Hard to believe, but the Honda Ridgeline — the “truck that’s not a truck” — is 20 years old.
Take a look around the well-established players in the truck segment, and you’ll realize the familiar players have all been there for decades upon decades. Then cast your memory (or imagination) back to 2005, when Honda decided to enter the space with a pickup truck of its own. Well, sort of…because against the likes of body-on-frame trucks like the Chevy Colorado, Dodge Dakota, Ford Ranger, Nissan Frontier and the Toyota Tacoma, calling Honda’s approach unconventional was a massive understatement. And that’s especially true as truck review outlets far and wide heaped praise on this unibody utility vehicle (Motor Trend even gave it a gong as 2006 Truck of the Year).
The Honda Ridgeline featured a host of nifty features like an in-bed trunk and a swing-out tailgate, for a start. It also packed fully independent suspension and full-time all-wheel drive, while the design helped it handle more like the familiar cars and SUVs with which Honda had inundated American roads over year the years. But it lacked the heavy-duty construction of a proper body-on-frame truck and without a low-range transfer case, it couldn’t off-road like a proper truck. So some folks wrote it off, and continue to do so into this generation.
Is that a big mistake? Well, we happened to spot this nearly 200,000 mile example out of a Colorado auction we’ve used to pick up some other interesting vehicles in the past couple years. With its blocky design and more car-ish look, does the Ridgeline deserve the flak it gets for “not being a real truck?” Does its 3.5-liter V6 engine actually hold up over the years?
Those are just a couple questions we’re going to look at throughout a new series with this first-generation Ridgeline, which we picked up for just over $4,000 with auction fees. Tommy and Kase take a closer look at our purchase below and offer up first impressions:
