One year ownership report.
Like
many others, the pandemic caused us to place more value on privacy and space
than we had had earlier. While I
personally always wanted a single family home, one within walking distance of
train stop was out of our reach and the wife needed that in order to get to
work. After 8 months of social
distancing, WFH, and dealing with apartment complex kids having
screaming/rock-throwing contests at all hours, buying a single-family house
further out became more realistic(as long as we managed expectations).
House acquired, one rare instance where the SO needed to
head to the office I would drive her to a metro stop in the mornings and pick
her up in the evening-sometimes we would just carpool back together if I was in
DC for grad school that day. The
situation wasn’t that bad, but we determined that we would like a second
vehicle. I wanted a truck, SO vetoed a
half-ton, so when the Maverick was announced with the hybrid train and high gas
mileage, I ordered it in June of 2021 and awaited delivery.
And waited. And waited. I never got a confirmation email, but I did call Ford who verified the order was in the system. The date the order went in was about when I would expect, the day after I went to Ted Britt Ford in Chantilly placed it. Summer turned to fall and fall turned to early winter. Not a whisper of a build date, all while I saw build-date emails plastered all over the Maverick Truck subreddit, often with my exact trim, package build, and color. During this time my 2012 Fusion w/170k miles on it became more and more cranky. While at a WV State Park in January 2022, the battery decided to die and standing in the snow coming down a local saw me trying to jumpstart it with one of those battery charger things and got us up and running. SO said they would be onboard with just getting something off the lot at this point.
On to the Ridgeline
By
January 2022 the car market was well and truly overheated. Half-tons like F-150s were still off the
table, but Rangers and Ridgelines were the two I really wanted anyway. I didn’t
consider the Taco or Frontier, both of which are somewhat antiquated and more
like dedicated work trucks/off-roaders.
This was gonna be a home depot crawler and road tripper, in terms of
workload.
Anyway,
saw on autotrader a white 2019 Ridgeline, RTL-E trim, with about 17,000 miles
on it asking about $38k. Website
helpfully informed me that this was a few percentage points below KBB. Went out
to the dealership, test drove, came back, asked how much it was, salesman just
rotated his monitor and pointed at the listing “this, plus doc fee and
tax”. Doc fee was the same that Ted
Britt had quoted to me for the Maverick lo those many months ago. Carfax report was clean. In-and-out, 2hr adventure including
financing.
The NART
The 2019 Ridgeline is the first iteration
of the second generation Ridgeline. In
contrast to the most recent refreshed Ridgeline, which had a external facelift
to make it look more aggressive in addition to a new transmission, it unabashedly
sticks to it’s Honda Pilot origins. An
extraordinary amount of components are shared between it and the Pilot, to the
point that the front end looks makes it look like the popular family SUV dead
on. Sitting in my Father-in-laws Odyssey
a lot of components are shared there as well, with the obvious difference being
the Odyssey has the newer “push button” transmission vs the traditional
shifter. The 3.5 liter, 280-hp engine is
shared across the Odyssey-Pilot/Passport-Ridgeline lines.
The heritage of the Ridgeline has caused it to get a
reputation of being Not A real Truck, or a NART. Unibody construction seems to be a key
characteristic of NARTs, as does not sufficiently aggressive-looking front
ends. I have had coworkers tell me that
the Maverick is more truck than a Ridgeline even though both are unibody
because (1) Ford makes it (2) It looks more like one. Same coworker will say they don’t like the
current generation of Ranger because the front is “too rounded”, which I have
interpreted to mean not boxy/aggressive enough.
I’ve seen criticism of the interior of the Ridgeline, calling it too close
to SUVs because of comfort accoutrements, but given we are now in the era of
$100k trim half tons, methinks they protest too much.
Regarding trucking capabilities, the Ridgeline has AWD
system that sends most of the power to the front wheels. A composite bed comes standard, rather than a
metal bed with a spray-in liner. Payload
on the RTL-E trim is about 1450lbs, and towing with the 7-pin is around
5000lbs. The Truck bed is about five and
a half feet long, tailgate up. In other
words, this is not a work truck per se, but it will do nearly anything for most
people. The Gen 2 refresh has a “Honda Performance Development” package that,
as far as I can tell, mostly adds fender flares and a decal. An off-roader this is not.
The bed is shallow, and as a result it is easy to access anything you put in the back. The in-bed trunk feature, and the trunk is big enough that you can fit a small human in it, is probably the standout feature of the Ridgeline. When I had ordered the Maverick I knew I would be putting a tonneau cover on it; I am now unsure if I ever will for the Ridgeline given the incredible trunk. Friends/family who knock the Ridgeline for being a NART sort of fall silent at seeing the trunk. There’s also an electrical outlet in the bed! I haven’t used it though, so I will not be commenting on it beyond its existence.
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| The Tailgate both drops traditionally and swings out. |
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| The trunk is fantastic and adds a lot of utility. |
The Road-tripper
The Ridgeline has excelled. I’ve put about 6,000 miles on this since
January, the bulk of it being trips around West Virginia, to the Eastern Shore,
and to northern New England. My daily commute is about 20 miles total, and on
days I must go into DC I usually take the Fusion. The road-trip mileage is
around 27mpg, even in hilly places like New England and West Virginia. This is 7 miles less than the lifetime
average of 34mpg in my Fusion, so not all that bad. During my commute it floats at around 21mpg,
and when the weather is cold long trips are more around 23 mpg.
The ride is smooth. Having driven a eCVT for the past 10 years I
had forgotten what a traditional transmission is like, so it is noticeable when
it shifts gears, but otherwise it tends to ride better than my elderly
Fusion. The driver’s position is high
enough that you have excellent visibility, while not the ungodly front ends of
some trucks that are taller than me.
While noticeably wider than my Fusion, and in fact despite being a
marketed as a quasi-compact truck it is wider than some midrange truckers like
the Tacoma, it’s easy to maneuver around.
An odd thing we noticed; the cabin is noticeably darker at night than
the Fusion. This may be due to the
nature of a truck cabin, the fact that the rear windows came tinted, or a
combination. Keeps the cabin cooler in
the summer at least.
Over the winter break we stayed at a cabin in West
Virginia, and it handled like a dream in the icy conditions and -17F temps that
the car’s thermostat was telling us was going on outside. Climate control was such that it didn’t seem
like it could possibly be that cold out. The main think that popped was how quickly the psi dropped for the tires, which are factory Firestones, but nothing could be done for that.
Concluding thoughts
We haven’t had any problems
with the Ridgeline so far, and “Truck-things” wise it has seen a lot of use as
a Home Depot/Nursery crawler, piled high bags of mulch/dirt being no
problem. The interior accoutrements make
it a dream to be in. Ultimately, a truck
this size with these capabilities is what I really wanted, even if I had
ordered a Maverick Hybrid, and I’m glad for it.
When my in-laws test drove the Maverick and said that it plain sucked
and felt cheap, of course it’s cheap it’s a cheap truck, they rated the
experience in my Ridgeline much higher. It’s
a pity the Ridgeline isn’t more popular, and Honda’s solution is to make it
look more aggressive, but dems the breaks in truck culture.
