Used 2021 Honda Ridgeline

The 2021 Honda Ridgeline is a midsize pickup with a spacious 4-door cab and two rows of seating. Or it’s a refined SUV with a truck bed.

This dual nature comes, paradoxically, from a one-piece body. Most pickups have a body built on a ladder-frame chassis. It’s an unsophisticated old-school recipe, but it’s rugged, works well for off-road adventures and for towing. The Ridgeline isn’t like that.

It deploys a unibody construction, like the Honda Pilot SUV. The upside is that it can ride and handle like the Pilot, which is composed and comfortable.

All 2021 Ridgelines are all-wheel drive, and this Honda pickup remains a highly capable truck. It has a multi-mode terrain response feature for added capability on slippery surfaces. It will tow up to 5,000 pounds or handle a maximum payload of 1,580 pounds. And the space between the wheel wells allows users to load sheets of plywood or drywall that are four feet wide.

The 2021 Ridgeline also comes with several advanced driver aids as standard. In some rivals, those features are either optional or not available at all. It has taken top scores in crash tests. And the Ridgeline has a fine reputation for reliability, in common with every other Honda.

KBB sampled a 2021 Honda Ridgeline equipped with the HPD appearance package, which gets installed on the truck just after it rolls off the Alabama production line.

In our week with this Honda pickup, we found it to be a quiet and easygoing daily driver, well-suited for running errands and such. But the real highlight of our Ridgeline experience was a trip across Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains to Honda’s proving ground in Cantil, California, where we sampled this significantly updated pickup on a pair of dirt test courses.

Crossing the San Gabriels on the Angeles Crest Highway and Angeles Forest Highway was a delight. While the Ridgeline, with 280 horsepower, didn’t exactly overwhelm us with power, it felt plenty quick because the paddle-shift 9-speed automatic transmission helped the driver keep the 3.5-liter V6 in the thick of its wide powerband.

Body roll in the high-speed sweeping corners was kept in check by the well-damped suspension, which is tuned for ride comfort but helps enable the Ridgeline’s impressive payload capacity of 1,583 pounds. This Honda pickup soaks up bumps with more grace than a typical midsize pickup with a solid rear axle, and it gobbles up the miles with uncanny ease. Our Ridgeline even had adaptive cruise control, which smoothly maintained a consistent gap to the vehicle in front.

On hard-packed dirt at the proving ground, the unit-body Ridgeline showed excellent poise. In a series of lead-follow exercises, the Ridgeline handled moderate-size moguls with ease, and the i-VTM4 AWD system would send up to 70 percent of the power rearward during hard acceleration, allowing for some composed tail-out fun when powering out of corners.

Clutches on both sides of the Ridgeline’s rear differential automatically apportion power to the wheel getting the best traction. While the Ridgeline driver may not sense this torque vectoring happening, it’s apparent in how well this Honda pickup keeps forging ahead in challenging conditions.

On the sandy dirt course, we sampled the Normal and Sand modes. Driven aggressively in Normal mode, the Ridgeline kept going in conditions that would have stranded most 2WD pickups. But the 280-horsepower V6 occasionally would bog as the traction control kicked in to stop the spinning wheels. In the Sand mode, though, the traction control switches off, which allows the V6 to rev higher and make better power, thereby allowing the Ridgeline to blast through the sandy course with remarkable ease. Our tip in sandy conditions: Use plenty of throttle and maintain a light touch on the Ridgeline’s steering wheel.

Based on our experiences on asphalt and dirt, it’s clear to us that the 2021 Honda Ridgeline is multitalented. It’s a pleasant everyday people hauler when needed, but it’s also capable in the dirt and ready to work, thanks to its small but smartly designed bed.

Sharing many components with the Pilot SUV, the cabin of the 2021 Ridgeline can make its occupants forget that there’s a pickup bed behind them, it’s so refined and roomy.

Honda keeps the cheaper-quality plastics to the lower reaches and puts the good stuff in better view. This year adds satin silver accents to the instrument panel, steering wheel, and transmission shifter buttons. There’s no traditional shift lever. This arrangement keeps the center console clean, but it takes some familiarization.

Sport trim also has new fabric seat inserts this year, and all trims receive contrasting stitching. The seats themselves are comfortable and well-shaped. And the Ridgeline’s occupant space is exceptional for the midsize pickup class, in both seating rows.

The lower cushions of the rear seats flip up, making enough space for a bicycle. And since the rear doors were made to open wider last year, accessing and utilizing that space has been made easier.

The 8-inch infotainment screen has been updated this year with crisper graphics and clearer icons, making it more user-friendly. The infotainment system also receives a physical volume control. In almost any other vehicle, that wouldn’t be news, but many of Honda’s creations have required the driver to adjust the volume using up/down functions, much to the annoyance of virtually everyone.

Honda has tweaked the front end of the 2021 Ridgeline. A new grille sits more upright than before, with new LED headlights on either side and a thick chrome strip running across the top. Behind that is a revised hood with a power bulge.

Subtler changes include a slight widening of the Ridgeline’s track, so it looks even more stable. And a fresh rear bumper houses new twin exhaust tailpipes.

The clever “truck section” stays the same, thank goodness. The bed itself is made from a scratch-resistant and dent-resistant composite, so there’s no need for a spray-in liner. It’s accessed by a dual-action tailgate that either opens down (where it can withstand 300 pounds) or opens to one side. And there’s a lockable compartment underneath.

BED LOCK
The bed of the Ridgeline is much more than just somewhere to throw a couple of mountain bikes. As well as a lockable compartment and a drain plug, the bed in the top two trims also has a power outlet and a special audio setup.

INTELLIGENT TRACTION DYNAMICS SYSTEM
Different surfaces require different approaches, adjusting transmission shift points, throttle responses, torque distribution, traction control settings, etc. The Ridgeline’s Intelligent Traction Dynamics System adapts to tricky on-road and off-road conditions with Snow, Mud, Sand, and Normal modes.

Sport trim is the entry-level version of the 2021 Ridgeline, and it’s packed with equipment more frequently seen in SUVs than pickups, including some leaning more toward the luxury bracket. Like active noise cancellation, for example, and tri-zone automatic climate control. Also included are 18-inch alloy wheels, all-wheel drive and keyless entry/ignition.

The Honda Sensing set of safety features (itemized in our Safety Technology section) is also included, along with hill start assist and the Intelligent Traction Dynamics System.

The truck aspect entails the ingenious dual-action tailgate, eight tie-down cleats, bed lighting (LED in the two higher trims), and a lockable 7.3-cubic foot in-bed trunk.

An 8-inch infotainment touchscreen, Apple CarPlay/Android Auto smartphone integration, two USB ports, an auxiliary audio input, and a 200-watt/7-speaker sound system are also standard.

The main way to cram more features into a new Ridgeline is to ascend the trim level ladder. We recommend the RTL over the Sport since it adds heated front seats, leather seating surfaces, leather-wrapped steering wheel, power-adjustable front seats (10-way for the driver, 4-way for the passenger), and a powered moonroof.

The RTL-E has blind-spot monitoring with rear cross-traffic alert (something that could sway us to this trim level), plus automatic high beams, heated steering wheel, self-dimming rearview mirror, satellite radio, a 540-watt sound system, and that truck-bed audio setup. The Black Edition is really just an RTL-E with some visual changes.

The new Honda Performance Development (HPD) package brings a special grille treatment, bronze-finished wheels, and fender flares. Other options include a protective film for the front end, door edges and handles, and door sills. Plus roof rails, crossbars, running boards, tonneau cover, cargo net, and a first aid kit.

A 3.5-liter V6 endows every 2021 Ridgeline with a muscular 280 horsepower and 262 lb-ft of torque. A 9-speed automatic transmission (with paddles) is standard. And torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system that can send 70 percent of the power to the rear wheels is now standard as well.

The V6 has a cylinder deactivation feature and a stop/restart function to optimize fuel consumption. Speaking of fuel, regular gasoline is fine.

Maximum towing capacity of the 2021 Honda Ridgeline is 5,000 pounds.

3.5-liter V6
280 horsepower @ 6,000 rpm
262 lb-ft of torque @ 4,700 rpm
EPA city/highway fuel economy: 18/24 mpg