2018 Honda Odyssey Review
2018 Honda Odyssey Review Minivans are the antithesis of awesome, and a few folks would likely rather be viewed sporting an adult diaper on their head to get a week than be spotted driving a minivan for even an hour. But we here at Car and Driver-among the gas-huffingest and, let’s face it, most judgmental gearheads around-absolutely enjoy minivans. Truly, our fondness for minivans springs from the similar area as our affection for supercars, sizzling hatches, and also the like, that is to say our deep respect and enthusiasm for autos with a purity of objective and also the ability to execute on it. Heck, we enjoy things with sliding doors a lot that we have now two of them in our long-term check fleet right now, a Chrysler Pacifica and this freshly unboxed 2018 Honda Odyssey.
The Honda arrived in our parking lot in top-spec Elite kind, sporting Pacific Pewter metallic paint in excess of Mocha leather upholstery. That suggests it’s gray, and the seats are dark brown. There was some believed given to testing a lower trim-we’d previously invested time together with the leading model in the course of our first-drive experience-but the Elite packs every single a single of Honda’s goodies in 1 box, and there are several new tricks we wanted to live with more than the program of our 40,000-mile check.
These involve CabinWatch and CabinTalk, two parental aids that use visuals and audio, respectively, to aid preserve much better tabs around the kiddos during the second and third rows, along with the Magic Slide seats that allow you to push together-or pull apart-the outboard second-row captain’s chairs once the center seat is removed. CabinWatch displays to the front center screen the view (in shade through the day, and making use of infrared light at night) from a little camera embedded from the ceiling just ahead on the second row. Turns out young children nevertheless wish to be Tv stars, as ours adore to perform when it is activated, accomplishing goofy dances, building humorous faces, plus the like. But more significant, the program makes it possible for us to keep our eyes pointed forward while still checking to the youthful ’uns. CabinTalk makes use of a microphone to amplify front-seat occupants’ voices by means of either the van’s speakers or, far more usefully, the rear-seat entertainment system’s headphones, pausing Blu-ray videos on the 10.2-inch display and allowing you to generate like an airline pilot. It’s a enjoyable parlor trick but seems to be the sort of characteristic that gets made use of infrequently.
Working with the onboard AT&T 4G LTE connection, the rear display can display output from built-in apps, such as Epix movies and PBS Young children Tv, and it can stream content from smartphones connected to the Wi-Fi. We have yet to really test the system’s entertainment capabilities, but with our Odyssey by now flying hither and yon for the duration of summer-vacation season, we’ll no doubt have plenty to report in subsequent updates.
2018 Honda Odyssey Review Features:
Other items baked into our Elite van-per usual Honda practice, you'll find almost no stand-alone options on any trim level-include the handy HondaVac onboard vacuum cleaner, 11-speaker audio, navigation, a heated steering wheel, a power sunroof, automatic wipers and high-beams, and LED exterior lighting. The Elite also packs an 8.0-inch infotainment touchscreen at the best from the center stack that features crisp graphics, but we’ve found some of the virtual buttons to be too tiny and hard to press while to the move, even for any front-seat passenger, ahem, undistracted by driving. You can find many far more features we could list, but Honda prints brochures to get a reason.
2018 Honda Odyssey Review - Interior:
The ride quality has impressed us so far, with expansion joints and frost heaves ironed smooth despite the Elite’s largish 19-inch wheel-and-tire package. The steering is faithful if a bit light for some of our drivers-there’s some back and forth about preferences between the Pacifica’s as well as the Odyssey’s steering-but the van tracks straight and true. For those not into steering for themselves, the Elite’s standard Honda Sensing bundle of driver-assistance and safety-tech features includes a lane-keeping-assist technique (LKAS) that, in conjunction with all the adaptive cruise control, provides a measure of semi-autonomous functionality above 20 mph (below which the adaptive cruise annoyingly deactivates). Provided that the lane is properly defined, the LKAS automatically steers to maintain the Odyssey between the lines. Our early experiences say it does so with varying success; straight-line cruising is little problem (you nevertheless need to deliver a minute amount of steering input each so often to let it know you’re there), but we haven’t worked up the trust to let the technique handle anything a lot more than gentle sweepers, as it sometimes appears to lose the plot until the van is just about to cross the outer line before applying steering to regain the proper path. It is possible more exposure will find us warming to LKAS’s nuances, but so far it seems a lot more suited for Nebraska than, say, the hills of West Virginia.
Whilst our Honda hasn’t yet made it to those destinations, we've got ventured to Kentucky and to Ohio-getting to Kentucky from right here usually involves Ohio, but these were separate journeys. There’s plenty of time remaining in our 40,000-mile test for it to wander significantly farther afield, as well as to reveal major foibles. But we’re enjoying our time together with the Odyssey, and neither it nor the Pacifica will get a lot time to interesting off between trips. It turns out that minivans are far more our style than goofy headgear.
2018 Honda Odyssey Review
The Honda arrived in our parking lot in top-spec Elite kind, sporting Pacific Pewter metallic paint in excess of Mocha leather upholstery. That suggests it’s gray, and the seats are dark brown. There was some believed given to testing a lower trim-we’d previously invested time together with the leading model in the course of our first-drive experience-but the Elite packs every single a single of Honda’s goodies in 1 box, and there are several new tricks we wanted to live with more than the program of our 40,000-mile check.
These involve CabinWatch and CabinTalk, two parental aids that use visuals and audio, respectively, to aid preserve much better tabs around the kiddos during the second and third rows, along with the Magic Slide seats that allow you to push together-or pull apart-the outboard second-row captain’s chairs once the center seat is removed. CabinWatch displays to the front center screen the view (in shade through the day, and making use of infrared light at night) from a little camera embedded from the ceiling just ahead on the second row. Turns out young children nevertheless wish to be Tv stars, as ours adore to perform when it is activated, accomplishing goofy dances, building humorous faces, plus the like. But more significant, the program makes it possible for us to keep our eyes pointed forward while still checking to the youthful ’uns. CabinTalk makes use of a microphone to amplify front-seat occupants’ voices by means of either the van’s speakers or, far more usefully, the rear-seat entertainment system’s headphones, pausing Blu-ray videos on the 10.2-inch display and allowing you to generate like an airline pilot. It’s a enjoyable parlor trick but seems to be the sort of characteristic that gets made use of infrequently.
Working with the onboard AT&T 4G LTE connection, the rear display can display output from built-in apps, such as Epix movies and PBS Young children Tv, and it can stream content from smartphones connected to the Wi-Fi. We have yet to really test the system’s entertainment capabilities, but with our Odyssey by now flying hither and yon for the duration of summer-vacation season, we’ll no doubt have plenty to report in subsequent updates.
2018 Honda Odyssey Review Features:
Other items baked into our Elite van-per usual Honda practice, you'll find almost no stand-alone options on any trim level-include the handy HondaVac onboard vacuum cleaner, 11-speaker audio, navigation, a heated steering wheel, a power sunroof, automatic wipers and high-beams, and LED exterior lighting. The Elite also packs an 8.0-inch infotainment touchscreen at the best from the center stack that features crisp graphics, but we’ve found some of the virtual buttons to be too tiny and hard to press while to the move, even for any front-seat passenger, ahem, undistracted by driving. You can find many far more features we could list, but Honda prints brochures to get a reason.
Also read: 2018 Honda Ridgeline ReviewHonda’s initially 10-speed automatic transmission-and the first ever for any front-wheel-drive vehicle-reports for duty on the Touring and Elite trims, which signifies it’s handling the gear swaps in our van. (Other Odysseys use a nine-speed auto.) We detected some funky shifting behavior from your 10-speed throughout our initial drive, but no staffer has reported anything amiss with ours so far, and it shifts unobtrusively and rarely if ever busies itself pecking all-around to get a gear. Odysseys with this transmission also get engine stop-start functionality, which stays out on the way about likewise as such a system can. Initially, we wondered if we’d ever experience it in the course of a weeklong trip, where the engine failed to shut down even once, but others have observed it since working regularly at stoplights and in traffic, firing up the 3.5-liter V-6 smoothly and quickly. That V-6 is velvety and, with 280 horses, powerful, and it can yank our 4574-pound Odyssey to 60 mph in 6.7 seconds, tops amid its competitors, including the slightly extra powerful Pacifica. By way of 3400 miles, the Odyssey has returned 24 mpg combined, 2 mpg superior than what the EPA says to expect.
2018 Honda Odyssey Review - Interior:
The ride quality has impressed us so far, with expansion joints and frost heaves ironed smooth despite the Elite’s largish 19-inch wheel-and-tire package. The steering is faithful if a bit light for some of our drivers-there’s some back and forth about preferences between the Pacifica’s as well as the Odyssey’s steering-but the van tracks straight and true. For those not into steering for themselves, the Elite’s standard Honda Sensing bundle of driver-assistance and safety-tech features includes a lane-keeping-assist technique (LKAS) that, in conjunction with all the adaptive cruise control, provides a measure of semi-autonomous functionality above 20 mph (below which the adaptive cruise annoyingly deactivates). Provided that the lane is properly defined, the LKAS automatically steers to maintain the Odyssey between the lines. Our early experiences say it does so with varying success; straight-line cruising is little problem (you nevertheless need to deliver a minute amount of steering input each so often to let it know you’re there), but we haven’t worked up the trust to let the technique handle anything a lot more than gentle sweepers, as it sometimes appears to lose the plot until the van is just about to cross the outer line before applying steering to regain the proper path. It is possible more exposure will find us warming to LKAS’s nuances, but so far it seems a lot more suited for Nebraska than, say, the hills of West Virginia.
Whilst our Honda hasn’t yet made it to those destinations, we've got ventured to Kentucky and to Ohio-getting to Kentucky from right here usually involves Ohio, but these were separate journeys. There’s plenty of time remaining in our 40,000-mile test for it to wander significantly farther afield, as well as to reveal major foibles. But we’re enjoying our time together with the Odyssey, and neither it nor the Pacifica will get a lot time to interesting off between trips. It turns out that minivans are far more our style than goofy headgear.