2006 Honda Ridgeline Test Drive

Look Out Detroit

With the passenger space of a large SUV and enough utility to work like a truck, Honda has hit another home run.

Should You Buy This Car?

The Ridgeline isn't a substitute for even a mid-size work truck, where you need a longer bed and the passenger space doesn't really matter.

But if you do want passenger room (the Ridgeline has more of that than any compact or mid-size pickup), standard all-wheel-drive (with a locking differential), power window and door locks and very clever packaging, then this truck might be for you. And if you value a refined ride, the Ridgeline is simply a cut above anything else on the market, whether full- or mid-sized.

Our tester was the top-of-the-line RTL model with leather seats and a navigation system, but you might be just as happy with the base RT edition, which does without the fancier baubles, but still has AWD, three 12-volt sockets in the cabin, electric sliding rear glass (a small window glides sideways to aid cabin venting) and even a height adjustment for the driver's seat.

It all sounds pretty darned smart — and it is. And while it may spell doom for Detroit in the near term, we keep hoping vehicles like this show the domestics that there's more than one way to build a vehicle that will sell. You might claim that GM already tried this kind of thing with four-wheel steering and clever sliding roofs, and that those vehicles tanked. But there's a problem in that logic; GM didn't do a very good job marketing those trucks, and they also didn't sell them at prices people thought were reasonable.

There's another point, as well: The Ridgeline is a unique animal, not the same model Honda's already been selling with another feature package that boosts the sticker to $40,000 (like GMC's failed offerings often were). If you don't try to sell too many, and you make the product its own thing, the cool factor goes way up. Now GM and Ford need to figure out how to be leaders in such trends, not followers.