Colin

Cnet review:

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dom

Lot of tech for sure. I've never had a car that had a quarter of those toys.

But I scratch my head when I see the HDMI and RCA jacks in the third row. That is quite a screw-up. Once I strap my kids into the middle row, I have to go to the back to hook up a device via RCA? Headphone jacks I get, because there are wireless sets available.

I wonder, I have tons of movies loaded onto an iPod touch, is there anyway to hook up a touch via one of those inputs for playback on the screen.

Otherwise looks good, still not crazy about the exterior but the interior looks great. And lets face it, that`s 80% of the battle when it comes to a minivan. Although I thought the interior of a Pilot was terribly cheap, so hopefully this is Acuraesque as most reviews thus far claim.

iforyou

iTrader: (1)

Yea....that's total bs....I would imagine it would actually save them money if they produce MORE 6ATs instead of making two different trannies.....I still think the real reason is that they are afraid of repeating that major issue with the 5AT....it's a way to limiting the damage by slowly introducing the 6AT instead of going all out at the very beginning?

Legend2TL

On the 1G Pilot it's the opposite, the RCA and headphone jacks are on the 2nd row. Nothing on the last row which use the wireless headphones, this is good since the wireless Honda headphones my daughters never like them much. I'm guessing it's in the back because the only place to have put the jacks would have been the B pillars and with the adjustable front seats it would have been difficult to integrate them into the pilars without having some interference. I'm assuming the center console on the 4G Oddy has teh swing away feature like 2G and 3G.

Quality wise which gen Pilot are you refering to? We have a 2003 and it's quality of materials and workmanship are very good.

dom

The latest gen. 2007/2008 onwards? I also thought the first gen Pilot (which is yours) was very good. Seems interiors of Honda and Toyota products have been getting worse. Sounds like that's not the case in the new Ody. We'll see.

dom

As luck would have it I just saw my first 11 Ody on the road. It was white. I have to say, the styling just doesn't work IMO. My wife even wondered what they were thinking. Maybe it will grow on me but the rear of the van just has way too much going on. The lightning bolt was a big mistake IMO. It would have looked much better as a straight line. And yes, the door track is simply too big and visible, maybe it was the white but I doubt it.

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-3024I3.../dp/B0043975PC

dom

Cool, thanks. Thinking of picking up a 3rd party screen for my 07. Need something that can hook up to a Touch or at least take USB.

Infamous425

seeing it in person i dont mind the lighting bolt at all. but the door track is atrocious. stands out in any color including black.

F23A4

My wife and I were eyeballing one last week at a Honda dealership and we both would tend to with you and your wife.

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

Saw one on the highway last week. Front is nice, rear looks way too busy and dumpy all at the same time.

phile

saw my first one on the road, it definitely looks smaller due to the lowered height and more aerodynamic profile.

lightning bolt isn't as bad in person either.

rear overhang is just as long and high off the ground as it is in pictures.

not bad but not as great as it could have been. I still think it looks better than the Sienna, which is just one angry whale on wheels IMO.

Moog-Type-S

I finally saw one on the road yesterday.

The rear end looks so massive, and the "lightning bolt" makes it look like the back half of the van is sagging off the frame.

I dunno what Honda was thinking. I know they were trying to spice up the van a bit, but this is a mess. The Sienna is the best looking van on the market now...bar none.

dom

I think the 'Bolt' probably looked good and seemed like a good idea at some point in development. And was simply lost in the move to production. IIRC, the bolt looked ok on the concept van we saw earlier in the year.

dom

The difference? The door track was a quarter of the size on the concept.

Legend2TL

Saw one a few weeks ago, looked OK for a minivan. The windshield is really raked backward. Overall it looks better than the Sienna but that lightning bolt and door track opening need to be reduced in size.

dom

Bringing the Ody to the dealer on Friday to have the tranny inspected. Should give me some time to have a good look at the interior of the new Ody.

pttl

Now it looks like someone just decided to attach a longer back end on a van. oops maybe this is too critical.....I should have said - I love it!

dom

Well, spent some time in the 11 Ody yesterday and I can definitley say the interior is on par with the previous gen. Maybe some cost cutting here and there, like the cover to under floor storage, but overall it was just as good and laid out better than my 07. Definitley bigger on the inside too. Especially in the rear with the seats up. Tons of room.

Reason I went to the dealer was to have my tranny looked at. When it settles into 5th its rough between 75-80km/hr and then smooths out at higher speeds. Dash rattles, steering wheel vibrates, etc. Went for a ride with a mechanic and he noticed it as well.

Left it with them for the day, they ran more tests and are now recommending a new transmission. They'll be sending the paperwork to Honda for approval on Monday. Sort of speechless at this point. Although its all under warranty.

I blame Moog for recommending I get an Ody over the Highlander. Just 3 short years ago Moog was still recommending Honda products.

pttl

Whaaa? On an 07 Ody?

Any other word on Honda auto trans of that time frame? I'm suddenly not as confident in my 06 TL.

fsttyms1

^ i dont trust ANY Honda automatic at this point!

majin ssj eric

The concept does look quite nice. Typical Honda. Just build the concept dammit!!!!

fsttyms1

Honda knows how to make a nice looking concept vehicle, they have a hard time making the real thing look good.

Infamous425

i just noticed another difference. the concept has gloss black exterior pillars while the production has matte black pillars which stand out more(ugly)

AsianRage

Did you have to carry more than 4 people at a time?

I'll be in the market some a vehicle that will allow my wife to sit in the same row with two car seats. A Highlander, or any entry-mid size SUV, won't ever fit my need.

MyCarIsntInMyWifesName

I wonder if the new 6spd will go kaboom.

fsttyms1

probably unless its made by someone who actually knows how to build a auto trans

pttl

Who does build Honda transmissions? Shouldn't they be broke by now?

Infamous425

honda builds their own transmissions, thats the problem

smarty666

I'm just glad I don't have one. I'll let someone else be the guinea pig on Honda 6spd autos before I'll be one! .

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

Hasnt the 6AT been out for over a year in the MDX? Anyone hear of any issues thus far?

dom

Once in a while, yes which is why a 3rd row was a requirement. Went with the Ody because the Highlander was a terrible drive. Never needed the wife to sit between the kids. Besides, removed the middle bench in the second row so there would be easy access to the rear.

neuronbob

I though Aisin built Honda's trannies until the Great 5-speed Transmission Fail of the early 'oughts.

Moog-Type-S

oof! Another Honda transmission nightmare.

Honda was making reliable products 3 years ago

My oddy was good for the first year, then after that all bets were off.

....but I have to say I dodged a bullet with an 06. Honda pretty much screwed the pooch on the '07-up changes. Changes FTL.

iforyou

iTrader: (1)

I believe Honda designs their tramissions and they contract out to some other company(s) to build them. One of companies f***** up a part of it in QC and hence we got this famous 5AT tranny problem. IMO Honda was at fault for not checking carefully.

Legend2TL

Honda design and assemble their transmissions. Some of the components are made by Honda but many are made by outside high production machine shops. One of those manufacturers was mostly responsible for the faulty countershafts that causes many of the 5AT failures along with some design issues.

Legend2TL

AFAIK, Honda have been designing and manufacturing their AT and MT gearboxes since the start. Maybe Aisin made the S2000 gearbox?

iforyou

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the correction

TSX69

Honda MiniVan Tops in Fuel Economy

The redesigned-for-2011 Honda Odyssey is longer and wider than other major minivans, but it's still tops in fuel economy.

With sleeker styling and lighter weight than its predecessor, the roomy, V-6-powered 2011 Odyssey with 6-speed automatic transmission is rated at 19 miles per gallon in city driving and 28 mpg on the highway by the federal government.

For 2011, Variable Cylinder Management, which can automatically deactivate engine cylinders when they're not needed, such as when the van is coasting, is standard on all Odysseys. It previously was reserved for the top Odyssey models.

Best of all, perhaps, for everyone riding long distances in this van, the Odyssey has voice recognition commands for navigation and song selection as well as a 16.2-inch, ultrawide, split-screen-capable display that folds down from the ceiling aft of the front seats for good viewing by 2nd- and 3rd-row passengers.

The system has HDMI technology, too, and because of its wide, rectangular shape, this screen does not block a driver's view out the back of the vehicle. This rear entertainment system is on certain Odyssey models.

But all Odysseys still have the 1-hand, fold-and-flip down, split rear seats that fit smoothly into a recessed cavity to make way for a flat cargo load floor.

Starting manufacturer's suggested retail price, including destination charge, for the 2011 Odyssey is $28,580.

The test model, a top-of-the-line Odyssey Touring Elite with all available factory features already on it, was priced at $44,030.

All Odysseys come with a 248-horsepower V-6 and automatic transmission.

Competitors include the 2011 Toyota Sienna, which has a starting retail price of $27,270 with 187-horsepower 4 cylinder and $29,910 with 266-horsepower V-6.

Another top-selling van is the Dodge Grand Caravan with a starting MSRP, including destination charge, of $25,830 for a passenger van.

Minivans, as they're still called, waned in popularity in the last 10 years as families moved to sport utility vehicles, which have become increasingly car-like in ride and amenities.

But the Odyssey remains a consistent top seller, though quality ratings have slipped.

In the latest J.D. Power and Associates Initial Quality Study released in June, before the 2011 Odyssey was out, the predecessor Odyssey didn't rank among the top 3 minivans. Toyota's Sienna, the Kia Sedona and the Grand Caravan held those spots.

Still, it's easy to see why families — young and old — can enjoy this new, 4th-generation Odyssey.

Interior space is generous and pleasant, and this includes a noteworthy 42.4 inches in the third row seats. Indeed, thanks to the lengthened body, passengers in all 3 rows have at least 40 inches of legroom.

Middle seats — 3 separate sections in the test van — could move forward on their tracks by a decent 1.6 inches, so passengers can arrange seats so everyone shares good legroom.

And the new, extra-wide sliding door openings were a dream as elderly, less mobile passengers entered and exited without fuss. Everyone liked that the passenger floor is flat, too.

Passengers also commented about the nicely padded the leather-trimmed seats. They don't feel like thick, hard, foam but have some give in them as people sit down.

Plus, the Odyssey has the most anchor and tether points for installation of child safety seats of any normal production vehicle — 5. So families with quintuplets will have no problem.

The wide front center console is well thought out. The covered storage area is large enough for most purses, and the top of the cover has a high enough lip to keep cell phones and other loose articles from tumbling out during turns. The console can even be removed entirely, if a driver needs to move from the front to the back seats without going outside.

The navigation screen in the dashboard is large, and letters and numbers are good-sized and easy to read.

The Odyssey is a tad bit lower to the ground now, so the step up is a bit easier to make. But everyone continues to sit up well above the road, and the driver and front passenger, in particular, can see above cars and down the road. And the ride is quite smooth. I felt only big road bumps a bit harshly.

To make the new Odyssey more aerodynamic, the windshield is more steeply raked than before, and the roof rack is gone.

So wind noise is reduced. Passengers still hear a good amount of road noise from the tires, though, and sounds from a loud diesel semi-hauler came through readily into the test Odyssey.

Driving the test van, I had ample power from the 3.5-liter, single overhead cam V-6 — no matter if I was merging into city traffic or passing on a highway.

Torque peaks at 250 foot-pounds at 4,800 rpm, and since the new Odyssey is about 75 pounds lighter than its predecessor, the vehicle moves right along.

Shifts from the 6-speed transmission were smooth, and while I could hear the engine as it accelerated, the sounds were pleasant, not strained, even when the van carried six people.

Note that the 6-speed is in Touring and Touring Elite trim level Odysseys. All others have a 5-speed automatic, but even with that, the government mileage rating is class-leading among V-6 vans: 18/27 mpg.

The bright green letters "ECO" illuminate every time the engine cylinders are deactivated to conserve fuel. Honest, that's the only way a driver knows the van is saving fuel by using fewer engine cylinders.

All Odysseys come with the usual standard safety features including curtain air bags, antilock brakes and stability and traction control.

TSX69

2011 Honda Odyssey

While we shouldn't be shocked by anything coming out of Madison Avenue, part of me is incensed to hear Honda using Judas Priest to advertise its new Odyssey. That's right, the opening riff of the greatest album from the gods of heavy metal deployed, not in the service of Satan, but to sell a minivan?

While the 18-year-old headbanger in me would like to stand up and rail against Honda ("If you think you're going to make me think your stupid soccer mom taxi is cool, well, You've Got Another Thing Coming!"), the truth of the matter is that Honda's ad agency nailed it. We're not teenagers anymore. We've grown up and had families. I even own a minivan, and, indeed, there is at least one Judas Priest CD that lives in the center console. And after driving the new Odyssey for a week, I have serious van envy. Honda has crafted the ultimate, state-of-the-art people mover, even if it's not much more than some flashy design and incremental improvements in areas like powertrain, fuel efficiency and equipment.

The biggest changes in the redesigned Odyssey are obvious at 1st glance, as it no longer looks so much like a conventional minivan. Honda's ideas on styling have been polarizing as of late (read: the Accord Crosstour is ugly as sin), so it's smart that the company chose the Civic as the donor of the new minivan's face. The venerable compact is still the most complete and fluid execution of modern Honda design language, and what it lends to the Odyssey works to make Honda's largest vehicle appear smaller and sleeker. It helps that the Odyssey has a lower and much wider stance, having been stretched over 2 inches across.

While its front and back sections don't exactly mate up well in profile, each works on its own. The flying buttress D-pillar helps the rear end achieve a more contemporary look, like that of many crossovers. Honda is calling the quirky jog in the beltline at the Odyssey's C-pillar a "lightning bolt," and it's more than just a clever device to give the vehicle a dynamic, moving-forward look. That little dip makes the third-row windows bigger and increases the feeling of roominess for passengers in the way back.

Honda clearly wants to make the back of the bus a more desirable place to ride, and it's come up with some enticing new features to serve the rear-seaters' needs. The 1st is that the 3rd row now has 2 sets of LATCH anchors, while the 2nd row can be had with 3. These carseat attachments mean more than horsepower to breeder parents, and the Odyssey has more of them than the competition.

The 2nd row is interesting in that Honda has decided not to follow Chrysler into its folly of designing seats to fold into the floor like those in the 3rd row. Understanding that it's the rare day when you want to use your minivan like a pickup truck, Honda instead designed a system that allows the 2nd-row seats to be moved laterally to make more room for passengers or car seats, while improving 3rd-row access through the center in the process. The optional 2nd-row-center seat can even be moved forward to place an infant carseat closer to mom and pop in the front. This is smart engineering trumping gimmicky marketing.

Up front, the cockpit is functional and the controls are similar to any number of other Honda or Acura vehicles (save for a dash-mounted shift lever). While having a central LCD display with a field of buttons and one large controller knob below seems to be the industry norm these days, it's unfortunate to see Honda abandoning the touch-screen interface that made its in-car navigation systems the class of the industry a decade ago. Also upsetting is Honda's decision to place the climate controls above those for the audio and navigation systems, a huge flaw when you consider that many drivers will set an automatic temperature setting and then rarely look at it.

Behind the wheel, the Odyssey is a nice driver, though it no longer feels as much like an Accord. It's not that this new version of what used to be the best driving minivan on the market can't corner, but that the steering doesn't provides as much feel as its predecessor.

If the Odyssey drives more like a minivan than a station wagon now, it certainly doesn't accelerate like 1. Honda's 3.5-liter V6 makes 248 horsepower in the 2011 Odyssey, along with 250 pound-feet of torque. It revs quickly and has great throttle response, and Honda has done a masterful job of matching the gear ratios of the new, optional 6-speed automatic transmission to make the Odyssey move. This is a minivan than can go quicker than it should, at least with babies onboard.

Honda has also included its Variable Cylinder Management (VCM) system as standard equipment. This shuts down 2 or 3 of the V6's cylinders when they're not needed, improving fuel economy. This and some other measures, including a 50-to-100 pound weight reduction, have helped the Odyssey boast some impressive EPA numbers for a roughly 4,400-pound vehicle. With the standard 5-speed automatic, the van is rated at 18 mpg city, 21 combined and 27 on the highway. The 6-speed automatic improves each of those numbers by a single mile-per-gallon, and that's tops among any vehicle that can carry 8 passengers.

No minivan these days would be complete without some sort of video screen for the kids, and Honda has gone big in this department with an optional 16.2-inch widescreen that folds down from the headliner in the 2nd row. (A more conventional 9-inch screen is also available.) Before you get too excited about having a display larger than a MacBook Pro in the Odyssey, however, understand this is really just 2 normal-sized displays mated into a single, wide LCD panel. While it's possible to stretch out a single video source to cover the entire screen in a grotesquely distorted aspect ratio, the more useful application is to allow each side of the vehicle to select a separate input source for their half of the screen, choosing from the DVD player, composite auxiliary inputs and an HDMI port.

While this HDMI port is bound to get video game geeks excited, it's more of a way for Honda to future-proof its van than anything else. The screen in the Odyssey is still pretty small, making most modern video games designed for widescreen, high-definition displays difficult. Your World of Warcraft addiction will have to be a lot more severe than mine to want to play in the back of an Odyssey.

As much as I like the Odyssey, I do have three caveats that are absolutely worth mentioning. The 1st is an audio system that had issues outputting varying levels of distorted sound across all audio sources throughout a 1,000-mile roadtrip, making even podcasts unlistenable. I'm trusting the tester was merely defective, and that this isn't a widespread problem with Honda's Active Noise Cancellation system, which uses the audio system to make the interior of the vehicle quieter.

The 2nd issue is an aesthetic one: Why can't Honda hide the Odyssey's door track? Honda knows the importance of styling, given how much its redesign of the Odyssey was based on making a van that looked different from any that have come before. So why is it, then, that this company continues to allow these giant gashes on either side of the minivan to persist. Toyota and Chrysler tuck their door tracks under the 3rd-row window, and such a configuration would make all the difference in tidying up the Odyssey's busy rear, which looks too much like it has been on the losing end of a battle with a guardrail.

My final complaint has as much to do with my own financial situation as it does with Honda, but $40,775 to get an Odyssey with the 6-speed automatic seems a wee bit dear. That's an exceptional amount of money when the base model costs just $27,800. Whatever happened to paying an extra $1,500 for the better transmission? Why is the 6-speed transmission bundled with a nav system and DVD player? This kind of business practice is akin to a cell phone provider offering a cheap plan with a token few minutes for 30 bucks, and then charging twice that amount to get enough minutes to actually use your phone.

As fantastic as the Odyssey is, there's a bigger question at hand: Can it (or Toyota's "Swagger Wagon," or a nicely revamped Grand Caravan from Dodge, or the all-new Nissan Quest) convince the masses that minivans aren't the automotive equivalent of wearing sweatpants? Surely there are a sizable amount of people who wouldn't drive a minivan even if it came with a personal invitation from Rob Halford himself. But Honda thinks that this market is primed for growth, and that's reasonable speculation. With plenty of consumers making the SUV-to-crossover jump in the interest of cutting their fuel bills while maintaining a capacious interior, giving minivans another look is the smart thing to do.