Tested: 2024 Honda Ridgeline TrailSport Embraces Off-Road Fantasy (2024)

Americans tend toward an instinctive aversion to moderation. We embrace drama and revel in inhuman scale, a nation of would-be tycoons and indefatigable explorers. We come up with ideas like Mount Rushmore and the Sphere in Vegas and nobody can talk us out of them. We look at the $20 million house on Zillow that has its own go-kart track and think, "That could use some more elevation change around Turn 3." Into this miasma of ambition and delusion rides the 2024 Honda Ridgeline TrailSport, a relentlessly pragmatic machine in search of that narrow subset of Americans guided by rationalism. It's the pickup truck for people who've never owned crypto.

The irony of the Ridgeline's TrailSport trim, new for 2024 and priced at $46,375, is that it represents a calculated step toward fantasy, a calculated attempt to win hearts rather than minds. Which is to say, it's an off-road version of a street-oriented pickup. The primary hardware that effects this mild transformation—limbered-up springs, dampers, and anti-roll bars, along with General Grabber A/T Sport all-terrain tires—doesn't turn the Ridgeline into a Ford Ranger Raptor, but neither does it ruin the Ridgeline's outstanding on-pavement composure.

The Grabbers look the part with aggressive tread design, but they're the same 245/60R-18 size (nearly 30 inches in diameter) as the Firestone Destination LE 2 tires on every other Ridgeline since the 2017 redesign. The Generals were developed specifically for this truck, we'd guess with an eye toward retaining on-pavement civility. Indeed, the Grabbers are quiet on the highway, and the TrailSport's 0.78-g skidpad performance doesn't much lag the 0.79 g we saw from a 2021 Ridgeline Sport HPD or the 0.80 g from a 2017 Ridgeline Black Edition on the Firestones. As we saw with the Honda Pilot Elite and its 0.84-g skidpad performance, Honda's torque-vectoring rear differential—which can send 70 percent of total torque to either rear tire—is a boon for handling.

More surprising than the TrailSport's lateral grip was its braking. At 180 feet from 70 mph, this Ridgeline and its General Grabber boots knocked a full 15 feet off the Black Edition's results. Honda confirms there have been no changes to the brakes themselves, so credit likely goes to the tires, strange as that seems.

This was also the quickest Ridgeline we've tested, cracking off the 0–60-mph sprint in 6.0 seconds and running the quarter-mile in 14.6 seconds at 94 mph. That's mighty quick by mid-size-truck standards, outrunning the Chevy Colorado ZR2 to 60 mph by 1.1 seconds and beating the Toyota Tacoma TRD by a second. The Ridgeline's power delivery is also much different than that of those turbocharged four-cylinder peers. Its single-overhead-cam, 3.5-liter V-6 is naturally aspirated and likes to rev, making its 280 horsepower at 6000 rpm and redlining at 6800 rpm. Honda fans will rejoice every time the V-6 crosses the 5350-rpm threshold, when the intake growl assumes extra urgency in the final pull to the top of the tach. That's when the intake valves switch onto a high-lift, long-duration cam profile—or, in colloquial terms, the VTEC kicks in, yo.

The Ridgeline's i-VTEC (Intelligent Variable Valve Timing and Lift Electronic Control) system can also shut down both intake and exhaust valves on the rear bank of cylinders to turn the V-6 into an inline-three when the mood suits it. This transition is seamless and undetectable, but you might notice it when you fill up—the TrailSport squeezed 17 miles out of each gallon of fuel while in our hands, falling 3 mpg short of the EPA's combined estimate.

The Ridgeline's clever thinking extends to its bed, which features a locking under-floor trunk at the rear (sized for a carry-on bag or two) and a tailgate that can open downward or swing out horizontally. The bed is made of fiberglass-reinforced composite, meaning there's no need for a bedliner because the cargo surface is basically bedliner already—the "Why not build the whole plane out of the black box?" approach. Sadly, 2023 was the final year for the Ridgeline's wacky tailgating audio system, which used the bed itself as a speaker. Even though there's no solid axle and separate frame beneath that cargo box, the TrailSport is good for a respectable 1521 pounds of payload. It can also tow 5000 pounds, which is shy of lummoxes like the Jeep Gladiator (up to 7700 pounds) but is fine for your 22-foot center-console boats and such.

The TrailSport's interior gets TrailSport logos on the front headrests, chunky rubber floor mats, and orange contrast stitching for the seats, steering wheel, and door panels. As for exterior flare, the TrailSport alone is available in Diffused Sky Blue paint, which is currently Honda's signature off-road hue. The front seats are supremely comfortable, the rear seats less so, but the rear bottom cushions can fold up against the backrest to open up the back of the cab for storage. Fold the bottom cushions down and their legs smoothly flip out and lock into place, retaining plenty of room under the seat. How very smart and useful—are you detecting a theme?

As for the elephant in the room, off-road prowess, we were wary of getting too wild with a truck that, in lieu of a front skid plate, has a "skid garnish." But we figured maybe we'd undertake a bit of beach driving, which would seem perfectly within the Ridgeline's use case. So, at Saint Augustine Beach in Florida, we rolled up to a vehicle access checkpoint, where a prominent sign read "4x4s Only." The attendant stepped out, eyed the Ridgeline, and asked, "Is that four-wheel drive?" Sigh—apparently the General Grabbers didn't adequately signal that the TrailSport, like all 2024 Ridgelines, is all-wheel drive. After learning that the beach drive was a lengthy one-way loop and cost $10, we decided that venturing out there wouldn't prove anything about the Ridgeline that we didn't already know, so we turned around and headed back to Florida State Road A1A. It was the rational thing to do.