bed trunk has a drain plug right over here you can just twist this pull it out and then you can drain this whole area which means that you can theoretically fill this up with ice and make it a cooler and there's some big benefits to that it means if you want to add more ice to your cooler you can just take your truck to the store you don't have to pick up the cooler walk into the store that whatever you just dump the ice right into your truck now the drawback is that you have to get all your stuff out of the bed before you can actually use your in-bed cooler but it's an interesting idea and if you don't want to use it that way you can just use it like a normal trunk for normal stuff and two other interesting things about this in-bed trunk for one thing it locks you can see right by the handle there's a little key slot you can twist it and lock up the trunk if you want and there is an emergency inside trunk release in here this is classified as a storage area like a trunk large enough for you to kidnap someone and so there's a little inside release that someone can use to climb out just like the trunk of a car which is kind of funny and by the way one other notable quirk in the ridgeline's bed you have this little storage compartment over to the right side of the bed you can twist these little tabs and open it up and when you do you can see well it's a storage compartment now this is sort of a base level ridgeline but higher level ones have an electrical outlet in here so you can use it to charge stuff or power stuff when you're tailgating or camping which is obviously a very convenient spot for an outlet and next up we move inside the ridgeline but there are quite a few more quirks in here than i expected it's a surprisingly quirky truck one interesting item is the gear selector old school truck you just pull that column shifter and stick it in gear not this thing you have little buttons in the center you can see here park is on the top for reverse you pull back on this little switch that puts you in reverse neutral is also a button and then drive is in the middle surrounded by silver because that's the most important one certainly a rather interesting gear lover common to honda products but unusual to everybody else now right below the gear lever another quirky button is this one which has a picture of a truck on sort of like a rough road although if you look closely you can see that is clearly the outline of a ridge line which is a nice little touch but anyway you press that and that selects your drive modes so you tap that to go through your different drive modes and you can see they are displayed in the gauge cluster all of the different drive modes available to you in your ridgeline and this button allows you to select between them now speaking of the gauge cluster here is a very interesting ridgeline quirk you look in the gauge cluster and you don't see a speedometer you have the tachometer over on the left and then on the right you have like the fuel gauge and the temperature but there is no speedometer in here very strange your speed is given to you in this giant digital readout at the very top of the gauge cluster which is like unusually wide like large print speedometer for old people truthfully it's strange to me they've chosen to prioritize the tachometer over the speedometer this is an automatic transmission truck you have paddle shifters but not me doing much shifting and so that's kind of a strange decision but your speedometer is only displayed in that digital readout at the top and speaking of the gauge cluster another quirk i like over to the left of the steering wheel you have the eco button in this car they call it econ and it's this green circular button but the thing i like about it is you tap that button and then like a leaf appears in your gauge cluster to let you know you're in the more economical driving mode and i guess that makes changes to the driving experience to make the car more efficient but you can tap and untap that button to have the leaf appear and disappear right in front of you and speaking of the gauge cluster it's worth noting this is a pretty old school traditional gauge cluster setup with pretty limited functionality you do have a center screen in here in full color and you can scroll through a few different items trip odometers tire pressures and you can also use this screen to like change your radio preset or the source that you're listening to am fm a music player and turn up the volume but that's about it there's not too many different things you can do in this gauge cluster screen again sort of a more old school traditional gauge cluster setup and a limited functionality and that's also true if you go into the center of this interior to the infotainment screen now this is a reasonably large screen and it's very responsive to your touch incredibly so just like a smartphone and it's intuitive to use but again pretty limited functionality this is a relatively basish model ridgeline it doesn't have all that much stuff including no navigation in here so this is a pretty simple infotainment system you'll primarily be using just for music playing and phone looking up contacts and making calls and frankly that's about it not too much functionality built into this infotainment system although it is relatively easy to use for the small amount of stuff that you will be doing with it with that said few things worth noting in here for one the infotainment screen on the 21 ridgeline now has apple carplay which will be a big deal for a lot of buyers that alone will make the screen seem more useful and offer more features and make it seem more modern the 21 ridgeline also adds a volume dial in the past they didn't have a dial and i guess you would just tap to increase the volume and that's very annoying but now you have a dial you can adjust it more easily i also like the fact that contained within this infotainment screen in the app menu you have a calculator i haven't seen that on too many other cars you can be doing calculations while you drive down the road with your built-in ridgeline infotainment system calculator but it's worth noting this truck is pretty basic in some other ways too this has a 41 000 ish sticker price and it's missing some features i would expect at that number for example no heated seats in this truck or leather seats i can excuse that that's not really that big of a deal meanwhile no sunroof in this truck again i can excuse that not a huge deal to have no sunroof manual seats in this truck no power seats for forty one thousand dollars and that's kind of getting a little less excusable you start to expect power seats at this price point but how about the fact that the visor mirrors don't have lights you can see the place where the lights would go but there are no lights there they cheaped out on visor mirror lights and i gotta say at 41 grand i want my sun visor mirrors to have lights that probably save them like 10 cents a car just put that in with that said the materials in this truck are pretty good for the money frankly they're not excellent or luxurious or particularly high quality but they're fine they look durable they don't look too cheap and it's pretty nice in here you also get a long list of standard safety features in this truck you get lane keeping assist which will steer you back over if you start to drift out of your lane you have adaptive cruise control standard in this truck and you have forward collision braking so if you're about to hit something the truck will stop automatically those are some pretty good features especially to have standard especially on a truck not all of them do and frankly if i had to choose between those features being standard and illuminated visor mirrors i would choose those features but it really should have illuminated visor mirrors too and next up we move on to the back seat of the ridgeline which has some neat tricks up its sleeve for instance right now you can see it's doing its normal thing it's being a seat with a little bar underneath it to support it in place but if you pull on this little handle on the side of the seat you can see the seat bottom lifts up and that bar automatically sort of retracts into the seat bottom so that it can be as flush with the rear of the car as possible now you can do this on both sides and when you do then you have a very large compartment back here where you can store stuff i'm not sure if it's big enough to get in a bike but you know big stuff that won't fit in the back or you don't want it to get wet you can stick back here if you put the seats up to turn it into more of a cargo area now the especially cool thing here is you can put the seat bottoms back down and you see the little seat bar underneath extends back down to go back to its position supporting the seats but the cool thing about this bar is that because the seat is only supported by a bar you can put stuff under the seat even if you have people sitting here so most vehicles in back have like a whole assembly under the seat and you can't access underneath the seat but with this truck because you only have the bar supporting the seat you can get items under the seat and out of sight and that is a really cool touch it's very versatile in back whether you put the seats up or not with that said aside from the trick seat situation there's not really all that much going on back here it's also pretty tight back here it's worth noting the passenger seat is in a pretty normal spot and i'm sitting here with my knees pretty much digging into the passenger seat headroom is fine but legroom not really all that great frankly it seems smaller than a honda pilot back here so the ridgeline's pitch of giving you all the benefits of a crossover with the addition of a pickup bed not entirely true because it isn't quite as large in the back seat as a crossover probably would be it's also worth noting back here you don't have any charge ports for devices higher level ridgeline trims do have charge ports back here but this one doesn't just some plastic blanks where those charge ports would go and again for 41 000 that seems like an oversight i would expect rear charge ports back here it's just what everybody wants in 2021. and finally we move under the hood in the ridgeline you can see the engine this is a 3.5 liter v6 with 280 horsepower which makes it slightly more powerful than a toyota tacoma now tacoma people say yeah but this is a car engine which is true this powertrain is also used in the honda pilot crossover it's not like a dedicated truck power plant but the benefit is you get better gas mileage this gets 18 miles per gallon city 24 on the highway with all-wheel drive which is pretty good for a truck frankly and by the way the engine is just one of many things shared with the honda pilot the engine is shared i mentioned the platform is shared but also basically the entire front end of the ridge line is the front end of the pilot here i'm covering the back and you can see this is just a honda pilot right well you take it away and you can see the bed is back there but this is pretty much a pilot from the middle of the truck on forward the front seats the engine it's all pilot and that's okay it makes sense to do it that way and frankly it's probably easier and cheaper for honda to build a pickup truck when they're already making half of it as something else you just stick a truck bed on the back as for the styling i think it's fine the pilot front end lends itself to a pickup truck okay but i did like the original ridgeline better to me it was more distinctive and kind of cooler than this one which really just looks like half a pilot half a truck the first one kind of seemed like it had more imagination behind the design and so those are the quirks and features of the 2021 honda ridgeline now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the ridgeline uh and i gotta say this whole off-road package it's so interesting honda they get why trd is successful they just don't have a vehicle to like pr deify so they have this like mimicking hpd and they come up with a passport to try to be like the forerunner but it's not as good and you just see honda and you want to shake them and be like develop a car and you can do this too instead of these sort of like half-hearted attempts but beyond the half-hearted off-roader attempt i have to say i do like the ridgeline i have never driven a second generation ridgeline before and it drives well it drives like you'd expect from a crossover and i can understand why a lot of people would like this car if you want a crossover or you're used to crossovers or suvs but you don't necessarily need the cargo space anymore you know in closed cargo space maybe you working on a house your kids are off to college whatever you want something that's uh truckier you know but not too trucky this is a pretty good vehicle and given the sheer number of people in america who buy trucks every year it seems to make sense to me that maybe there's a market for people who want a truck but don't necessarily want a truck with that said it's definitely a small market these are not tremendously popular vehicles but my understanding from the dealerships that i work with is the people who want them really want them there's not really a good alternative you know they could go get a tacoma or a gladiator or whatever but the reason they've showed up here is they want like that more car-like ride that feel that they're used to with like a pilot and on the road you certainly get that i mentioned the fuel economy benefit earlier it's not a huge it's a couple miles per gallon better than a tacoma not a lot of miles per gallon better but the driving experience boost is pretty substantial it feels a lot more car-like in here than every other truck in fact it feels like i'm just driving along in a honda pilot to be totally honest the entire interior up here looks basically just like a pilot same steering wheel same dash everything um and that's how it feels the benefit is though that you get the added practicality if that's what you're looking for one drawback i do have at this truck is it's pretty expensive and 41 000 for this one with all-wheel drive and with the off-road package but you know missing some of the stuff i mentioned earlier manual seats and a 41 000 vehicle it's a tough sell no sunroof no heated seats a lot of people are going to say well truck buyers don't care about that but the thing is i think ridgeline buyers are different from truck buyers and part of the reason they get this vehicle is because it provides some of those car like comforts they're used to so giving them 41 000 price point and not having some of those features it's not ideal it's probably not the greatest value of course with that said i look at the used market and ridgelines hold their value pretty well like a lot of trucks do frankly because they're workhorses but in this case there's limited production there's not that many of them and well-kept ridgeline especially first gens keep their value well ultimately i actually think it's kind of funny you know a lot of people have been asking me for a ridgeline review for a long time and i didn't review this generation when it first came out so i was kind of waiting for a refresh which we got in 21. and one of the things that i'm struck by with this ridgeline generation is kind of boring and that's intentionally so like it's a versatile truck um but it's not like cool or crazy or exciting it's just intended to be a mashup of like a relatively competent truck and a very competent crossover and that's what it is that's how it drives and that's how it feels and if that's what you're looking for i mean if you go to the toyota dealer and you feel the tacoma is too trucky the ride is too rough it's more capability than you really need which i totally understand this thing makes sense and so that's the 2021 honda ridgeline this will never have the off-roader enthusiast following as the toyota tacoma but it's a great truck for city dwellers who want to carry around some stuff in the back without having to sacrifice crossover driving experience and frankly based on the number of these that i see around i suspect there are more people like that than you might think anyway now it's time to give the new ridgeline a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the ridgeline is a bit odd looking sort of cross over in the front pickup in the back not ugly but just fine and it gets a five out of ten acceleration zero to sixty is about seven point two seven point three seconds it gets a one out of ten handling is fine secure but not fast or thrilling and it gets a 3 out of 10. same deal with fun factor despite the hpd decals and some off-roading intended mods it just falls short of actual off-road capabilities which really limits the fun here and it gets a 2 out of 10. finally cool factor these are sort of cool they're rare and a bit interesting and it gets a 3 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 14 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features the ridgeline is reasonably well equipped and it gets a 6 out of 10. comfort is fine a bit better than a lot of pickups and it gets a 6 out of 10. quality is good the interior's only okay a bit above average but honda reliability is legendary and it gets a seven out of ten practicality is fine normal for a four-door pickup truck and it gets a six out of ten finally value and the rich line is okay it's not too expensive for a truck but it falls short on some truck things and the off-road version isn't really much of an off-roader it gets a 5 out of 10 for a total daily score of 30 out of 50. added up and the doug score is 44 out of 100 which places the ridgeline here against some relevant vehicles the ridgeline ties the ford ranger which is decent company but it falls short of the off-roady trucks like the chevy colorado zr2 and the tacoma trd pro if honda wants to compete with those trucks in that highly popular segment it's going to have to do more than some tires wheels and graphics [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 783,546

Keywords: 2021 honda ridgeline, 2021 ridgeline, 2021 ridgeline review, ridgeline review, honda ridgeline, honda ridgeline review, new honda ridgeline, honda truck, honda truck review, 2021 honda ridgeline review, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: 5R88tfI2kVI

Length: 21min 38sec (1298 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021