2011 Honda Odyssey: What's It Like to Live With?
Read the latest updates in our long-term road test of the 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring as our editors live with this car for a year.
What do you want to know about?
- Introduction
- Good. Real Good.
- Fragile Plastics
- Style Fault
- The Doors
- I Ratchet Therefore I Prosper
- Rated Good for Roof Strength
- You Can Be My New Friend
- Grab a Handful
- Praising the Second Slider
- First Real Road Trip
- Oh Noes!
- No Fear
- Ski Trip Part 1
- Ski Trip Part 2
- Ski Trip Part 3
- Ski Trip Part 4
- Ski Trip Part 5
- Ski Trip Part 6
- Our Favorite Caption
- You Write the Caption
- Another Recall
- Clear Gauges, Soft Suspension
- Minivan Ruler?
- Lunch Carpool
- Sunken Dipstick
- Wide Track
- Thirsty??
- So How's It Drive?
- Liftgate is High Enough
- Throttling Back
- Minivan, Maxi Spend
- Shifter Overshoot
- Rising Fuel Prices
- The Frozen Wallet
- Test Gear Sherpa
- Track Tested
- Hits (and Passes) 5,000 Miles
- Will it Fit?
- Three-View Back-Up Camera
- 'Nope, Never!'
- Minivan As Hotel
- You Caaaaan't Have It
- Another SF Road Trip
- I Don't Have Kids...
- Service Due Soon
- Windows Don't Open
- Hauling the Sandbox
- Power Liftgate Video
- Of Seats And 4x8 Sheets
- Cool Box or Cold Box?
- Audio Review
- Mom Stuff
- Neck and Neck in Sales
- Oil Life Now at 10 Percent
- First Service
- A1 Service
- Doors
- Will the Board Fit?
- Mini In The Way It Drives
- Return Leg of the Diaper-Changing Road Trip
- Rear Entertainment Still Worth It?
- Rear Entertainment Review
- It's Super Nice Back Here
- Hauling Stuff. Again.
- The Minivan Experience
- Comes With the Territory
- Nothing To See Here
- Auto Locks Make Me Insane
- Moar Hauling
- 10,000-Mile Milestone
- Slow Satellite Radio Tuning Video
- XM Tuning. The Alternative.
- The Good and the Bad After a 700 Mile Weekend
- The Range Champion of Minivans
- No Special Rates for Minivans?
- Preferable to a Suburban??
- Thirsty in Town or Just a Short Fill?
- USBs Leak?
- Full Power, Baby
- Cruising Comfort
- Just In Time
- Truck? Who Needs A Truck?
- Now That's A Load
- The Efficient Way To Tune Satellite Radio
- Right-Size Me
- iPhone iPod Hiccup
- Interior Video Tour
- Going to See Grandma
- Great Air Conditioning
- Hauls a Nine Foot Rug
- No Proximity Entry?
- This is Why You Get Nav
- A Nice Feature
- Four Dudes, One van
- Suspension Walkaround
- 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring vs 2007 Honda Odyssey
- Minivan Gone Wild
- Camping Tool
- Getting Some Sun
- Freeway Sighting
- A-Pillar Portholes
- Two Non-Minivan People Ponder the Second Row
- Four on the Board
- Fists of Fury
- One Thing...
- Needs New Oil Soon
- 15,000 Miles
- Nooks and Crannies
- The Steering Wheel and the Dead Pedal
- Just Because
- Feeling the Pressure
- Hooked
- 11.11.11 >>> Vegas!
- Rollin' Deep to Vegas
- Power Door Switches
- Service When?
- Service Due Now
- More Than a People Mover
- Odyssey Eats Road Gator, Lives
- Middle Row Middle Seat Defeat
- Service Update
- New Tool Box
- 4x8s Fit, But Not Easily
- Easily Removed 2nd Row Seats
- Safe and Dry and Room for Five
- Well, If I Could Make a Few Changes
- Satellite Radio Interface Could Be Better
- Versatile Cupholders
- Why So Blue?
- Relief from the Horcrux
- The Sound of Silence
- Hauling our new 2012 Jeep Wrangler Wheels and Tires
- Fuel to Burn, Roads to Drive
- Will the Bus Fit?
- Enduro Machine
- Lifesaver
- What A Minivan Does To You As A Parent, Part II
- Best Fuel Range In Its Segment
- Gimme Gimme Gimme
- Sliding Doors, The Band-Aid for Tight Spaces or Laziness
- One Month Of Minivan
- Beyond Function
- The Past 20,000 Miles
- Cargo Capacity
- Rearview Camera Options
- Career Day
- Check Tire Pressure Warning
- Sliding Door vs. Fuel Pump
- Low Fuel, Low Fuel, Low Fuel
- 12 Months Later
- Video Review
- Building My Bar
- The S-Class of Minivans?
- Wrap-Up
Introduction
Our staff is growing up. We've got two new babies and a new hire with a 5-year-old, so it seems fitting that our long-term test fleet should add a little bulk. In the spirit of baby announcements, please join us in welcoming the 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring to our growing family. This rather large delivery took place on February 1, weighing in at 4,541 pounds and measuring 202.9 inches.
What We Got
There are five Honda Odyssey trim levels, with our Touring model ranking second only to the Touring Elite. Included with our Topaz Metallic minivan are 18-inch alloy wheels, dual power-sliding doors, a power liftgate, a sunroof, foglights, front and rear parking sensors, leather upholstery, memory settings for the driver, retractable third-row sunshades — deep breath — a fold-down armrest for third-row passengers and both the navigation and rear-seat entertainment systems. Opting for the range-topping Touring Elite would've added xenon headlights, a blind-spot warning system, an upgraded rear-seat entertainment system with a 16-inch HD widescreen video monitor (with HDMI input) and a premium 650-watt, 12-speaker surround-sound audio system.
Like all 2011 Odysseys, ours is powered by a 3.5-liter V6 that makes 248 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque. Touring and Touring Elite models get a six-speed automatic, while lower trims make do with a five-speed. The EPA estimates fuel economy at 19 city/28 highway mpg and 22 mpg in combined driving.
The 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring is priced at $41,535 with no notable options to kick that figure higher. That makes our latest addition the second most expensive minivan on the market — $2,495 less than the Odyssey Touring Elite. Fortunately, Honda provided the car to us for 12 months, so those children of Edmunds still have a college fund.
Why We Got It
The entire minivan segment has seen significant revisions or complete redesigns for the 2011 model year, and the new Honda Odyssey benefits from a roomier interior, better fuel economy and a longer list of features.
In our most recent minivan comparison test, the Odyssey (in midrange EX trim) tied for 2nd with the new Nissan Quest. The 1st-place Toyota Sienna SE is already in our long-term fleet. Before the Sienna, the 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan was the last minivan in our lot. While the new DGC is a vast improvement, it still finished last in the comparison test.
This latest long-termer addition is almost $10,000 more than the Odyssey EX from the comparison, with plenty of other bells and whistles to evaluate. Are these added features worth it? Do they function as advertised? These are questions that we hope to answer in the next year.
In our reviews, we list the Odyssey's agile handling, fuel economy, quiet cabin, configurable second-row seat and easy-to-fold third-row seat among its strengths. On the other end of the spectrum, we count the high sticker price and button-heavy dash among its drawbacks. We'll see how these hold up during the next 12 months and 20,000 miles.
Follow the long-term road test blog for updates about our 2011 Honda Odyssey.
Current Odometer: 1,373
Best Fuel Economy: 23.8 mpg
Worst Fuel Economy: 19.6 mpg
Average Fuel Economy (over the life of the vehicle): 20.8 mpg
The manufacturer provided Edmunds this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.
Follow the long-term road test blog for updates about our 2011 Honda Odyssey.
Our new long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring has already established itself as the Oldham family's go to ride. In its first month of service the Odyssey has hauled my clan to a taping of American Idol (I think J. Lo. just winked at me.), a long weekend at grandmas, tennis lessons, a matinee of Gnomeo and Juliet and the mall. It has also done school drop off duty and it has taken three adult couples to an overpriced, overrated italian restaurant by the beach.
How good is the new Odyssey? Good enough that my wife, who would rather walk than drive a minivan, said we should think about replacing her Mazda CX-9 with one of these.
I was shocked. Pleasantly. I'll remind her that she said it when the Mazda's lease is finished.
Yesterday I sang the Odyssey's praises. And I stand behind those words. But this morning I was cleaning out the van so it was tidy for the next editor and I found these scratches on the back of the center console and on the side plastic of the cargo area.
Considering the van only has 1,600 miles on it, I find this disappointing.
I know my kids can be rough on a car, but these plastics, especially in a vehicle built to haul rug rats, should be more resistant to this kind of damage.
I have read a lot of people bagging on the styling of the Odyssey. Overall, I think it's a good looking van, but there is really only one aspect that gets to me and that's the C pillar right at the back end of the sliding door.
That short, sharply downward angle of chrome is really odd. The way it stops at the rear of the door reminds me of a fault line where two plates are slipping against each other.
Do you think the styling is a disaster, or do you like the Odyssey is a good looking van?
One neat thing caught my eye as I was getting behind the wheel of the Odyssey last night: The front doors have not one, but two tiers of storage. Quite an unusual sight, I thought.
If doors were buses, the Odyssey's would be one of these things, and you don't see those puppies rolling down the boulevard every day.
The two bins are kinda substantial. The lower level of storage is also designed to accommodate a taller water bottle.
I wondered if maybe this was a minivan thing that I hadn't been aware of — did the Toyota Sienna's doors also have two tiers? They don't (see below).
This setup strikes me as an incredibly clever use of space on the part of the Honda elves. And perhaps this kind of practical thinking is what success in the brutal minivan wars is all about.
Have you ever seen this kind of two-tired door setup on another vehicle or is it exclusive to the Odyssey?
OK, warning, this is a blog entry about a very minor feature that only the fussiest minivan owner or prospective minivan owner is going to care about. I fall into the latter group.
The front armrests in our 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring ratchet. That is, you can set them into one of three positions. Although Honda does not delineate it on either its media or consumer site, not all 2011 Odysseys have this feature. For instance, the cloth upholstered Odyssey EX does not (you get only one armrest position and it's too low for me), so I could not let it win our recent minivan comparison test. Kidding. Maybe. Carry on with your evening.
This week, the 2011 Honda Odyssey earned the Top Safety Pick accolade from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, by picking up a Good rating in the roof strength test. It was already rated Good for frontal offset and side-impact crash safety.
Although the IIHS did not make a video of its Odyssey EX victim undergoing the test in which a large metal plate is slowly pushed against one corner of the vehicle's roof (because, says communications VP Russ Rader, "it's kinda like watching grass grow"), the engineers did take a couple photos.
To get a Good rating in this test, a vehicle must withstand a force of at least 4 times its own weight before the roof sustains 5 inches of crush. The Odyssey EX checked in at 4,398 pounds and withstood 22,666 pounds of force — 5.12 times its own weight.
Odyssey IIHS ratings
I have been looking for a new pet long-term car since the Mazdaspeed 3 left the fleet. The Countryman seems like the obvious choice, or maybe the Mustang, but right now, I am really enjoying our 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring.
This is no surprise, really, as I dug the previous Odyssey, too, but this new van takes the steering feel and body control to a new level for minivans. This isn't just a case of a jaded writer getting out of a sports car (or sport compact, whatever) and being surprised by how good the pedestrian vehicles of the 21st century are. The way this Odyssey handles is as, or even more, enjoyable as many of the sedans in our fleet, and it's certainly well ahead of the Sienna. Driving to the mall in it (shown above) is just fun. I'll be doing this a lot over the next 11 months.
There is plenty to like about our new Odyssey, but I'm still mixed on the new styling: the lightning zag at the rear window, the additional bulk and the increasingly exaggerated Tonka body and grille styling. From some angles, I like it. But I wonder why designers intended to make it look as heavy (heavier?) than it is.
Were they going for rugged? Some kind of muscularity? Can I take this on trail?
Case in point: the new "H." It's just large and...LOUD.
New for the 2011 Odyssey EX trims and above is this slick feature: a second-row jump seat that slides forward nearly six inches. Depending on reach, wingspan and seating position, the driver can grab the slider bar and yank the seat forward without turning around if necessary. And with two independent latch points, it's clearly made to shove emergency rations of Cheerios into the hands of a wailing child while on the go. Not that we'd encourage that kind of driving, but you know, theoretically, you could.
Turns out that a second row bench, or variation of, ranks high on The Wife's list of minivan priorities. This was news to me. I prefer the Nissan Quest's arrangement myself: two captain's chairs that fold flat and create a flat — although elevated — load floor. The Missus, on the other hand, thinks that dual captain's and a center console is a horribly inefficient use of perfectly good kidspace.
To get flat-floor function from the Odyssey, you have to pull all three second row seats (the third row folds flush into the floor). In that configuration, the Odyssey gives you more vertical space than the Quest, and one person can easily tumble, remove and haul out the Ody's seats. Still, I'll sacrifice the vert space for the Quest's convenience for camping, hauling the amps and drums, or converting to a metal palapa for summer beach days.
I'd also take the Quest's CVT over the Odyssey's busy transmission. Don't know what it is — the new multi-discs in the torque converter's lock-up assembly, cylinder deactivation, hyper ECO calibrations — but I could never find the Ody's sweet spot when driving around town. It requires a firm roll on throttle to respond, and when it does, it's a sequence of shudders, thumps and quick lurches of engine braking. I couldn't manage to keep it smooth in regular stoplight and stop-sign driving.
Could chalk it up to driver error, but I'm curious to hear what my colleagues think as the Ody makes the rounds.
Today our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey will take its first real road trip. It'll be a 320-mile run from Santa Monica to the ski resort of Mammoth Lakes. The Odyssey and I will be back next week. Check back then, and I'll let you know how the Honda handled the task, which should include some snow driving.
Honda is recalling 33,341 Odyssey minivans due to defective windshield wipers. Of course, Scott Oldham just headed to Mammoth for a ski weekend in our long-term Honda Odyssey. The defect is supposed to affect the wipers in cold weather areas. Oopsy.
Here's the direct quote from the NHTSA:
“If the front windshield wiper blades become frozen to the windshield and the wiper motor is switched on, one of the front windshield wiper linkage rods may bend or separate from the motor due to insufficient stiffness of the rod.”
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call phrasing.
We contacted Honda to ask about our particular vehicle. Looks like they caught the problem in mid-December so not all Odysseys are affected. When the full VIN list becomes available, we'll know for sure. Good luck, Scott.
There's nothing mini about the modern minivan. This Odyssey measures almost 17 feet long, plus it's wide and tall enough to blot out the sky.
The idea of driving one has to be pretty scary to a newbie.
But as I tell the minivan newbies I meet, there's nothing scary about driving the Odyssey. The Honda guys work hard to make sure that every one of their cars drives in a natural, intuitive way which makes you feel like a better driver.
Some of this comes from the rigorously formatted driving position, which is a model of great ergonomics. Some of it comes from the great field of view from the driver seat, something to which Honda also pays close attention. And part of it comes from the smooth, deliberate and predictable way the vehicle responds to the controls.
As a result, almost anyone can take the wheel of a Honda Odyssey and feel as if they were born to drive a minivan.
Of course, it would be great if they would stay out of the fast lane during my drive to work in the morning.
On Friday I announced that I would be taking our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey on its first real road trip, a 600 miles ski trip to Mammoth Lakes, CA.
Immediately one of you called foul. Carguy22 commented, "Um, I thought we voted on this? I don't remember the Odyssey winning. Were we vetoed Scott? Haha."
Well, the answer is yes, I did veto the winning vehicle, which was the 2011 Acura TSX Wagon, but for a very good reason: Our luggage didn't fit in the Acura.
The skis were the problem. They were just too long for the Acura's cargo area.
At first the plan was to rent the skis up in Mammoth. If we stuck to that plan the TSX Wagon would have been large enough. But at the last moment we decided to rent the skis near home and drive them up to Mammoth along with all of our other stuff and of course the four members of the Oldham family.
Suddenly the Acura was too small, and I wasn't strapping anything to the roof. So I switched to the Odyssey, which has about 500 times more cargo and people space. (Honestly I wanted to take the Raptor, but the missus wasn't into our luggage riding alfresco.)
Once we made the switch to the minivan, packing the car was simply an exercise in throwing everything in. Literally.
And the Odyssey proved to be ideal for the trip.
Our 300-mile drive from Santa Monica north to Mammoth Lakes was in dry and unusually warm conditions. And our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey was in its element out in the countryside, where the urban sprawl quickly became desert landscape and ultimately snow covered peaks.
The Odyssey proved perfectly comfortable and wonderfully quiet at highway speeds. Seat comfort is exceptional and the van's endless list of amenities (navigation, sat radio, heated seats, triple zone climate controls) worked as advertised and kept every member of the Oldham clan in the happy zone.
And it has plenty of motor.
Even at over 7,000 feet the Honda's 248-hp 3.5-liter V6 always had enough in reserve should a burst of power be needed. And those grades never had the van wheezing even with four overpacked Oldhams aboard. This van is a mountain climber.
However, it isn't perfect. The previous generation Odyssey packed an athleticism that's just missing from this new version, and I miss it. And there are three culprits that keep this van from being as fun to drive as its predecessor.
The first is the transmission. If finds its top gear too quickly and won't give you a kickdown unless you ask with a very heavy right foot. This makes the Odyssey less responsive than the 2005 Odyssey we had in our fleet six years ago. There is a button on the Honda's shifter marked D4. Push it and the 6-speed becomes a 4-speed. You essentially lock out the transmission's top two gears. I find myself using this often around town and even on the road trip to get the transmission quickly into a lower ratio and the engine up to a higher rpm.
The second problem is the steering, which is less precise on center than before. Simply, it just feels less sporty than it could. Or it did. Or it should. I can also say that the new Odyssey doesn't have the magical locked-in feeling of its predecessor, which had an incredible stability out on the highway and in crosswinds.
And the Odyssey's third shortcoming is its brakes, which work well, but have a soft pedal. Again, like the steering, they just feel less sporty than the brakes on the 2005 model.
To be clear, the new Odyssey performs well and it drives great, but after my 600-mile road trip I've concluded that it just doesn't have the sporting nature of the van it replaced. In that van six years ago, I distinctly remember shocking an Infiniti G35 driver on a mountain road, when I passed him on the outside. I'm not sure I would do that in this van, which is more luxurious in its tuning and its nature.
Personally, I'd like there to be an Odyssey SE. Know what I mean?
As soon as I saw this poster hung inside the Mammoth Mountain Gondola, I knew I should have taken our Raptor.
Although we drove from Santa Monica to Mammoth Lakes in dry, warm weather, the drive home was a different story. It began snowing an hour after we arrived and Mom Nature continued to dump the white stuff through the entire weekend. When we woke Monday morning conditions were questionable. We starting thinking we weren't going to make it out.
And neither did anyone else. When we were checking out of our hotel, the bellman asked if we had four-wheel drive, snow tires and chains. When I told him no, no and no, he basically said we were screwed. "When you get stuck," he said, "walk on back and we'll find you another room for the night."
Wimps. We were fine. The Odyssey got us through without a moment's drama. In fact, we were going around guys with chains like they were standing still. Now, I will admit that the drive from our hotel to the entrance of Route 395 is flat or down hill. Uphill in these conditions may have been another story. Especially if you need to come to a complete stop. And it's only a 15-20 minute drive. Once you reach 395, the elevation has changed enough that the road is more black than white.
I'll also admit to keeping my speed down. In fact, I drove these snow-covered roads with the Honda's shifter pulled down into the L position. Okay, I'll also admit that when I parked in front of that post office sign to take the photo above, I mistakenly parked on a slight incline, and for a few seconds we were stuck. Luckily, the Odyssey's 18-inch Michelins and its traction control system supplied just enough grip to get us moving. My wife was not amused.
Required? Give me a break.
On the way out of town we found this women stuck on the side of the road. I stopped to inform her of her critical error. To which she replied, "How do you know it's rear-wheel drive?"
Total trip 705.4 miles. Total fuel used 30.086 gallons. Avg. fuel economy 23.5 mpg.
Considering my drive was at high altitudes, included some weather and some city driving, and the van was hauling four folks and gear, I would call this a strong performance. Plus, I've never been known as a hypermiler.
For reference the EPA says the Odyssey should average 19 mpg in the city and 28 on the highway.
I also should praise the Odyssey's range. Over 500 miles on a tank. I like that.
Thanks to jefe2000 for this week's favorite caption. Here are the others that made us laugh:
Excuse me officer, this minivan is doing some unwanted 'sightseeing'. (missmymiata)
Excuse me, but I believe I was expecting a Swagger Wagon instead.... (technetium99)
How many WNBA players can fit in an Odyssey? One! (rumblerss)
I know it's a "mini" van, but this is just ridiculous! (ccoll5)
She was a long tall woman in a red dress. (technetium99)
Welcome to Momument Valley. (gregnv)
Next time on "Will It Fit?"... (vt8919)
Just one of many Odd-ysseys. (vt8919)
Sorry ma'am. Your junk is too big to fit in my trunk. (fsunole)
Picking the right vehicle to visit the Soccer Mom memorial is important. (agentorange)
Yeah, I drive a minivan ... got a problem with that? (speedynk)
Honda Odyssey, make every journey epic. (ergsum)
It's nothing to write Homer about. (ergsum)
Picking up a statuesque blonde with a minivan is never easy. (ergsum)
... over use of hard touch materials ... (snipenet)
What was your favorite?
To the winner:
You can select one of these three prizes:
- Top Gear Season 15 DVD or Blu-ray
- Top Gear puzzle book (not for kids)
- red fuzzy dice
Editor in Chief Scott Oldham sent me this photo of our Honda Odyssey taken somewhere on the way to Mammoth.
What is your caption?
We'll post our favorite this afternoon. And yes, we still have some Top Gear stuff for prizes.
It has not been a good month for the Honda Odyssey. First, there was the windwhield wiper recall and now there is a potential problem with the driver windows.
Honda has recalled 2,800 of the 2011 Odyssey minivans because the front windows may shatter into the cabin.
Here is the quote from the NHTSA:
"There is a potential failure with the driver and front passenger door power windows in which the window may come off the track, causing the window to become inoperative and preventing it from being rolled up or down, or it could drop into the door," said NHTSA in its recalls summary of the problem. "The window may shatter into the passenger cabin, causing a risk of injury to the vehicle occupants."
We'll let you know if our Odyssey is affected.
Got some quality seat time in the Odyssey this weekend and these two things jumped out at me. First, the gauges. I like them. They're not overly stuffed with too many icons and a hundred hash marks on every dial. Sure, I would prefer numbers on the temperature gauge and all, but this is a minivan after all. Honda delivered the basics and it is good.
And about that suspension. A little too soft for my tastes, and I say this based on the minivan marshmallow scale. No one wants a stiff, "sporty" ride in a family wagon like this, but the Odyssey always managed to bridge the gap between a precision feel and a comfortable ride quality.
Now it feels like Honda dialed back the precision a couple notches in favor of a little more cush. Maybe the average family will like it, but I don't. Just feels to detached for me. I think the Sienna might have the edge in this department now, at least the SE version.
I couldn't help notice that in a few of our polls (in the right column) when we gave you the choice of several cars for road trips, the Honda Odyssey always gets lots of votes but the Toyota Sienna gets very few.
On paper, they are both fantastic vehicles. In our Minivan Comparison Test, the Toyota Sienna came out the winner. But you never vote for it.
Why is that?
Yesterday, four of us climbed into the long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring for a 10-mile trip up the coast to lunch. I ended up with the keys, which was good as I am a control freak, plus as noted previously, I've taken a real shine to the Odyssey.
We usually talk about how simple it is to get kids in and out of a minivan. Although all of us were able to buckle our own seatbelts, I was struck by the sheer personal space in this van. At no point did I worry about any of my passengers elbowing me, kicking my seat or otherwise disturbing my 72-degree climate-controlled bubble.
No surprise, really, since published shoulder- and hip room are competitive with other vans, while second-row legroom (40.9 inches) is best in class. I don't put a lot of stock in published specs (given varying measuring methods), but the Odyssey feels very roomy by minivan standards.
Also impressive was the van's quiet ride. Our speeds ranged between 45 mph and 70 mph, and at no time, did I have to raise my voice to talk to someone in the second row — and I tend to be soft-spoken and mumbly. I was also able to hear the middle-seaters with no problem.
After the jump, you'll find out what the Honda's passengers — Al Austria, Bryn MacKinnon and Carroll Lachnit — were thinking as I drove.
Austria (sat in right rear, then right front): The IP (dash) materials weren't as good as I imagined. Good ride, comfortable, not as much 2nd-row legroom as I expected. And quick turn-in!!
MacKinnon (left rear): The exterior door handles seem really overly chunky and too futuristic. Second-row armrest is kinda ridiculously squishy.
Lachnit (right front, then right rear): I thought the 2nd row was plenty roomy (but I'm short). Seats were comfortable. And boy, can it accelerate out of a tony Malibu shopping center ;)
On a whim, I popped our 2011 Odyssey's hood this week just to see how easy it would be to check the oil. And like on other Hondas, the basic layperson service points are all right in front (good). But the dipstick is quite a reach down into the engine compartment (not good)
I did, however, go ahead and check the oil (level was fine), and in doing so, found that the Odyssey's dipstick is more robust than some others and at least easy to reinsert back down into the tube. [The other dipstick (yellow) visible in the background is for the transmission fluid.]
The wide, deep track behind the Honda Odyssey's sliding door is starting to bug me. Looks way too gappy to be considered a design element.
Is the Odyssey's sliding door function so good that it was necessary during the engineering process?
I will have to spend more time comparing its doors to those of the Toyota Sienna, which is, aesthetically, gap-free.
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring includes neither beverages nor ice.
But if you're thirsty, there's a place for your drinks in the front.
And...
And in the rear.
And in the 3rd row. (That square shaped opening is the wrong shape for a french-fry holder, so I'm counting that too.)
So including bottle holders in all four doors and those 2 non-french-fry holders, I count 16 bottle and cupholders.
Sixteen!!
When I used to work for Big Motor Car Corp, one of the first things people would comment on when they learned of my profession was the cupholders — how they should be improved. (Apparently, they thought they were too shallow, among other things.)
And the cupholders on the Odyssey are an indirect reflection of such feedback.
Many Japanese and German vehicle development engineers I've interacted with are amazed by the in-vehicle beverage drinking capability of American drivers.
So am I.
If you read the title of the blog, that's the question I got from a guy while pumping gas. "Like a minivan." I answered. I wasn't sure what to think about it to be honest. These are beast of burden in my opinion. I don't really think about how minivans perform other than if they're slow.
But there are two features that stood out to me in my brief time in the vehicle.
First, I found the placement of the seat heaters to be a bit odd. Straightaway center. Doesn't seem like a big deal, except that the dash is big so it's a reach for people whom are height challenged such as myself. It makes it a pain to pull the ol' seat heater gag on your passenger if your telegraphing your move right in front of their noses.
The second feature, which I surprisingly got plenty of use out of was the variable rear camera angle. There is the standard out behind you POV and the straight down onto the bumper view. Makes is super handy maneuvering in tight spaces like large SUV's in your midsts.
So I guess I couldn't tell the guy at the gas pump much more about the way it drives other than soft and comfy. This thing to me is about features and design more than performance. Other than the odd switch placement, this thing is pretty nice to live with.
Some time ago I said the liftgate on our 2011 Toyota Sienna was too low. At 5 feet, 11 inches the Sienna creased my forehead numerous times during one week's worth of normal use. It only seemed fair to subject our 2011 Honda Odyssey to the same scrutiny.
I've been in the Honda for a week now, using it similarly and haven't struck the hatch to my cranium once. I thought that maybe I was one of those smart-types who learns his lesson from repeated brutal head trauma. Then I realized the Odyssey, at a shade over 6 feet, has a higher liftgate opening. It isn't much difference, but in my case it's just enough.
Honda did an excellent job with the Odyssey's throttle calibration, with a nice and subtle tip-in.
More and more cars these days have abrupt throttle delivery, making for a lurch forward when you hit the accelerator pedal from a stop, as if you're trying to race somebody. Whether it's an effort by manufacturers to make their cars feel quicker off the line, or just bad calibration, it's an annoying trend.
The Odyssey's throttle delivery is supple, and not because the V6 doesn't produce any power; it does. There's never any lurching, no matter if you just casually ease into the throttle or plant your right foot hard. The mark of good calibration is when it's so natural that you don't have to think about being smooth, it just happens.
I do wish the automatic transmission wasn't so eager to get into top gear, though, and conversely reluctant to kick back down. I know why it does this (fuel mileage); I just wish it didn't.
Full disclosure: Because I'm half of a DINK household (double income, no kids), I'm the wrong demographic for the Honda Odyssey. Nevertheless, when I finally drove it for the first time last night, I liked it a lot more than I expected to. The Odyssey rides comfortably, handles nicely and thanks to the 3.5 liter V6, accelerates ably enough that you never have to worry about that lane change or freeway merge. The visibility is great, and although it's big, it doesn't drive big. Parking was easy, too.
No storage whining from me. The Odyssey has plenty of compartments for purse, phone, iPod and perhaps even my 18-pound cat, were I of a mind to put him in the middle console. (Which I would never do. Most days.)
But it was odd to drive alone in this very nice, comfortable ark. I was tempted to pick up some fares at a bus stop, just to put the Odyssey to its true purpose.
In short, I had nothing bad to say about it. Then my bottom-line watching colleague, Ron Montoya, pointed out the Odyssey Touring's price tag: $41,535. This is the second-to-top trim, and although it's nice, it's not 41.5K nice.
Edmunds' short list of recommended minivans calls a tie between the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. The recommendation also notes that the Kia Sedona is worth a look for its value. At the top trim level, plus virtually all the options you could throw at it, the Sedona's MSRP is $35,500. Were I a penny-watching soccer mom or dad, I'd have to give it serious consideration.
So while the Odyssey isn't for my DINK household, I think it would be perfect a family of DIBS (double income, big spenders). But what do you say? Is the Odyssey worth every single penny?
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring has an IP (dash) mounted shifter right next to the center stack. But unlike our long-term Toyota Sienna SE (below), the Odyssey's shifter isn't gated.
So when I first drove this thing I was overshooting D by running the shifter down to the stop, ending up in L. I only noticed this by looking at the display in the meters. Now I know.
How about some cars you've driven? Is it easy to overshoot the D position?
At 6 o'clock this morning I found myself at the gas station filling up our 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring. An older man pulled up to the adjoining pump in his rusty, 70s era VW Beetle. He started and finished pumping before the Honda was satisfied. My side eventually clicked off, and as I reached to return the nozzle to its holster he got my attention.
The man asked, "How much did it cost you?" I looked at the meter to find that 18.726 gallons of regular just cost 79 bucks. In response to this he said, "Paid 10 dollars. Went into the city to get some duck with my son last night." He looked down at the receipt in his hand, scratched his white goatee and continued, "Cost me 10 dollars just to go into the city. We have to do something about this. Well, have a good day."
This just in: Our Odyssey has a refrigerated bin where the dash meets the floor between the two front seats. It gets pretty cold in there.
I discovered this novel feature after looking for a place to store my Costanza wallet while parked over the weekend. Left it in there and, somehow, (likely my wife who fancies herself a real comedian or my daughter who likes illuminated buttons) the "cool box" was activated.
Sucker pumps out a mean cold front, quickly chilling the worn-out billfold to a fanny freezing 40 degrees or so. Perfect for a soda or a juice. But for a wallet? Not the best.
Our long-term Honda Odyssey got stuck with test equipment hauling duty earlier this week. The Odyssey might not have been thrilled with the demotion, but we loved it, as it's usually quite the Tetris-fest to squeeze all of our gear into one of the test cars.
But with the Odyssey, we had room to spare, with four seats still left over. And that's even with a photographer's ladder thrown in for good measure.
Minivans might not be considered very cool, but they're damn useful.
The Honda Odyssey has long been the favorite "car guy" minivan thanks to its car-like handling and incredibly responsive / informative steering. It was the solution for the people who liked to drive and also needed to haul some stuff and some people.
It was (and is) also a Honda, which means that besides the people who bought it for the solid chassis, lots of people bought it simply because it was a Honda. And for 2011, it seems that Honda has done more to appease the masses who bought for the reliability than for the enthusiasts who bought for the fun / function compromise.
Our Odyssey makes 248 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque from a 3.5-liter V6. The transmission is a six-speed automatic. It weighs 4,522 lbs.
So how does it stack up on our track? Follow the jump...
Specifications:
Drive Type: Transverse, front-engine, front-wheel drive
Transmission Type: six-speed automatic
Displacement (cc/cu-in): 3,471/212
Redline (rpm): 6,300
Horsepower (hp @ rpm): 248 @ 5,700
Torque (lb-ft @ rpm): 250 @ 4,800
Steering System: Speed-proportional rack and pinion power steering
Suspension Type (front): Independent MacPherson struts, coil springs, stabilizer bar
Suspension Type (rear): Independent double-wishbone, coil springs
Tire Size (front): P235/60R18 102T
Tire Size (rear): P235/60R18 102T
Tire Brand: Michelin
Tire Model: Primacy MXv4
Tire Type: All Season
Wheel size: 18-by-7 inches front and rear
Wheel material (front/rear): Painted Alloy
As tested Curb Weight (lb): 4,522
Test Results:
Acceleration
0-30 (sec): 3.1
0-45 (sec): 5.3
0-60 (sec): 8.0
0-60 with 1-ft Rollout (sec): 7.7
0-75 (sec): 11.6
1/4-Mile (sec @ mph): 15.9 @ 87.9
Braking
30-0 (ft): 33
60-0 (ft): 126
Handling
Slalom (mph): 58.2 (57.9 with T/C OFF)
Skid Pad Lateral acceleration (g): 0.74 (0.75 with T/C OFF)
Sound
Db @ Idle: 42.5
Db @ Full Throttle: 76.4
Db @ 70 mph Cruise: 65.9
RPM @ 70: 2,000
Comments
Acceleration: Virtually the same w/without traction control and / or wheelspin. Upshifts are quick and smooth at redline. Engine sounds snarly and aggressive — especially for a minivan. nice.
Braking: Best stop was the first, then consistent distances thereafter showing good fade resistance — not even odor or smoldering pads which is expected of a Honda. Firm pedal, straight stops, controlled dive.
Handling: Skidpad: Tire-howling understeer but good balance and steering feel / weight. With ESC on, there was little (if any) interference (perhaps the throttle pulled back a little? ) ergo nearly identical results. Slalom: Driver controls and chassis feedback make the Odyssey feel more capable than it truly is. It's easy to overdrive this van because you can, but the tires cannot cash the check written by sensations the chassis writes. Actually went a little quicker with (excellent) ESC turned on because it can apply a single brake ( and I cannot) to snub understeer.
The Odyssey was hard at work roaming the Mojave desert last week in support of super-duper-secret vehicle testing operations, so I'm going to forgive whichever of its many different drivers failed to notice its odometer hitting the big 5K.
Thus far, there have been recalls for the windshield wipers and the front windows. Also, our particular Odyssey doesn't seem to want to open its auto-sliding doors from the inside. Press the buttons to the left of the steering wheel and all you get is a series of beeps. You can still open them using the key fob, the button on the B-pillar and the exterior handle.
Obviously, we'll need to get this rectified for we certainly can't suffer the sustained indignity of getting out of the car and opening the door for the kids.
Back when we had a Honda Fit, I thought I'd start a series called "Will it Fit?" It proved rather pointless, since everything I tossed in it — from a 120-pound Akita to a keg of Boddingtons — fit with no problem. This really wasn't much of a challenge, either. A 59 x 34-inch box encasing the hopes and dreams of a nerd posed little threat. The bigger question I had was, "what do we have to do to get it to fit?" The answer: not much.
I forgot my tie-down straps at home but Riswick had the bright idea of folding down the "40" section of the 60/40 seats to ensure the precious cargo remained upright. Initially, the top corner of the box would have kept the hatch from closing so I checked the second row. Rats. It was already slid forward.
I was thinking I'd have to remove the offending seat, so I started unlatching it from the floor. With the seat tilted forward, it opened just enough space to get the rest of the box in. Easy. There was even enough room for Bryn's awesome Recaro child seat, my camera bag and related cables and such from Best Buy. We could've fit another four people in while we were at it.
I'm sure it would have fit in our Sienna, too. Loading probably would have been easier in our old Grand Caravan, with its Stow'n'Go seats. It might also work in the Nissan Quest, with its flat cargo floor, but I'm not sure if there would be enough cargo bay height. In any case, hauling big delicate stuff is best left to minivans. I would've hated to have this out in the open on a pickup truck bed.
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring has a back-up camera, of course. But our Odyssey goes one step beyond most new back-up camera systems by adding another view.
There's also a Top View like on some other modern cars like our long-term Hyundai Equus that's available just in case your child is taking a nap underneath your vehicle.
(Just tap the Navi controller knob to toggle through the views.)
And there's a Wide View available. If you compare the Normal and the Wide views, there's only a slight difference.
I didn't try to compare the Normal and Wide in a busy mall parking lot where there may be some added usefulness. But they look very similar to me.
Is the number of back-up camera views going to be like the razor blade war with 2, then 3, 4, 5, and now 6 blades offered?
We'll see.
What do you think? What do you like in a back-up camera?
I'm moving again. I'll spare you the details, but in short, the distance from place to place is about a quarter of a mile, so the Odyssey and Sienna are going to be my good friends these next two weeks.
However, that means I'm going to be driving the Odyssey and Sienna a lot. Don't get me wrong, they both drive quite well for minivans, but they are minivans nonetheless. Every time the new Mrs. and I approach one of them, it's like we're staring into a deep, glaring abyss of a depressing future.
"Nope, never," she said adamantly. "I don't care what happens, we're not getting one of these."
I add, "My mother made do with an Acura Integra, I sure as hell don't need a Honda bus."
Now, roughly five minutes after this goes live, at least five editors will stop by my desk spinning some cautionary tale about how they said something similar back in the day, patting me on the head with some sort of "you'll see sonny, you'll see" nonsense, which will in some way make them feel better as they picture a day somewhere in the future when they'll get to say "I told you so, you sniveling little shit."
Well, I suppose we will see, but the Vegas odds are against them on this one. Even if some more family oriented vehicle shall be purchased in the distant future (somewhere in between the Blue Jays being a relevant team again and Takahashi growing up), it sure as hell won't be a minivan, Chevy Traverse, Ford Expedition or whatever great automotive pachyderm comes along. I like small cars, she finds her Mazda 3 too big. This is more about size than stigma.
This isn't to diss the Odyssey or any minivan, of course. They are still the most space-efficient way to transport a whole heap of stuff or a bunch of people in comfort. There are certainly people who can routinely utilize this sort of maximum capability and I'm certainly glad Edmunds has one during my move, but does that mean I can foresee me needing one every day? Nope, never.
Would you sleep here, in the back of a 2011 Honda Odyssey? I would.
Did, in fact.
Behold, sleepytime at the race track. I needed a place to get some Zs between my driving stints during a recent 24-hour endurance race. And the Odyssey is, in fact, a place.
Transforming it into a bed involves stowing the third row of seating and relocating the second row. The third row is so easy to stow that an ape could do it. They call it a 'magic seat' and it really is magic. Pull the little strap and boom, it folds itself into the rear well. Nice!
Now, the middle row is a pain in the ass to remove. It's heavy and fiddly, especially when you're already sleep-deprived.
As you can see from the lead photo, the Odyssey's floor isn't exactly flat, but plunk down an air mattress and you can sleep on broken glass (provided you have a Kevlar-lined air mattress).
The Odyssey is spacious enough for this six-footer to sleep at full stretch in relative comfort. And — bonus! — our longterm Odyssey has sunshades on all the windows. Just go ahead and try to sneak a peek through those at my
Spider-Man Underoos
very manly sleeping attire.
One thing I realized about those (extremely useful and handy) power sliding doors and liftgate is that if you plan on using them a lot when the car is parked and off, don't. Power things require power — namely battery power — and if you get overexuberant with the opening and closing you could possibly find yourself in a very Warren Clarke-ish way when it comes time to drive home.
The power sliding aspect can be switched off with the very prominent buttons to the left of the steering wheel. So, you know, switch 'em off.
Vans used to be cool. Big Ford Econolines, Chevy G-Series and Ram Wagons with their rear-wheel-drive V8s. Thirsty fuel pigs, the whole lot of 'em.
Remember those? They were personal spaces, not just modes of transport. A place to hang out. Two captain's swivel chairs, maybe a short bench along one of the sides, next to a sink or micro-fridge. A row in back that extended into a bed. A few readers here likely began their world's travels in just such a homey environment.
Not the most dynamic transporters, of course. Rolling in a straight line at speed, you didn't want to upset them. But mash the gas and that straight line got a lot longer, a lot faster.
I don't get any of that in what pass for vans today. All the Econolines now serve church groups and adult daycare centers. Fixed row seating, pack 'em in. Careful around the corners. Just, as JRiz noted the other day, buses.
The van makers want you to feel a little of that magic, though. I got this mailer from Honda recently, after half-heartedly shopping a used Odyssey. Nice little package. Good photography and design treatment, matte paper finish. Probably cost a small penny, but good to see they hire folks into bands like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Where's the Like button?
The Odyssey is nice and all. A soft, hydrofoil ride home after a long day at the mindhive. It does all you could ask of a pillowy metal box of cotton. But it's not cool. I don't want to hang out here. Nothing about it makes me want to roll up to the beach, or the park, or the campsite, slide open the doors and pull out the ukulele. Too much plastic, too many gadgets, too much order. I don't even want to track sand in here. I'm afraid the thing might get a rash.
Now THIS, this is more like it.
Seems like heading up north was a popular destination this past weekend. I too drove north to the Bay Area, but I visited in-laws. With this visit in mind, I was very happy to see our Honda Odyssey was available.
Why would a married guy without kids even be happy about a minivan?
The Odyssey was a great option because I was going to visit my brother and sister-in-law. They are soon to be parents. My brother-in-law has an unnatural affinity for minivans that only a soon to be father can have. He was especially thrilled that our family cargo hauler was the Touring edition. In fact, he cited more options than I really knew about the van as we looked it over. The guy has been doing his homework.
He's right to be excited about this minivan. The drive up from LA was very comfortable. It's got plenty of power to pass the big rigs on I-5, it's pretty quiet and composed on the road, plenty of room to haul the family, the baby gear plus the family dog of which he has four. When the kids get older, the DVD system will entertain them during those ruckus rides too and from Grandma's house.
We drove around town with everyone in the car, including all the dogs. As a dry run of sorts, I really understood why a family would want one. I say that because a minivan to me always seemed just plain wrong, like haggis. In high school and college the minivan was a symbol to me that you just gave up your individuality. Let's be honest, how many single friends you know without kids own a minivan that isn't a hand-me-down?
Yeah the Ody's steering is numb and it's not a very sporty vehicle. But are you really looking at one of these for it's cornering ability? Honestly, just having the nice motor goes a long way to satisfy that flickering memory of a single life. But if you do have kids, the practicality, functionality and unrivaled versatility of our Odyssey cannot be beat. I guess I must be growing up, or "getting old" because I'm getting to that threshold that I just don't care about that stigma. I'm not full blown old man yet. I still wear shoes that are somewhat fashionable, not just comfortable.
Would I buy one? Well, all I have is a wife and dog, so no. A minivan would be overkill. But if I had a kid(s), and the incredible amount of crap people carry these days to go with them, you bet I'd be seriously looking at this vehicle.
If you're at that crossover point, or you've way past it, is the minivan the only true option? Would you still go for a station wagon, SUV, or just cram them in the Civic?
...but I was a kid once a long time ago. Back before we had minivans. We piled into my father's large Chevy and stuffed all of our suitcases and gear into the cavernous trunk. We had a mid-seventies Caprice Classic, remember? And it served us just fine. You could fit six adults in that car. I was a dancer and was forced to play softball for a season and my brother played ice hockey and golf, so we had plenty of stuff to cart around.
I can appreciate the Honda Odyssey's minivan virtues. I recognize it as a class leader and its modern safety features. But I can't see driving around in one all the time.
I know parents appreciate the DVD players and rear seat entertainment systems. But when I was a kid, we (gasp) actually talked to each other. I liked my parents. They were fun. And on long trips my brother (a future writer) would tell me action-packed adventure stories starring the characters from my neighborhood. Those stories probably had my parents in stitches. I know they got me through many a long drive and developed our career skills better than staring at a screen like a zombie for hours ignoring each other.
Anyone with me? Give me a big sedan any day.
Now, get off my lawn.
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring has started telling us it'll need service soon. Every time we fire up the van this appears on its instrument panel.
Makes sense. The van is approaching the 7,500 mile mark, and this readout says the engine's oil is 85% spent.
The other day I wrote that I was surprised to learn that the rear side windows of our long-term 011 Toyota Sienna SE still pop out for some extra ventilation. I wrote, "I wonder if the rear side glass in the Honda Odyssey can be opened. I'll check and get back to you."
Well, I checked and they don't. But...
...our Odyssey is a top line Limited and its rear glass does have these cool pull up shades while the Sienna SE does not.
Also, in the same previous post I mentioned that I broke the Sienna's seatbelt trim loading my kid's bike into the van. Well, this must have also happened to a Honda engineer. Check out the design of the Odyssey's third row belts. They are integrated into the pillar trim and are therefore less intrusive into the space. This is more attractive and should prove more durable. A much better design.
I had a crazy Saturday. I took this picnic table/sandbox to Goodwill in our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey. The table measures four and a half feet long and four feet wide. Honestly I didn't think it would fit, but it did, with a few centimeters to spare.
This task also made me appreciate the Odyssey's low cargo liftover. Hauling this table in our much taller Raptor would have actually been far more difficult.
Respect the van.
Last week I posted a video of our long-term 2011 Toyota Sienna SE's power liftgate in action. And now it's our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey's turn.
Just as with the Sienna, there are several ways to activate the Odyssey's power liftgate, including a button the dash, pulling on the door itself or a button on the van's keyfob.
Video after the jump. Listen for the beeps.
My daughter's room has floor-to-ceiling closet doors, and they're beyond painting. Turns out that with the right approach and some encouragement the perimeter frame snaps apart in a very clever way. Replacing the panels is as simple as measuring the old inserts and heading down to Home Depot to have some new 3/16" panels sawed to the right dimensions.
Those dimensions were 6 inches shy of 4 feet wide and 3 inches less than 8 feet long — easy work for our 2011 Honda Odyssey once the middle seats were removed. But even an unsawed 4x8 panel would fit easily. The tape above illustrates 48 inches and there's easily enough space for the 8-foot dimension to slip inside that plastic hatch trim panel.
Yeah, that radius at the sides does require that a full-width 4-foot wide panel be lifted up and over the threshhold a couple of inches, but once the panel is inside it's not going to slip around.
But how about those seats?
The middle seats come out easily so long as you remember to fold the back down flat first. From there a release handle (just in front of my knee in the picture) disengages the rear floor clamps, allowing the seat to tip forward. Swing the back out the door using the outside front one as a pivot, then lift.
According to my scale they weigh about as much as the suitcase I took on my last business trip — 47.5 pounds. That's less than most wheel and tire assemblies but still enough for this to be a honey-do task.
I know that Chrysler has Stow-and-Go seats that make this simpler and eliminate the where-do-I-put-them-now problem. But the last ones I sat in were uncomfortable because of the compromises needed for them to oragami themselves into the floor. They also didn't slide fore and aft for an adult-sized helping of middle seat legroom with a tall driver sitting ahead.
The Odyssey has well-shaped middle row seats with good padding and a fore-aft adjuster. I can ride in them all day long. I like 'em.
As a minivan owner myself I've only had one occasion in 7 years where I needed to remove the middle seats. Or maybe it was two times — it's been so rare I've forgotten. I'll take every day comfort over a seat removal and storage task I rarely need to do. Of course everyone is different, so I can see how other folks might see the Stow-and-Go trade off another way.
I've been curious about the Honda Odyssey's Cool Box, and have been meaning to try it for some time now, but kept forgetting. I'm not very smart. Well, I finally remembered on my way into work this morning.
But you should know a few things about me: First, I'm a weirdo. Second, I like to have the A/C on pretty cold anytime I'm in a car (I hate being hot). And third, I prefer my beverages, particularly water, sodas and energy drinks, ice cold.
So I held out very little hope that the Odyssey's Cool Box would keep a Coke anywhere near my preferred drinking temperature after an hour and a half of driving.
Well, I was wrong (which is not all that uncommon of an occurrence). The drinks weren't ice-cold when I got to work, mind you, still but plenty cold enough even for someone like me to drink them.
In case you were wondering, the way this system works is that if you press the button near the compartment, air conditioning gets diverted into the Cool Box. Honda recommends setting the fan speed to high if the cabin temperature is hot. I had the A/C set at 69 and on just the first fan setting. Honda also says the Cool Box will continue to function even if the heater is on, as long as the Cool Box button has been pushed.
Of note, the drinks I put in the Cool Box were from the fridge, so all it was really doing was keeping them cold. At some point I'll also experiment with a room temperature drink, and see what it can do with that.
The point of all this? I was pretty sure that for a long trip (like the one The Wife and I just took in the Raptor) I would need to still bring an actual ice cooler to keep our drinks cold. Nope. Not needed. Just one more reason for me to like the Odyssey.
No matter how much swagger automakers try to give their minivans or try to make them man-up, there's still the stigma that you're essentially driving a mommy mobile. But just because you may feel like Rodney Dangerfield behind the wheel of a minivan doesn't mean you have to suffer with an audio system that sucks.
The seven-speaker, 246-watt audio system in our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring comes close to falling into that category, and we didn't spring for the non-branded premium audio system available on the Touring Elite trim. I found myself in that top-of-the-line model for a week, and here's what you can expect sound-wise if you pay an extra $2,495.
The Setup
The 2011 Odyssey Touring Elite comes with 12 speakers powered by 650 watts. The speaker includes a 3-inch midrange in the center of the dash, 1.5-inch tweeter at each end of the dash, a 6.5-inch midrange in each of the four doors, two 3-inch mids straddling the rear-entertainment system above the middle-row seats and two more in the D pillars and an 8-inch subwoofer in the driver's-side wall of the cargo area.
The Sound
As with every sound system I test, I listened to about 10 musical tracks that I've heard in literally hundreds of vehicles to gauge clarity/lack of distortion, tonal balance, timbre, tonal accuracy, soundstaging, imaging and dynamics. The music ranges from jazz to folk to rock and rap. I also use several non-musical tracks to further test soundstaging, imaging, linearity and absence of noise. For more details on this testing process and the tracks used, check out the Edmunds.com article Sound Advice.
The Odyssey Touring Elite's premium sound system didn't disappoint but neither did it stand out. It scored slightly above average in each sound quality category but exhibited the midbass boom and high-end harshness that's the hallmark of most so-so car audio systems. Low bass was one bright spot. The low-end was surprisingly solid — if slightly distorted — for an 8-inch sub mounted so far away from my front-seat listening position.
I usually only listen from the driver's seat, but while checking out the rear-entertainment system I was impressed by the sound in the third-row seat. With the combination of the D-pillar and overhead speakers, the sound was robust and clear. But there was no sense of a soundstage or imaging and it was like listening to a good portable system.
Plus, the system's main strength while listening from the front seats is its very wide and deep soundstage. The stage extends beyond the confines of the vehicle, giving music a wide-open, airy feel. Imaging wasn't quite up to par, though. Vocals that should be anchored in the center skewed towards the left and right channels.
This was confirmed by the two non-musical staging/imaging tests: voices were recorded so that they appear in the right, center and left of the soundstage and seven drum beats are supposed to move across the dash at precise intervals. The system failed both tests. As for linearity, a measure how well the sound holds together at low- and mid-volume levels, the system scored poor and fair, respectively. It easily passed an absence of noise/zero-bits test.
The Sources
The 2011 Odyssey Touring Elite I tested (sticker price $44,030) comes with a single-CD radio with AM, FM and XM and a separate DVD player. The DVD is for the rear-entertainment system, which features an "Ultrawide" 16.2-inch screen that can play two separate video programs at once in a split-screen view. The second video source can come from RCA aux inputs next to the third-row seat or an HDMI input, the first of its kind in a car, in the passenger-side wall next to the third-row seat.
An iPod connects to a cable in the glove compartment with a USB port on the end. Access to the contents of an iPod is a lot like that of our long-term Acura TSX Sports Wagon: mostly through the clunky controller in the center of the dash. Also like the TSX, the Odyssey has a voice-activated "iPod search mode" that easily understands commands like "Play artist Foo Fighters" but gets tripped up by commands like "Play song Arlandria." The iPod menu includes playlists, artists, albums, songs, genres, composers and podcasts but not audiobooks for the bibliophiles.
You can plug in a USB drive loaded with MP3, WMA and AAC/iTunes files and get largely the same functionality. You can also rip files from CD (but not a USB drive) to the 15GB hard drive and they're cataloged in an iPod-like menu structure. The system also has Bluetooth audio for wirelessly streaming music from a compatible device.
What We Say
The premium system in the Honda Odyssey Touring Elite is definitely a cut above the one in our Touring model. It's certainly not $2,500 better, but the extra coin also gets you the upgraded rear-entertainment system as well as bi-xenon headlamps and blind-spot warning.
If a minivan is in your future, the best-selling Odyssey is hard to beat. And despite the deficiencies of the Touring Elite's premium audio system, it will let you rock out even if you're rolling with the family.
The Scores
Sound: B-
Sources: A
iPod Integration: B
Cost: C
Wanna know what I did this weekend?
Too bad. I'm going to tell you anyway. I dragged the baby to two different doctors' appointments to try to figure out/treat his head-to-toe probably-an-allergic-reaction-to-amoxicillin rash (I'll spare you that horrific picture), took the cat to the vet, drove the whole family to a kids' disco dance party at a friend's house and took the 5-year-old to her final intro-to-soccer practice and then to see "Kung Fu Panda 2."
Pretty much what the minivan was made to do, right? Hell, there's even the soccer thing in there.
Two things stick out from my weekend of run-of-the-mill family stuff: 1) it was a total pain to park in the movie theater's parking structure and the vet's teeny, awkward parking lot; 2) my husband thought we were driving a Sienna the whole weekend until he happened to see the H on the key fob on Sunday.
As far as the 2011 Odyssey and Sienna are concerned, buyers don't seem to have a clear preference. Year to date (YTD), Honda's sold 45,734 units of the Odyssey, while Toyota's moved 45,678 units of the Sienna.
When it comes to sales growth year-over-year, though, there's no doubt about who's out in front. The Sienna's YTD sales are up by an impressive 35.4 percent year-over-year, while the Odyssey's sales are up by just 5.6 percent. So the Sienna runs away with the "Most Improved" title.
Of course, both Honda and Toyota are still wrestling with the after-effects of Japan's March earthquake and tsunami.
Both models were redesigned for 2011, and thus far, the Sienna's upgrade seems to be having more impact than the Odyssey's when it comes to attracting new buyers to the brand.
Two weeks ago, Chief Oldham reported the Honda Odyssey would soon need service.
Since then we've driven the minivan another 454 miles, and its oil life has dropped from 15 percent to 10 percent.
Any bets on the odo reading when it hits 5 percent?
When you read that the oil life in our 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring was down to 15 percent it got your attention. Admit it. When it dropped to 10 percent you leaned forward in your chair. Now you've been checking the blog, sometimes twice a day, for this moment.
The Odyssey is due for its A1 service. We'll drop it off at the dealer today.
We waited a day to relay our first service of the 2011 Honda Odyssey just to keep you in suspense. Well, this was an easy one. We pulled into the service drive at Santa Monica Honda without an appointment, were greeted by a porter immediately and ushered inside to sit with an advisor.
After some small talk... "the body shop guy brings donuts on Tuesdays and Thursdays now instead of Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He says it's because everybody is gone on Mondays and we're already happy for the weekend on Fridays. We think he did it so he only has to buy donuts two days a week instead of three..." we completed the check-in paperwork. Our advisor concluded the meeting with, "I'll call you when the van is ready. Should be pretty quick."
He wasn't kidding. News that the Odyssey was ready for pick up came about 30 minutes later. I've had many cars serviced at many dealerships. Only a handful were ever as prompt as this particular visit. And we didn't even have an appointment. Maybe we timed it right. Maybe it's because this was a minor service. Maybe our advisor had his act together. Whatever the reason, it deserves recognition.
Total Cost: $34.32
Days out of Service: None
2011 Honda Odyssey Touring
Sliding door thickness: 7.5 inches
2011 Toyota Sienna SE
Sliding door thickness: 7.5 inches
I spend a fair amount of time around minivans. It's a workplace hazard. But I was still surprised the first time I opened the slider on our 2011 Honda Odyssey. The door stuck out quite a bit. I naturally walked over to our 2011 Toyota Sienna to find it was just as obtrusive.
Of course there are safety structures to blame for some of the door thickness. But all minivans can't be created equal. Our fleet offers a sample size of 2. That isn't enough for me. This is where I need your help. Do you own a minivan? Does your neighbor? Any year. Any make. Grab a tape, measure the side doors and report back.
Monticello has his "Will the Bike Fit?" thing. But for the surfers on staff (all two of us) the question become whether or not a board will fit. Or more specifically, will a longboard fit
I wrangled the Odyssey a few nights ago since I knew that the surf was up and I didn't have another vehicle available that would fit a log. But I still wasn't sure it would accommodate my 10-footer. And it worked out for the best that I didn't have to find out.
My buddy let me borrow his 9'5" Tyler, a board I've always coveted and that he rarely loans out — even to a close friend like me. Master craftsman and El Porto hellman Tyler Hatzikian's boards command top dollar because he hand-builds them from start to finish. And because of the way they glide. Also a car nut, Hatzkian pours the same passion and purist approach into building his own rat rods.
Since I was in a hurry — and the sun was going down — I didn't even chance seeing if my 10-footer would fit. (That's it in the stacks on the right in the pic below.) Even with the middle passenger-side seat folded down and the front passenger seat all the way forward, it was tight fit for the Tyler.
Of course, if you owned an Odyssey you'd probably just throw racks on it. But then I wouldn't have had an excuse to take the Tyler.
If you ever find yourself thinking that today's minivans just aren't very mini anymore, all you need to do is reacquaint yourself with a traditional full-size van. I spent a little bit of time driving the pictured E-150 over the weekend. The dimensional difference isn't huge — a regular Ford van is roughly a foot taller and longer — but the Odyssey's "mini-ness" comes about most in the driving experience. It's more maneuverable, easier to drive and more comfortable on the road. It drives like a car. The E-150 drives like the old-school truck that it is.
Last week I made a 270-mile family trip in our TSX Sport Wagon. Before returning home, I had the opportunity to change out to the long-term Odyssey and drive it for the return leg. Same crew, same amount of stuff and the same route — observations of going from a $35,470 wagon to a $41,535 minivan follow after the jump.
First of all, the Captain Obvious statement: the Odyssey's a lot roomier. But even I was a surprised to see how much more. I felt like a big fat guy named Walt who suddenly got to undo his belt after bingeing at Applebee's. Life was a lot more relaxed and comfortable in the minivan.
For the TSX, it was a game of Tetris to get all our luggage and gear to fit. For the Odyssey, I easily threw in everything we originally had into the luggage area plus a couple extra storage bins and a bunch of fruit we picked up at the pictured local produce stand. Even then, there was plenty of space available. The Odyssey also trounced the TSX in terms of interior storage, cupholder usability and versatility thanks to its sliding doors and higher roof. Diaper changes were performed in the luggage area, which was a lot easier than the TSX's front passenger seat. Front seat comfort in the Ody seemed better, too.
As for power, the Odyssey has more grunt for highway passing, though it's not a huge difference. The TSX was superior in regards to fuel economy, as I saw about an 8 mpg difference between the two. However, that's not an accurate comparison as I used air-conditioning a lot more for the Odyssey, did more city driving and made more stops with the engine still running. Official EPA highway ratings are 28 mpg for the Honda (with the six-speed auto) and 30 mpg for the Acura.
Overall, the Odyssey was the superior and more enjoyable vehicle for a family road trip. But we'll see how long the glow lasts now that I'll be back to daily driving.
Our Honda Odyssey Touring comes standard with a rear-seat entertainment system. It's nice; I used it on my most recent road trip. But I just can't picture myself paying for one if it were my own vehicle. The Touring ($41,535) also comes standard with a lot of other stuff, but if you go with the Odyssey EX-L ($34,725), rear entertainment is optional for $1,600. I checked a few other vehicles; $1,500 to $2,000 seems to be the typical MSRP for rear entertainment.
Me? I'd pass and use the money instead to buy two Apple iPads. The value I'd get from the iPads would be exponentially higher.
"You traded the Bluesmobile for this?"
"No, a microphone."
"A microphone? ... OK, I can see that."
Well, it seems I'm in the minority when it comes to thinking that the act of trading a rear-entertainment system for a couple of iPads would be a good idea. But I do have a quick review on the Ody's RES operation and its video and audio performance.
The Odyssey has a fairly standard setup. The 9-inch display screen flips down and is viewable from both the second and third row.
The single CD/DVD player is in the center stack and can be controlled from the front (using the knob controller and the navigation display), the rear (using the remote control) or voice command.
That rear remote can be used either in its docked position next to the display screen or can be pulled out and used like a regular remote.
The system also comes with two wireless headphones. They have adjustable volume and an auto-off feature. As with most other systems, the front passengers can listen to an alternate audio source while those seated in the rear can use the headphones. There's also a third-row port for two additional (plug-in) headphones plus RCA inputs. This plus the household-style outlet means you can conceivably run a game console.
Overall screen quality is decent, even from the widest positions. (Incidentally, the Odyssey Touring Elite comes with a 16-inch HD screen as well as surround-sound audio (you can read an audio review of it here)). Audio quality from the speakers also seems solid, even from the third row. I also compared the wireless headphones to a pair of Audio-Technica over-the-ear headphones I own and was impressed with the wireless headphones' sound.
If you're looking at an 2011 Honda Odyssey and thinking about ordering the base rear-entertainment system, I think you'll be pleased.
I'd just like to point out that the rear accommodations in our Odyssey Touring are pretty stupendous. It almost seems like a waste as there's no way the typical passengers (bratty children) will appreciate it all.
This is what you get: Enough legroom and headroom for adults in both rows; sliding and reclining second-row seats; center-position rear seats that aren't compromised by transmission/exhaust humps or raised cushions; rear-zone automatic climate control with dual individual overhead vents for outboard passengers; cupholders galore; center armrests for both rows; outer armrests for the second row; and retractable sunshades for both rows.
Luxury sedans often get heaps of praise for their palatial backseats, but the latest Odyssey is pretty impressive, too.
Surfboards. Plywood. Sandboxes. Test gear. All good tests for the Odyssey so far. OK, so how about a towering Kentia palm house plant? The Ody measures about 13 feet from dashboard to stern. The palm was probably about 14 or 15 feet stretched out. Good thing plants are flexible.
Minor footnote: this palm is actually a replacement for the one I bought a year ago and brought home with our departed Ford Flex long-termer. Hopefully we (my wife and I) can do a better job of taking care of this new one.
It was last Saturday morning. I'm stopped at a red light, driving the Odyssey. To my right, a black Lancer Evolution (latest generation) pulls up. Black aftermarket wheels, lowered stance, burbling exhaust and, ahem, a quite attractive female driver. Probably in her 20s, she's slim and has long brunette hair. She looks over and...
No, wait, that's the beer commercial version, where Ms. Evo Hotness looks over at me and flirts, and then we go off and drink cans of domestic light beer along with her three similarly hot bikini-clad girlfriends in a hot tub. But this is the real-world version. Actually, Ms. Evo Hotness just drove off, never noticing me or the Odyssey.
I would like to say I at least kept up. But I had precious cargo with me — an ornate and frilly Disney princess birthday cake for my daughter's birthday party later that afternoon that I had just picked up and was bringing home. For fear of the cake sliding around and squishing its frosting against its box, I was driving like an 80-year-old-grandma in her geriatric Toyota Avalon. Topping off this manly experience was a gaggle of pink helium balloons bouncing around in back, blocking the view of the rear. Swagger Wagon? Man Van? Right.
It's moments like this that probably get men to resent minivans. But I suspect this angst is wrongly directed. In actuality, it's not the minivan they don't like, it's what it represents. If you own a minivan, there's an awesomely good chance you're a parent. And society says you're just not hip if you're not the unattached carefree person you used to be. You used to be the guy in the Mustang GT flirting with Ms. Evo Hotness. But now you're like me, baby spit up on your Number One Dad! T-shirt, gingering escorting a pink princess birthday cake.
But I thought about this more and came to an interesting viewpoint. What I suggest, if you find yourself relating, fellow parent, is a change in attitude. If you decide that parenting is in fact worthwhile and admirable (and you might as well, because you're stuck with it), then the minivan becomes, by extension, cool. Just like the Evo allows Hotness have a fun time, the minivan makes parenting more fun. No other type of vehicle lets you do more (or as easily) as a minivan.
In my case, I watched my daughter dance gleefully with her friends at her party, mow down birthday cake and then heard her say,"Thank you for my birthday party, daddy" as I tucked her into bed that night.
It's the minivan experience. Enjoy it.
Burnouts and powerslides.
Web forums and bench racing.
Minivans and wipes.
See also: Things that go together. This is the second time in a month I've found wipes in one of our long-term vans. Do minvans ship from the factory this way?
Also, I found this in the Odyssey's "cool box."
Snacks. Further evidence for my contention that a minivan is just large, rolling extension of a mother's purse.
I lifted the Odyssey's hood this morning out of curiousity and to check the oil. What I saw didn't really surprise me.
There's an engine under there alright. Covered with black plastic, it's as generic and underwhelming I expected. There are a few fluid containers on the left side of the bay with colored lids. But it looks like it the engine itself was stamped out in an all-look-same engine factory, like it should come in a white box with black writing that says "engine." A minivan engine is the embodyment of utility and Honda knows it. Even the engine cover, which bears the words "Honda 3.5 i-VTEC," lacks any sort of detailing to make those words stand out.
Nobody cares how a minivan engine looks and Honda knows it.
In case you missed yesterday's post, I've been preoccupied the last week or so with familial responsibilites which have been laregly aided by the use of our long-term Odyssey.
However, the auto-lock function has been a thorn in my side the entire time.
Today, after some quality time with the owner's manual, I'll be disabling this constant nusance, which one of my colleagues no doubt activated.
I can't count the number of times in the last seven days I've walked around the van to tap the "unlock" button on the driver's door. Or the number of times I've had to reach into a pocket — arms full — to find the unlock button on the key fob. Auto locks, you might say, are not my thing.
Are they yours?
It felt weird not to drive any kids in the Odyssey, but the van's destiny was cargo-only this weekend. So much cargo that we removed the passenger-side seat and the center seat from the second row.
Dan's already gone into a great detail on how to remove the second-row seats. Suffice it to say that it's much easier to remove the seats for the first time (as was my case) when the manual is in the car (as was not my case). It's kinda hard to RTFM when the FM is MIA. (The manual magically appeared on my desk when I came in this morning, so at least it does still exist. I dutifully tucked it back into the glove box.)
But, thankfully, we have the internets at our house, so we looked it up and got 'em out (and by "we" I mean "my husband" cuz I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to lift the darn things anyway).
What you see here is, roughly:
- eleven 10-foot-long 2x4s
- 5x3-foot folding table
- 6- or 7-foot-long heavy bench thing
- bunch of long metal things
- big box of clothing
- big box of large framed pictures
- 9-foot rug
- 9-foot bolt of fabric
- two stools from Ikea
We could have fit a lot more stuff, too. No outrageous tetris skillz necessary to make fit, either. Husband still can't tell the Odyssey from the Sienna, though.
This is what happens when you try to jump a bunch of XM stations using the tuning knob on the Odyssey. It's a little slow.
Here you can see that I'm starting somewhere in the 70s and trying to get the channel 22 — Pearl Jam Radio (the only satellite radio worth listening to). Turning the knob slowly will, with glacial progress, click off one station at a time and display the station number with each click. But you'll need to divert attention to the radio for minutes to cross the chasm between channel 79 and channel 22.
Attempts to blast through 20 to 30 stations at a time with rapid knob spinning doesn't really work, either. As you can see in the video, progress is limited to only a few stations at a time.
I'd love to blame this on XM, but I've tuned in real time in too many other satellite-radio-equipped cars to do that. This, it seems, is a Honda thing. Certainly presetting the stations would help, but presets are always a personal choice so I'm a manual tuner quite often. Also, there's the category button, which is great if you have the order of the categories memorized. Otherwise, just be patient.
Reception, however, is quite good — no cutting out under overpasses as happens in some hyper-sensitive cars.
Yesterday I pointed out how slow the XM tuning is in our Odyssey using the audio system's tuning knob. Reader sharpend pointed out the alternative, which is to use the multi-function knob.
In fairness, it is better...
...but not much. Here's the same trip from channel 79 to channel 22 using the multi-function knob instead of the tuning knob. It's still easy to outrun the knob with some ambitious spinning, but it does keep up marginally better. It's slightly quicker this way — 19 seconds vs. 29 seconds according to my math.
Had to take the Odyssey on a long round trip this weekend. Not the most exciting vehicle to rack up the miles in, but like most minivans it's a great cruiser. Here's my list of hits and misses:
The Good:
- Solid power from the V6. Never has trouble keeping up with traffic even on the long uphill grades. Overdrive toggle switch is nice to have.
- Quiet at speed. Had no trouble listening to the satellite radio even at 80mph.
- Satellite radio. When you're in the middle of California's central valley, it's a life saver.
And the Bad:
- Suspension is too soft, even for a minivan. On some of the rougher parts of the Intersate, the Odyssey bounces and jitters too much. Feels sloppy.
- Likewise, the steering is a little too vague on center. Would prefer it to feel a little more locked in.
- The fact that the nav system works on the road is good. The fact that it's hard to get gas station icons to show up is not good. Probably an error on my part, but it seems like this should be something you don't have to read the manual to get working properly.
- Windshield washers shoot half the fluid right over the roof. Makes wipers less effective and annoys fellow motorists.
Or at least V6 minivans that is. I noticed on my drive last weekend that the Odyssey seemed to have a pretty sizable range on a full tank. Sure enough, when I checked the stats it easily trumps its competitors in the this regard.
Part of the credit goes to its 21 gallon fuel tank. That's one gallon more than the Dodge, Nissan and Toyota minivans. A bigger factor is the Odyssey's highway mileage which the EPA rates at 27 mpg. The next closest competitor is the Dodge Grand Caravan (25 mpg on the highway) followed by the Nissan Quest and Toyota Sienna, both at 24mpg a piece.
Given the minivan's status as the ultimate road trip vehicle (for families at least), the ability to eat up huge chunks of highway without stopping is a nice feature. Well, that and the cool box.
This doesn't really have anything to do with the Honda Odyssey I road tripped in last weekend, but I figured I would share anyway. As I was leaving my hotel, I noticed this sign at the valet.
What? Special pricing for hybrids? That's ridiculous. There should be special pricing for minivans. After all, they pack two cars worth of people and stuff into one reasonably efficient vehicle, that should count for something, no?
And what about pure electric cars? Do they park for $6.50?
"You are nuts, all of you." That's what I told a few of my esteemed colleagues during a recent visit to the test track.
We were testing a new Chevy Suburban and my co-workers were ripping on it: 'ridiculous', 'inefficient', 'dinosaur', they chided. Hey, I like the Suburban I told them. Does that make me a bad person?
While the Suburban is a gas-guzzler of course, it has as much people and gear-carrying capacity as a minivan. Our Suburban was even dark gray — near black, like a U.S. Secret Service Special. On the other hand, minivans like our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring, while more practical, are mommy cars all the way.
So I asked those who were present, which would you prefer: the Suburban or our long-term Odyssey?
To a man (figuratively speaking), they preferred the Odyssey.
Man card and Nads collection for these few individuals will begin next week.
What about you — which side are you on?
Besides driving the 41-miles between home and the office twice, I accumulated 50-miles worth of errands this weekend in the Honda Odyssey. Either this minivan is really thirsty, or the previous fill-up was a short fill and I made up the difference with mine. The 3 previous entries seem to compute reasonable miles-per gallon: 22.6, 31.5, and even 16.7 makes my 13.2 seem way outa whack. For reference, the EPA City/Highway/Combined estimates are 19/28/22. Our running average is 20.5, or a little shy of the Combined number.
I'm a big fan of storing music on flash memory sticks. When I plugged one into the Honda Odyssey's umbilical cord (see below), things were going well, listening to "The Perfect Song," but only for about a minute, then silence. Hm. I tried to select a new song and zip, nada, kaput except Folder, Artist, Album and Track info still appears. Curious. Unplugging and replugging the thumb drive repeated the same routine. I pulled a different stick, and everything was fine. I even plugged in my iPhone and it worked flawlessly. Is my USB memory stick leaking? Corrupted?
As I was walking up to the Honda Odyssey last night, I remembered that it has power-opening doors. Always a good thing in my book. Not necessarily because I'm inherently lazy, but because pretty much power anything is fun.
Anyway, as I was unlocking the Odyssey I asked aloud to no one (because it was 10 p.m. and the parking garage was empty): "I wonder if I can open the two sliding doors and the hatch with the key fob all at the same time? That would be cool."
Turns out you can't, at least not with the fob. In fact, if you press all three fob buttons at the same time, none of the doors will open.
What you can do is have them open sequentially. Press the hatch button, then as soon as it starts opening press one of the door buttons, followed by the other door. If you're quick enough, all three doors will be opening or closing at the same time for a brief second or two.
But, I was able to achieve my goal of having all three doors open simultaneously via the dash switches. These fellas don't mind if all three buttons are pressed together, whether opening or closing, with car on or with car off. That's cool. Still kinda wish I could do it with the key fob, though.
This right here, the Odyssey's front seat, is just one more reason why I'm liking minivans more and more lately, and the Honda in particular. Having what I believe to be the longest daily commute on the editorial staff means two things:
1) I'm obviously not very smart, as commuting such long distances in one of the country's most congested areas is just plain masochistic.
2) I put a pretty high value on a car that lets me while away the miles in comfort.
As such, I love the Odyssey's adjustable seat armrests. You can easily find that perfect position to kick back with both elbows resting comfortably. And the seat doesn't have the harsh amount of lumbar support like on some Hondas. I could see covering big distances with the Odyssey, and not minding one bit.
As for the stigma that comes with driving a minivan? I don't care one bit what other drivers on the road think about me, whether they're assuming I'm Mr. Mom or whatever. I just floor the throttle and the more-than-adequate V6 lets me motor right around them.
On a separate subject, apparently someone else on staff likes the Cool Box, too. Check out the bonus stash I found this morning. Speaking of the Cool Box, yeah, I'm a big fan. My bottle of water stayed not cool, but cold, during the entire hour-plus drive to work. Brilliant.
As for that editor on staff who goes around trying to fit one or two bikes into the long-term test cars? Forget that. I want to see if I can fit ALL of my bikes into the Odyssey. Maybe that's my next blog right there.
Is this another visitors come in from out of town, you made multiple runs to Home Depot and wanted to see how much stuff you can cram in the boot blog? Yes and no.
Yes my folks visited from out of town. Yes I made multiple runs to Home Depot to grab bags of potting soil and other assorted items. Yes I went to a flea market and bought some furniture. The Odyssey proved it's worth for a weekend, but those aren't the reasons I was thankful to have the Odyssey.
The nav system. Yeah the folks were in town, but it was the entertaining and showing them around town that really counted. I can readily admit that I've lived in Los Angeles for 14 years and I still have trouble finding my way around, especially to places I rarely venture. I have a lousy sense of direction.
Thankfully our Ody is equipped with a large screen mounted in the center console and satellite-linked navigation with FM traffic reports. While getting to places far in near from my house, I could easily keep an eye on for alternate routes just in case we're getting caught in traffic. This came in handy twice for dinner reservations we were running late for, a movie in crowded Hollywood and the a fore mentioned flea market surrounded in construction. I looked like I knew what I was doing (which is always a good thing when it comes to a know-it-all step father), and I saved my sense of sanity by avoiding the legendary LA traffic.
Sure, a lot of folks can get navigation on their phones these days, but having a fat display without having to hold it is both handy and safe. The more I drive our Odyssey, the more it impresses me. It's a solid family adventure vehicle.
You haven't heard much about the Odyssey this week because it's been busy helping me move. Part of that process was building Garage Mahal. And every Garage Mahal has serious shelving.
That's where the Odyssey comes in.
This is what 105 linear feet of industrial shelving looks like in the back of a minivan. The longer orange beams on the left span eight feet and fit fine in the van. I figure this load was between 400 and 500 pounds.
No problem.
Yes, the Odyssey continued moving duty over the holiday weekend. Here it hauled a two-piece sectional couch and three area rugs.
I figured this would be a two-trip job but a little creative packing got it done in one. The longer section is just over seven feet and the shorter piece — which we slid in laterally behind the front seats — is just over four feet long. Wasn't able to fully close the rear hatch so I strapped it down and hit the road.
Again, who needs a truck? I've even noticed the regulars at Home Depot looking at me with new respect.
Perhaps you remember the struggle I've had with slow tuning response in the Odyssey's audio system. If not, a brief refresher course is available here and here.
But it's all rather irrelevant. Here's why:
As you can see, this is easily the quickest way to jump this many stations at once. I shouldn't have overlooked it.
Driving the Odyssey home the other night, I was passed by a sleek, black Swagger Wagon Sienna, and for a moment I wished I'd been driving it. I felt bad. I'll cop to being a bit of a Honda homer, but it's getting harder to be a fan of the brand these days. And then I started thinking about the sweet Odyssey we don't get in North America.
The top trim of the JDM Odyssey, the Absolute, is not a beast of a family hauler. Rather, it's what the TSX wagon aspires to be.
It's more than a foot shorter than our long-term Odyssey, the roof line is eight inches lower, it's 800 pounds lighter, seats seven passengers, and offers all-wheel-drive. The Absolute gets the same 2.4-liter as the TSX, and makes identical power: 202 hp and 171 lb-ft of torque. Plus it looks cut and lean, compared to our corpulent U.S. market Ody.
Check out Keiichi Tsuchiya pushing one around the track in this clip. Tsuchiya, the Drift King, Don of the Powerslide, is probably familiar to many readers through his involvement with the D1 Grand Prix and his segments in the Best Motoring and Hot Version videos. Dude raced at the highest levels of Japanese touring car and GT competition from the late 70's, and was a regular Honda NSX pilot at LeMans throughout the Nineties. He's got deep knowledge of how Hondas should behave.
Good seats, he says. Good turn-in and grip, feels like there's more room to push it. Nice exhaust sound, especially on downshifts. The Absolute even has shift paddles. Which again begs the question why Honda doesn't offer it here. Wouldn't have to be at the exclusion of the grey whale Odyssey, which is a fine, comfortable and cavernous carriage. But offer it in the U.S. as the Odyssey Sport or something. Maybe even tuck the IMA hybrid system in there. If you were in the market, wouldn't you consider it?
Watch at the end when Tsuchiya cuts the stability assist (VSA) at one point, adding a coy disclaimer that he doesn't do that kind of thing, then proceeds to squeal the Absolute through corners. Funny, 'cause I swear Niebuhr has made the same claim when we were out, uh, scouting locations in the photo van.
Something isn't quite right with the iPod connection in our 2011 Honda Odyssey. To be fair, the same thing happens in Ford products with the Sync system, as well as a couple of others I can't recall at the moment. It may well be an Apple "update" issue because the trouble didn't start until the release of iOS4 some months ago.
It's also clear that some carmakers have it figured out because there are dedicated iPod connections out there that DON'T do this.
"Do what?" you ask.
Say I start the car and promptly plug my iPhone into the Ody's USB jack using Apple's own white cable, as intended. Whatever I was listening to last time I drove the car starts thumping out of the Odyssey's speakers. So far so good.
The trouble starts 30 to 60 seconds later, when the music or podcast stops dead. (This coincides with the completion of Bluetooth pairing in the background.) The counter keeps ticking forward on the Honda's audio screen, however, so the song or podcast is advancing despite the silence.
None of the Honda's audio controls can do anything about it unless I give up on the iPod connection and select Bluetooth audio. But to do that properly I must also unplug the cable and forgo iPhone battery charging so I can manipulate songs on the face of the iPhone itself.
I don't want that. I want the dedicated iPod connection. I want the battery charging and the remote control and display available via the Odyssey's audio menus and dash- and steering-mounted controls. I want to keep looking forward, not down at the iPhone.
Turns out a new icon appears on the iPhone when this happens, but you must be looking at the iPod screen on the phone to see it. As per usual, a cable-connected iPhone displays no play or pause controls on this screen. What's new is the HandsFreeLink icon, Honda's branded term for its Bluetooth pairing feature. It would read "Sync" if this were a Ford.
In true Apple fashion, there are no instructions telling you why this is so and how to get your iPod back. Pressing on the new icon a couple of times does, however, reveal the solution.
Select "Dock Connector" and the music starts playing and the iPod connection is restored to full functionality. Of course I have to reverse the podcast or audiobook in order to hear what I missed while all this was going on, but at least it works.
...until the next time I stop the car and remove the key, that is, at which point I'm back at Square One. That's right, this happens Every. Single. Time. Waiting for Bluetooth pairing to finish before connecting the cord is actually WORSE in this car because I oftentimes get silence in both the HandsFreeLink and Dock Connector settings.
There appears to be no way on my end to set things up on the phone so that "Dock Connector" is the default.
If you know the way, please tell me.
I was going through some of my old videos on my youtube channel and noticed the most viewed ever was an interior tour of the Chevy Cruze. So, I thought I'd do the same for some of the other cars as I drive them.
Last night, I drove home in the Honda Odyssey. After the jump, there is a tour of my favorite interior features. Enjoy.
Weekends, like minivans, are about family. Which is why I grabbed the keys to our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring on Friday.
Within hours it was packed full with kids, wife and dog. Destination? Grandma's house. Grandma lives about 150 mile due east of our Santa Monica office in the sleepy desert community of La Quinta, CA, population 41,092 people and about twice as many golf courses.
The Odyssey as expected was ideal for the trip. It hauled the Oldhams there and back in perfect comfort and allowed all six of us (sans pooch) to drive to a far off restaurant in just one car. Two full size adults made that drive happily in the Odyssey's third row. No complaints. In fact, the same two volunteered to ride back there after dinner for the trip home.
I also made two discoveries about the Odyssey that have only fueled my love affair with this van.
1) Its third row is easily accessed by flipping one lever and tilting a second row chair out of the way.
2) The driver can lock the temperature of the rear climate control, which keeps the kids from turning it up to 90 degrees (there's a secondary control in the headliner above the second row).
Yesterday I mentioned that the Oldham family and our long-term Odyssey spent the weekend in the desert oasis of La Quinta, CA. What I didn't mention is that La Quinta is actually just east of the surface of the sun. Summer is long gone, but it's still 110 degrees in the Coachella Valley.
The good news is that the Honda's air conditioning had no trouble keeping up. Even if we climbed in the big van after it heat soaked in the sun for hours, it cooled itself off quickly.
I remember when Honda's air conditioning systems had trouble cooling you off on a winter day. No more.
That's a nine foot rug with room to spare. The best part? My wife changed her mind and returned it. We owned that rug for two hours.
Thankfully, I don't have children. I don't have the time or energy for that kind of exercise. But I do have nieces and a nephew who, from time to time, have been in my sole care.
Here's what I remember: Stuff. Lots of stuff. The child itself, some sort of bag with child care stuff and maybe a stroller. Truth be told, I've blocked most of those memories. What I do remember is that trying to find the keys to the car SUCK when you've got an arm full of tiny humans.
And knowing the type of person who buys minivans, it's kind of surprising that Honda doesn't even offer proximity access on the Odyssey. The top-of-the-line Touring Elite gets everything our Odyssey Touring has plus HIDs, blind-spot monitoring, DVD rear entertainment and a premium audio system and a $43,675 base price — but no proximity access.
Maybe with some practice you get better at trying to figure out kids + stuff + getting into a car, but even if just for the initial break-in period, a truly keyless (and remoteless) entry seems like a huge benefit.
Now, we know Honda is against options, but consider that BMW, known for expensive options, lists Comfort Access at only $500. $500 on a $40,000 bill is nothing.
Oh, it's also easier for those of us who constantly have our pockets full of random other junk, but that's not the real point here.
Whenever the question of nav or no nav comes up, I'm always firmly on the side of spending the extra cash ($2,000 from Odyssey EX-L to EX-L w/nav — about 5% — and standard on the Touring ) and getting the nav system.
There are a number of reasons for this:
1) It looks cooler.
2) It generally works better.
3) It does more stuff.
and the big one...
4) It displays WAY more stuff. Look at that display. It has teams, score, innings and outs all in one screen. There's no scrolling or wrap-text required. And this doesn't end at sports! You'll get full track, album and artist listing on sat radio, CD or iPod without any annoying scrolling. I love that and if it only did item 4 on this list, I'd still get it.
You'll note that none of these reasons involve the actual navigation part of the deal and I think that's part of the problem with how people view these things. It's easy to say "Oh, no, nav is a waste of money when a Garmin costs $199." But when you consider the other features, usability and the looks of these systems the accounting is a lot easier.
You also get this little screen lower on the dash in case you actually need the nav for something.
And this is what you get if you don't opt for the navigation system. Booorrring. It would worth my $2K just to not have to look at the blue screen with the block lettering.
(Note: This argument needs to exclude modern BMWs that offer a smaller iDrive screen with high functionality even if you don't buy the nav.)
Here's a cool feature you might only discover if you're in the habit of reading your owner's manual from cover to cover. Or if you're my wife.
Just push and hold the unlock button on the key fob. I find it useful for dumping a few BTUs from the Odyssey's interior on a hot day.
Nice.
"It hurts."
"Just lay back. No. Not that far."
"This is worse."
"No, no...you're too far back. Lean forward."
***unpleasant moan***
Leg 1 of our not-quite-a-road-trip 170-mile trek was complete and, after a few hours on a track, four of us were headed back to LA in our 2011 Honda Odyssey and the above conversation made its way to the front seat of the Odyssey.
"What's happening back there? Can you hear them? Shoud I get the hose?"
I guess we should probably start at the beginning of this story...
I had grabbed the keys to the most sensible vehicle possible for the trip while the other guys had managed the keys to the Volt and the 911. The 911 driver had intended, along with our photo guru Kurt Niebuhr, to take the fun route while the Volt driver, Riswick, and I would carpool on the highway enjoying a quiet morning of coffee and not vomiting from carsicknenss before 5am. We were still, at this point, in fierce debate between the Volt and the Odyssey.
But then the rain happened and the 911 driver wussed out. Something about not wanting to be damp all day. That made the carpool decision that much easier and since I'd been smart about car choice, I got to drive. Four guys in a car that seats 42 (8 actually) shouldn't be a problem at all.
From the driver seat the Odyssey is pretty great: Solid visibility, good power, accurate steering, comfy seat, logical controls. All the stuff we've talked about before in the blog and when we gave the Odyssey the win over the 2011 Toyota Sienna XLE. I felt as fresh after 90 minutes of driving as I did after 9 minutes.
From the backseat, though, things weren't quite as refreshing. Above the clacking of helmets from the hatch, one of our editors, let's call him Mark Takahashi, could not figure out how to get comfortable. "I wished the seat cushion had some adjustments. It wasn't comfortable reclining because I felt like I'd slide off the seat," he later said. Now, it's possible that at 5'10, an adult and fresh out of some race-prepped cars, Mark wasn't the ideal rear-seat tester. Those of us in the front seats had endured the same back-breaking day and were thrilled to be lounging in the supportive, heated front buckets.
The other issue we encountered was that rear seat passengers and front seat passengers had a difficult time communicating. This isn't uncommon, especially in vehicles with such massive interior spaces (148.5 cu-ft of space behind the first row), but the Honda-spec road noise levels make inter-row communication like trying to talk to someone who's across the aisle on an airplane. You can manage it, but after a while, you just don't want to bother anymore. Mark and Kurt had their conversations, James and I had ours.
Nobody wants their kids comfortable or to know what they're talking about anyways, do they?
It is time for another suspension walkaround from the long-term fleet. Lamborghini Aventadors only come around so often, right? This week its time for a trip back to reality in the form of our 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring.
Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that everything in the following shots looks a bit too clean for something that's been in the fleet for 8 or 9 months. You may also notice that these shots were taken in the driveway of my old house.
Yeah, I've been sitting on these shots for awhile. It's high time I finally do something with them.
To the surprise of no one, the front end of our Odyssey is propped up by your basic coil-over MacPherson struts.
Also expected is steering that does its thing from behind the front axle centerline. Protrusions built into the knuckle and lower arm (yellow) are there to act as a steering stop. They do the job just fine, though there can be a metal-to-metal tap at full lock.
Here's another view of the rear-mounted steering (white). The front stabilizer bar (yellow) starts even further back as it snakes its way up to the long slender drop link that bolts high on the strut housing. Direct-mount drop links such as this need to be long in order to mount high on the strut body where they can tolerate the strut's rotation as the wheels steer left and right.
The Odyssey's L-shaped lower control arm juts to the rear. The forward bush tackles lateral loads while the large-volume aft bushing takes care of fore-aft loads. How does such a separation occur? Those fore-aft wheel motions arrive at the rear bush as in-out motions because the L-arm pivots on the rigid front bush, which redirects them by 90 degrees.
This bend in the lower control arm allows decent ground clearance under the arm while still allowing a low ball joint position to reduce stress in the ball joint. The lower extremities are safely protected inside the wheel.
Underarm clearance isn't a huge deal in a minivan, I would think, but the Odyssey platform is used in the Pilot, Ridgeline and Acura ZDX. We've seen a new Pilot break cover and the ZDX is fairly new, but the 2012 Ridgeline still looks to be last-year's model riding around on last-gen mechanicals.
Four bolts (yellow, plus two more) hold the wheel bearing and front hub assembly to the knuckle, a design that transforms a front wheel bearing replacement from a royal PITA to an intermediate-level DIY project.
I think I shot these pictures last spring, which is appropriate. The photo isn't reversed though; the Honda logo is meant to read properly from above before the part is installed.
Good-sized ventilated rotors and big-looking sliding calipers handle the stopping chores up front. Our stopping distance, feel and fade tests of the new 2011 Odyssey came out much better than expected compared to our test of a last-gen 2010 Honda Odyssey (not to mention many other Hondas of recent vintage.) Did Honda finally raise their internal brake performance standards? It would seem so.
Dual pistons (yellow) handle the heavy lifting...make that squeezing.
In back we find a multilink suspension comprised of a trailing arm (yellow) that handles fore-aft wheel location and resists brake torque, and three links that handle lateral wheel location and wheel alignment.
The upper link (white) acts alone to define the camber angle. Two lower links resist lateral loads and control the wheel's toe-in angle. In this view we can only see the rearmost one (black), which is reinforced and expanded to carry the coil spring.
This head-on view of the works reveals the missing link (green) and shows how much shorter this toe-link is than the main lateral link (orange) we saw before. Its shorter length describes a tighter arc, which pulls the front of the wheel and tire inwards for a little extra toe-in during corners.
The upper camber link (white) is shorter than both of the lower ones, which has the effect of pulling in on the top of the outside tire in corners to increase negative camber to maintain an even loading across the tire's contact patch.
We can also see how the trailing link (yellow) pivots on a large front bushing that bolts to the body with a hefty tie-bar.
This view shows why the trailing arm (yellow) is an arm and not a link. In my view of the world, a link has a single point of attachment on both ends, which allows it to flop about on both ends. An arm, on the other hand, must either pivot about an axis (instead of a mere point) or have the ability to resist torque. When it comes to holding wheels in 3D space, one arm equals two links.
Our trailing arm is Y-shaped and bolts to the knuckle in four widely-spaced places. This arrangement makes it rigidly attached to absolutely resist torque. In contrast, the upper camber link (white) is a link because each end pivots about a single point.
If all you have is links, you'll need five to hold a wheel in place. (In front the steering is the fifth link, but it moves to turn the wheels.)
Here our arm counts as two links, so only three additional links are needed to bring the total to five — which is exactly what the Odyssey has.
Even though it's big, it's wide and it carries the spring, the rearmost link is a link in my book because it has a single-point pivot (white) on each end.
The spring pocket lives about halfway down the length of the link, making the motion ratio of the spring 0.5-to-1 or thereabouts.
If you're wondering what's missing, it's the rear stabilizer bar. The Odyssey hasn't had one for the last three generations. After that I can't remember. Minivans have hefty rear springs to deal with passenger load; they provide sufficient roll stiffness on their own.
The shock absorber (yellow) connects directly to the knuckle for a motion ratio of 1-to-1.
The Odyssey's rear brakes consist of single-piston sliding calipers and solid rear discs. That may not seem like much, but the front brakes do most of the work on family cars — even minivans. But where is the parking brake?
Right here. It's a cable operated drum brake that lies hidden in the hat section (yellow) of the rotor.
Our Odyssey Touring rides around on P235/60R18 Michelin Primacy MXV4 all-season tires and aluminum alloy rims. Mounted and balanced they weigh in at 56.5 pounds apiece.
And that's pretty much it. The Odyssey Touring steers and handles about as well as any minivan has a right to, and it feels less bulky than the 2010 model it replaces.
The other day I inadvertently parked our Long Term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring next to our 2007 Honda Odyssey support vehicle. Ignoring what we were supposed to be doing, instead, we spent a good deal of time walking around the two comparing the two. "The old one's downturned face is kind of sad," one guy said. "Look at how much better the stance is on the new one. 18s are nice." "Have we all forgotten about the stupid beltline?" There was also some generic praise for the new Odyssey's door handle layout.
What stands out to you?
Some numbers...
| New | Old | |
| Length: | 202.9 | 201.0 |
| Height: | 64.8 | 70.0 |
| Front track: | 68.1 | 66.7 |
| Rear track: | 68.2 | 66.8 |
| Wheelbase: | 118.1 | 118.1 |
| Wheels: | 18x7 | 16x7 |
| CurbWeight: | 4,541 | 4,475 |
One public relations firm wanted so much to drive home the point that minivans aren't boring that it made a "commercial" casting the 2012 Honda Odyssey in a fun light. The dad in the ad does his husbandly duties of dropping off the kids and getting the car washed but also enjoys a day with paint ball battles, golfing and bar room brawls. Meanwhile, minivan features like antilock brakes, 8-passenger seating, Honda ultrawide entertainment and active safety features are highlighted.
If you weren't sold on minivans before, does this video after the jump sway you in their direction? I mean, come on, sliding doors and room for a bunch of your friends.
Last weekend the Odyssey took me camping. It was a simple one-night trip with a bike and a plan to ride the best trails in the Southern Sierra. And to sleep in the Honda.
Fortunately, the Odyssey has ample room for sleeping. But here's a hint — take more care than I did to protect yourself from the large steel hooks in the floor where the seats attach. Also note: two Thermarests aren't adequate for this duty. Perhaps Jay Kav's setup is slightly better.
Even so, this reinforces the stupendous awesomeness of a minivan. The Odyssey transformed from sleeping quarters to bike hauler in about 10 minutes, which must be some kind of record for breaking camp. Which, in turn, allowed for more of this:
When you think of minivan features, you typically think of the practical, family-friendly stuff. Sliding doors, a zillion cupholders, blah blah blah.
But on a day like today when the sun's back out after a recent rainy spell, the feature I appreciated the most wasn't practical at all. I'm talking about that sunroof (standard equipment on Odyssey EX-L, Touring and Touring Elite trims). Not panoramic or anything, but certainly big enough to offer a welcome glimpse of those clear blue skies.
Spotted this Prius driver training school car on the freeway while commuting in the Odyssey some time back. Made me glad I learned to drive back when cars were honest.
You know, when they had a real mechanical connection to the bits that make them go, stop and turn — something even the Odyssey does relatively well.
Just a thought.
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring has small portholes in the A-pillars. These are getting more common today.
You can see that the amount of glass and the size of the opening are rather small. But by allowing you to see through that area of the A-pillar and the mirror housing, that small window conveys a sensation of even greater visibility than what is actually seen by your eyes.
Without that porthole, that A-pillar would appear overly thick with a subjectively big blindspot. In the pic you can even see that fire hydrant at 1 o'clock of the driving position. Without the small window...it's gone.
What if you were turning and that hydrant was instead — a child.
What do you think? Do you see the value?
Believe it or not, there are people who've managed to go almost their entire lives without ever parking butt in a minivan, and it can be interesting to see how these non-minivan people react when dropped into the belly of a relentlessly functional people-mover like our Honda Odyssey.
A couple of friends with almost zero minivan experience recently spent some time in the Odyssey's second row. While they weren't bowled over by the minivan's sheet metal, they had some good things to say about the second row, which impressed them for three primary reasons...
1: Great legroom. They couldn't believe how much space was available for stretching out their legs.
2: Comfortable armrest. The meaty padding on the armrest was a hit.
3: The personal space factor. As you can see, when seating two, the second row allows for quite a bit of room between both passengers. Personal bubbles are maintained — a luxury you don't always get to enjoy when seated in the second row.
Like many of you, I'm mixed on the current-gen Odyssey's looks. The lightning zag and seemingly disjointed rear caboose just look jarring compared to the classic flat beltline of the last generation. Then again, this Odyssey in Crystal Black or Metal Metallic looks fairly sleek, with the dark color tones (glass, tires, sliding door channel) obscuring the otherwise "edgy" design. And the new nav/multimedia system is almost reason enough to consider a current-gen Odyssey over a last-gen model.
But for me, the biggest deal breaker has been the six-speed transmission in our Touring model.
It's just too jerky, elastic and confused around town, and I've never been able to adapt or find its sweet spot. We've all remarked on this in some way during the Odyssey's time with us, and opinions on the six-speed range from "sucks" to "eh, don't even notice it."
I was squarely in the former camp until I started using the D4 button for city driving. The transmission PCM feels like it actually changes the mapping, adjusting where the torque converter locks up, as opposed to simply locking out 5th and 6th gears. The first three gears definitely hold longer than when D4 is disengaged.
Making 45-50 mph surges between stoplights on busy avenues and trawling through parking lots is no longer such a loopy effort. The slushbox still surges more than I personally like, but works well enough that I'd call the deal back on and consider buying a new Odyssey. Not sure I'd look forward to rebuilding the trans at 70,000, though.
The lower Odyssey trim levels still offer a five-speed. Now I'm curious to drive one to see if it behaves more like last-gen, or more like current gen with one less gear.
Driving the Odyssey the other day, enjoying the comfortable seats and captain's armrest, feeling vaguely master of some parallel universe, I noticed something missing. Namely, a lump in my back. Honda's had an unenviable reputation for fist-in-the-back seating, particularly of the Accord-based variety (search Honda-Tech, TOV and assorted model-specific forums if you're skeptical). It was pretty noticeable in our departed long-term Crosstour, maybe less so in our LT TSX wagon (some on staff say otherwise).
But the Odyssey, to me at least, doesn't suffer from it. Deflate the lumbar support all the way and it's just gone. Now I'm curious to know if the manual lumbar support on the LX is as invisible when fully deflated as the power lumbar adjustment is on our Touring (power lumbar is standard on EX models and above).
Regardless of cause - whether Honda redesigned the Odyssey's seats or has been tweaking this across the board - it's a welcome deletion.
Question: What's one thing that big fancy luxury sedans and diaper-laden minivans have in common? Answer after the jump.
Answer: Those nifty sunshades. They're probably even more essential in minivans than in luxury cars; I imagine cruising along to the sound of "Dad, the sun's in my eyes!" gets kinda old.
Our long-term Honda Odyssey is starting to ask for its second scheduled service. It'll only be the second time the minivan has seen the service bay of a dealership. The first being its first oil change at 7,943 miles. It cost us $34.32 back in June.
Nothing else needs attention, as the Odyssey continues to truck on issue free.
It's been eight months since we officially introduced you to our long term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring and in that time we've already racked up 15,000 miles.
The going has been, as you'd expect from a modern family hauler, trouble free. We required an oil change at 7,493 miles that cost us $34.32 and, well, that's it. As Scott mentioned, it will need oil again shortly, but routine oil changes can hardly be ruled a problem, right?
During that time, Jacquot's taken it camping, Newcomb reviewed the audio system, we took it to the track, Dan Edmunds took the wheels off and we're still trying to get the stink of Kavanagh out of the thing after he slept in it.
I really appreciated this little ledge-like storage bin in the passenger door of our long-term Honda Odyssey this weekend. When my husband drove and the center console was stuffed full with his iPod, phone, our water bottles, and the like, there was still a refuge for my faithful, battered 1st-gen Droid.
There is an identical bin on the driver side door, but I was really glad to have it as the passenger.
Where do you put your (hands-free-enabled) cell phone when you're driving?
I always like cars (and vans) that have a huge range of steering-wheel telescope adjustment, because I can track the seat back to accommodate my longish inseam and still have the steering wheel close, so I can hold it NASCAR-style with my arms bent at nearly 90 degrees.
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey lets me do this so I am automatically a fan.
This would be pretty much the perfect seating position (for me) if the deal pedal weren't so high. You can see here that it's raised up quite a bit from the floor, and this makes for slightly awkward foot positioning.
Of course, this is to be expected in a minivan (or any van), because footwell packaging is just tricky with their short snouts. So, the funky dead pedal isn't a deal breaker, but it might be slightly annoying on a long trip.
I'll see Mike Monti's cute "Will the Bike Fit" series and raise it a few degrees of complexity. Herewith, "Will the Kit Fit?"
It does.
Headroom's a little tight...
The Odyssey was pretty insistent that we check the tire pressure. Good thing; the right rear was down about four pounds. The others were all down about one pound or so, too. Topped them all up to 35 psi as prescribed courtesy our local Shell.
TPMS always seemed like a gimmick to me, one more thing to save us from ourselves. I also remember it being a nightmare (and maybe still is) for the aftermarket industry. Still, was nice to have it in this instance.
Warning: Girly post alert
The Honda Odyssey has a purse hook on the front passenger side. My 20-lb bag full of cameras, phones, assorted eye glasses and cables would probably snap it right off.
But I guess if you were carting around a van full of little ones, it could also serve as a plastic bag holder for assorted trash, empty juice boxes, or a makeshift barf bag.
Where's the best place to spend 11.11.11? Vegas, of course! I'll be rolling in our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring — we want to be comfortable, naturally.
I took our long-term Toyota Sienna on a previous Vegas trip, so it will be a good comparison.
Today I did some pre-trip prep: car wash, oil check (10% left according to the car, pic on the jump). I would normally also check the tires, but Dan Frio checked and inflated them earlier this week between drumming sessions.
I plan to report on trip fuel economy, bet on 11 on the roulette table, and put $11 on Manny Pacquiao, who's fighting Saturday night.
Anything else I should report? Or bet on?
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring is a great road trip vehicle. I drove several of my friends to Vegas for the 11/11/11 / Manny Pacquiao fight weekend. (I made $20 on the PacMan for the Decision, but mistakenly also bet on a KO.)
My friends loved it and thought it was a spacious and comfortable road trip vehicle. I agree.
The Odyssey has light steering that's great for parking but a bit numb on the highway. The ride quality is comfortable and not too floaty, although impact control could be improved. The body structure is pretty tight. I didn't hear any squeaks or rattles with the radio always on. Also, the Navi and the sat radio interface are both excellent.
Power is decent, but in my recollection our long-term Sienna did a better job of handling the grades on The 15. And there's plenty of room for people and gear.
I ended up getting 23.6 mpg over the course of the 600 mi trip. Impressive.
A couple of gripes...
You can't open the power side or back doors if they are locked. For that matter, you can't open the front doors either without unlocking them first. A minor inconvenience, but it got annoying after mistakenly trying this many times on the trip. And the pleather isn't even a good effort.
The Odyssey is asking for B1 service now at 16K miles. And the rotors are warped — there's big shudder when braking from highway speeds.
I don't like minivans but my buddy thinks they're cool. He said when you go out you can "roll deep." There's need for your group to take several vehicles, and when you arrive at the club, he added that no one will mind — provided that your F/M ratio is sufficient. Whatever, it's fine.
Yeah, the Odyssey is great road trip vehicle. We're thinking of taking it to San Franciso or San Diego sometime soon.
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring has its power side and rear door switches on the lower left side of the dashboard. This is a different setup than most minivans, where these switches reside in the overhead console, near the map lights.
I prefer our Odyssey's setup and think this is quite convenient. But I imagine that many will prefer the overhead console location for these switches because
- That's what they're used to
- The front passenger can also operate them
Yesterday I wrote that on my Vegas Pacquiao trip I wished our Odyssey would override the door locks. Let me explain once more. In some vehicles you can open a regular (not sliding) door if it is locked — no unlocking by the switch first. Not so on the Odyssey with the front or the sliding side or the rear door. You must unlock first.
This is what I would like on our Odyssey...
This is what I would like on our Odyssey: if you operate those door switches in the pic — that only the driver has access to — then even if the doors are locked they should open. As it is right now, even if you're outside, approaching the vehicle, and use the remote, you have to unlock the doors before you can open them. I think that's inconvenient.
DLu said there might be a workaround, but the van is gone for a few days so I can't play around with the car or RTFM. But I will.
And I'm curious about that "On" sliding sliding switch in the pic...Hmmm. I'll check that when the car is back.
What do you think? Would you like the van's power doors to operate without unlocking first?
And what about the location of those switches? Do you like them where they are on the Odyssey or in the overhead console?
So many cars have service minders now, even counting down your need for an oil change by "percent left."
Tell me, how many people actually head into the service at the first sign of a regular maintenance light? And how many wait for the need to increase before an oil change?
Slag minivans all you want, but our 2011 Honda Odyssey is usually in high demand when it comes to sign-out time, particularly on weekends. Maybe that's why we're getting regular maintenance reminders popping up in the IP.
I got this one earlier this week, noting that it's time for an oil change, when I used the Odyssey for shuttling back and forth from downtown for the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show. And I noticed that Kelly got a different one after she took the keys.
We'll keep on top of the popular minivan's maintenance so that it can keep up with its high demand. And so that, say, the Porsche, Audi and Mustang aren't taken instead.
It's the kind of phone call guys who own pickup trucks are used to getting:
"Hi, uh, are you busy today? Think you can help me pick up something from the store?"
Turns out, minivans are, for the most part, a more user-friendly, modern-day pickup. And they're especially handy when two women need to load a new, boxed Studio Day Sofa (aka futon) in the light rain.
1). Low load height beats tipping a heavy box up into a truck bed.
2). Inclement weather has nothing on you.
Shana called for help on Saturday morning, and by lunchtime she was lounging on her new sofa.
No truck, or men, required.
Road gators. They're everywhere in the L.A. And this morning on the 405 freeway, the Odyssey ate one. Happened immediately after the New Beetle in front of me took a big bite and just before the Chevy work truck behind me sucked it up. There was no avoiding this one.
A post-gator inspection proved this mark on the underbody deflector to be the only sign anything happened.
Here I sit waiting in line outside my daughter's high school in the 2011 Honda Odyssey. I'm suddenly realizing the middle row's middle jump seat is installed, and it's going to have to come out before my daughter and her friends appear. These adult-sized kids will need the walk-through center aisle to help them clamber into the third row with their backpacks and such.
Fine, it comes out in a jiffy. But where do I put it? In the Sienna there's a compartment for it in the left-rear wall of the cargo area. No so here in the Odyssey. This heavier (and, it should be said, more comfortable) seat has a bulky floor attachment mechanism that leaves no real place for it but the garage.
But by the time I get to my garage, I'll have dropped off my daughter's friends and the "crisis" will be history. I'll get by this time because the cargo well happens to be empty, but there's no adequate way to tie the big lump down.
If I had my choice I'd invert this scenario and leave the aisleway clear all the time, keeping the jump seat handy so I can quickly snap it in place when needed. Score one for the on-board storage strategy of the Toyota Sienna.
We recently took our Odyssey in for the anticipated service. Not only were we at a standard interval, but drivers have recently complained of vibration when braking at freeway speeds.
We had a brief chat with the service adviser regarding the brake shudder. He wrote up the paper work, a number cone was placed on top of the van and moments later a tech drove it around back to be inspected.
A phone caller later that morning informed us that the techs had duplicated our problem and discovered a slight amount of warp to the front rotors. It wouldn't affect function in their professional opinion. We still had 8mm on the front pads while the rear had 6mm, depths they considered very good.
We decided not to do anything about the rotors for now. If the problem got worse, they quoted us $298 for a brake job that included resurfacing the rotors. Instead, we opted for the standard service interval requires: multi-point service inspection, an oil change, and tires rotated. While the van was in their hands they performed service on a safety recall for the wipers.
Total damage (including hazardous waste and tax): $122.56
Days out of the office: 0.125
Yesterday I stuffed a new Craftsman stainless steel tool box in our 2011 Honda Odyssey. This morning I delivered it to our new shop and got it set up with the help of Rex and Mike.
I can't tell you how nice it is to finally have some tools on hand. It won't be long until we're set up to begin wrenching on Project Wrangler.
Several months ago Dan praised our 2011 Honda Odyssey for its ability to swallow up 4' x 8' sheets of material. I agree. Any minivan that can't fit cargo of these dimensions loses its functional bragging rights instantly.
Dan also said that according to his measuring tape, "an unsawed 4x8 panel would fit easily." You just need to lift it over the threshold. After after transporting 8 sheets of drywall in the Odyssey last night I have to disagree here. That threshold was a bigger obstacle than I expected...
Aside from my getting home late and not having enough light for a better photo, everything looks good, right? All sheets fit, nice and snug. But not without some collateral damage.
The 4-foot wide load area doesn't give much room for error. Just ask the seat belt and paneling. I can imagine a sheet of plywood leaves a far more permanent gouge. This chalk wipes right off, fortunately.
The threshold took (and delivered) the brunt of the damage. Luckily it was only minor bleeding. I realize this lip helps keep the cargo from shifting during transport, but doesn't the rear hatch do that too? And doesn't driving carefully also do that? So there it is, my gripe. I wish the load opening was squared off at the bottom. This rounded lip does me no favors.
I had occasion to remove the second-row seats from our 2011 Honda Odyssey the other day. Turns out the process was rather easy. There was an unexpected surprise once I unclipped the seats from the floor brackets...
Each one of the seats had a convenient handle, specifically for ease of removal. That's cool. No worry of pinching your fingers by grabbing hold of random adjustable arms. This may be old news to the minivan savvy. But you know what? I still appreciated it.
The second-row center console has one too. I like it.
I know, I know. You've had it up to *here* with minivan cargo shots. Sorry. It goes with the territory. Cargo carrying capacity and passenger seating flexibility are the two things that make the 2011 Honda Odyssey and its minivan bretheren worthy of at least one spot in your driveway.
Here I'm carrying more equipment for our new shop. This time it's a 6-foot workbench and a vise to go along with it. The bench components slide easily between the front and middle seats and the heavy vise sits down in the well behind the "40" half of the third row where it can't roll around too much. Yes, that's the middle-middle seat stuffed temporarily in the back, but at least in this case it's making itself useful as a shim.
Sure, a crew cab pickup would have done the job, but this 6-foot benchtop would have had to lay propped up on the tailgate, secured with rope, and I'd have to unload everything right away to keep it from mysteriously walking away. In this case the stuff is spending the weekend with me. I grabbed it from Grainger will call on Friday afternoon and will drop it off at the shop on Monday morning.
There are three key points here: 1) the Odyssey can still comfortably carry five adults with all this stuff aboard, 2) it's all safely locked up and protected from the weather and; 3) we're getting closer to having our workshop kitted out.
Wagons are great and all, but if the day comes when it's time to get a minivan, I will embrace it. Seriously, these things are great, and I say that not as a completely out-of-touch journalist who has just discovered minivans, but as a casual minivan enthusiast who has driven the last three generations of the Odyssey and its competitors (we had a '99 Odyssey in our long-term fleet, then a 2001 Grand Caravan, a 2004 Sienna, a 2004 Quest, a 2005 Odyssey, and so on). It's like driving around in a whole room of a house, but it's smaller than a camper and therefore easy to park anywhere.
So I drove our 2011 Honda Odyssey last night. Although I still think it has a more compliant ride quality, more comfortable seats and better cabin electronics than any previous generation of this van, there are still a couple things I would change if I could.
1. I don't love the way this six-speed automatic is programmed. When I gave the van a healthy dose of throttle last night to get up to get up to the 70-mph nighttime freeway pace, there was a pause and then the transmission dropped a couple gears and it wasn't overly smooth about it. A few years ago, or even a few months ago, I wonder if I would have even taken note of the pause, which likely factors into the Odyssey's fuel mileage (which is the best of any large minivan), but recently, I've sampled some newer automatics that provide a much sharper response when the driver goes to accelerate.
Maybe it's silly to expect that in a minivan, but as Josh has written, you get something closer to that in our long-term Sienna, and the Nissan Quest's CVT also feels pretty responsive even if its track numbers don't reflect that.
2. I'm not totally happy with the steering. It's great around town, where it's precise and communicative to an extent that nobody expects in a minivan. But I wish the effort was a little higher at highway speeds, because the Odyssey doesn't feel as locked-in as I'd like through the faster freeway interchanges. Wouldn't mind a little more weight to it on-center, either.
In general, I am fine with our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey's center stack controls. Indeed, they're clunky looking, but both the controls and the displays are large, so functionality is quite good. However, I don't care for the channel scrolling function for the satellite radio.
Even if you're on the audio screen, the nav system's big multi-function controller won't scroll through stations unless you tap down and then select the channel list feature. And no matter which station you're on, even say, XM 75, it always starts you out at the top of the list (XM 000). So if you start searching for a channel and then have to pause to do a little driving, you can't come back to your place... you have to start over from the top.
I'm (pretty) sure my problem would be solved if I would just use the tuning knob over on the right side of the head unit. But that never occurs to me whenever I get back into the Odyssey. I always grab the big, chunky control dial, which is about triple the size of the tuning knob and more enticing to use. So here's what I'd like.
(1) Swap the location of the CD deck (and assorted audio hard buttons) with the multifunction controller (and its associated buttons), to close the physical distance between the controller and the nav screen. Right now, they're really far apart, and it's mentally taxing to spin the dial while visually referring to a display that far away.
(2) When I select the channel list feature, have the list start from whichever channel I'm currently listening to — so in this case, XM channel 75 would be at the top of the list.
(3) Allow a few more characters to show the title of each song. With a screen that big, you should be able to display more characters than that.
Cupholder blog entries are boring, but you wouldn't want to buy a minivan that had bad cupholders. Our 2011 Odyssey Touring doesn't have bad ones. What's most impressive about these two in the center console is the range of cupsizes they can securely hold, thanks to their large rubber tabs.
On the left, you have a standard width coffee to-go cup in a cardboard cozy. It's stable here and the coffee (Tanzania Peaberry) didn't splash.
On the right, you have an allegedly BPA-free Nalgene bottle that really shouldn't fit in any vehicle's cupholder. But it does. That means a bottle of wine would be secure there, too.
This is my view out of the Honda Odyssey. I don't know about you, but I don't need that much blue tint. Actually, I don't need any blue tint thank you, but I definitely don't need this much. It actually dips below the blacked out center bit, and looks to cover about 40 percent of the windshield. And yes, people who aren't as vertically blessed as I have been iritated by this as well. In fact, Takahashi (who was driving) inspired me to take this picture. Seriously, why so blue?
And yes, that's a blimp.
My mother-in-law and two sisters-in-law just finished driving from Atlanta to Los Angeles in a Mini Cooper. Despite all three being small in stature, they nevertheless began referring to the Mini's backseat as the Horcrux. After a short while back there, the sister in question would get cranky and angry at the the other sitting up front (mom almost exclusively drove). Once they switched places or got out of the car, all crankiness miraculously disappeared. If you get the Harry Potter Horcrux reference that's nice, if you don't or barely do (like me), ask someone who does or read this nonsense.
Anyway, imagine the juxtaposition they experienced when climbing into the back of our Odyssey a few hours after completing their journey. Eight seats, power-opening doors, probably five Minis worth of space and tons of entertainment features. Forget the Horcrux, 18-year-old Breanne was blown away by the TV screen, multiple AV inputs and especially the household-style electrical outlet.
"I could plug in my hair straightener back here!" she said. Well sure.
I'm playing my morning podcast in the Odyssey and then nothing. The info is still showing on the screen, but there is no more sound. I try a different podcast, still no sound. Maybe I pressed some radio mute button, but it doesn't exist. I go to a different radio source, but there is music-a-playing out of XM. I unplug and replug in the USB wire and it works again, picking up later than when it conked out, meaning sound stopped transmitting even though the track kept playing. Several minutes later it cuts out again. Bugger.
That's enough of that, switch to the aux jack, problem quasi-fixed. Not sure if this is an issue with our Odyssey, or if it's the faulty result of Odyssey + iPhone + specific Apple wire = Not Working.
Hauling our new 2012 Jeep Wrangler Wheels and Tires
The return trip from Stokes involved no bulky wheel boxes because, well, our 2012 Jeep Wrangler's new wheels are now mounted inside its new tires, as they should be.
Now the load is compact enough that they'll fit into our 2011 Honda Odyssey without need to remove the middle row. The amount they tilt forward will be sufficient.
Compared to the ienna's slider, the Odyssey's tilting action doesn't open up as much space. My tape suggests the difference is almost 10 inches in the Sienna's favor. The Odyssey's tilt action is geared toward third-row access improvement instead of cargo expansion; they're not really latched down in the position.
None of this is a problem, really, because they're a grunt and lift from coming out at this point. But this is what you get with them left in place.
We're approaching one year and 20,000 miles with the Odyssey. I'm doing my part to close in on that milestone with a holiday road trip to the northern territories of California and Nevada. When all is said and done, we'll have covered about 1,200 miles. With the wife and kid, visits with friends and family, and lots of highway time, this trip is right in the Odyssey's wheelhouse.
We've taken the Odyssey on a few long-distance runs already, but I think this will be the longest. So, friends, readers, minivan critics and champions: any final Odyssey thoughts and inquiries I can address on this run?
In the best Kesey/Int'l Harvester spirit, Further...
San Francisco is a dicey place to drive even in the lightest traffic or smallest car. At least that's how it's always seemed to this occasional visitor, and navigating the Union Square area on a Saturday night only intensifies the stress. Buses, cabs, cable cars, double-parkers, short signals and people wandering in every direction make for slow and deliberate progress. Getting out of Los Angeles at mid-afternoon and becoming invisible to the highway patrol for 400 miles would be easy. But anticipating the drive through the South of Market neighborhood to our hotel on Powell and Geary in the Honda bus had me chewing enamel.
My worries were unfounded.
First, I forgot that people tend to give wide berth to a tall, fat car creeping through the intersection. Second, the Odyssey's surprisingly tight turning radius made easy work of the many left- and right-handers you need to execute on a grid of one-way streets. Underneath, the Odyssey still feels like an Accord.
Next, I worried how the Odyssey would fare in the hotel garage, and whether I or a valet would manage to buckle one of the doors on a post, pillar or corner of a wall. But it was another exaggerated concern. Although the valet lanes were tight, as were the exits to the streets and ramps to the garage's bowels, the Odyssey never required any extra care beyond sliding slow through the limited space. You learn, especially in quarters like this, that the Odyssey seems larger in your imagination.
Next day, as I was feeling pretty pleased with my urban piloting skills, I watched from our sixth floor window as a squad from the SF Fire Department threaded two lead Suburbans, a small pumper, and a hook-and-ladder down Post Street choked with Sunday afternoon traffic. A handful of cops followed, still riding those big-hog Harleys - a cool sight at a time when most other agencies have switched to the angry-insect enforcer bikes from Germany and Japan.
I decided this much: road trips with the fellas, which could involve dirt, sand or snow? Chevy Suburban. Road trips with discerning wife and restless progeny? Honda Odyssey (or similar minivan).
I've covered plenty of road trip miles in trucks and body-on-frame SUVs. Discovering the Grateful Dead near the end of their run made that possible. There's something to be said for the confidence of riding on a thick truck frame. Road gators, armadillos, mud, standing water, sheets of rain: a truck or SUV makes you feel somewhat impenetrable. They goad you into taking rural state highways to the destination rather than the interstate. Or to cross flash flood basins with dark skies ahead. But they're not the easiest machines in which to navigate older drive-throughs or a parking lot full of veggie burrito vendors needing a miracle.
Then again, young, adventurous girlfriends and stoner pals don't mind some bump-and-rumble motoring in a hand-me-down 4Runner or Suburban. But the Modern MomWife will not hear of it. The Modern MomWife demands (and deserves) a compliant and relatively lump-free ride, especially across a distance of 1000 miles or more. The cabin should be quiet and the seats comfortable. There should be room for big bags, small bags, tote bags, food bags, the kid's bags, pillows and blankets, and bags for the pillows and blankets. There should also be room to move your feet.
The Odyssey's all that and some. Plenty of room, seemingly limited only by your ability to maximize it. It's surprisingly quiet - never a Honda strong suit. Not surprisingly, it glides across most highway surfaces. It's not quite a private jet, as one reader likened it. But the Odyssey is a damn good endurance runner. After several hours of highway travel, neither I nor the Missus felt fatigued or uncomfortable in the front or rear seats. Power seat adjustments, captain's armrests, and a refined, absorbent suspension made painless work of the San Francisco-Reno-SoCal legs of the journey.
Even braking through long grades, or to accommodate the odd long-haul trucker jumping lanes and vibrating out of his gourd on meth and Red Bull, was more assured than Honda's reputation for brake performance suggests. I'll cover some other dynamic observations, including learning to compromise with the transmission, in follow-up posts. Now, back to my Cornell '77 bootleg.
Roadside stop to stretch our legs during a long road trip. The kid sees some snow, wants to play in it. Sentimental dad reaches for camera to record the moment, only to see battery death looming in the LCD screen. Sentimental moment thus preserved with a handful of shots, I remembered the Odyssey's 115v outlet. Score.
Disaster averted for future precious moments that, let's face it, get moved to a hard drive and live there forever more, rarely seen or heard from again, until you figure out that screen saver slideshow function.
I couple weeks ago I wrote about our Sienna in all of its parental, stuff-carrying glory. I ended up changing vans during the middle of my holiday trip. so the Odyssey handled the return leg. Listed total capacity of these two arch rivals is pretty much the same, and there didn't seem to be much of a difference for loading up my stuff behind the second row. I still had a lot of crap.
Both the Sienna and the Odyssey are great vans. You won't go wrong with either one, and it really just comes down to personal preference.
Ed wrote a similar post back in August, but having just done a lot of road trip highway driving, it's worth mentioning again: the Odyssey's fuel range is quite good. Biggest fuel tank (21 gallons) of the four heavies (Odyssey, Sienna, Quest and Chrysler vans) plus the best V6 highway fuel economy (28 mpg) equals less stopping for gas.
I looked at our fuel logs for the Odyssey and Sienna. The Odyssey's average of miles on a tank is 310.7 miles. The Sienna posts an average of 262.8 miles between fill ups. The Honda's also had fewer fills overall. It hasn't quite hit 20,000 miles yet, but I'm estimating it will be about 60 fills to reach 20K. The Sienna took 73.
It's just a little thing, but when cresting 450 miles from a tank, it's a nice feeling nonetheless.
A few of the Odyssey's features that became near must-haves on my recent road-trip:
Power liftgate: my inner cheapskate scoffs at such a luxury. Really now. Am I so soft that I can't press the button mounted on the liftgate to open it, let alone reach up and pull it down with slight effort? I am, apparently. This thing was great. Open gate, heave junk into the cargo hold, press close button and walk away. I'm in the driver's seat and buckled by the time the hatch closes. Seconds count, people.
AC charger: saved camera battery, charged up a mobile phone in the absence of dedicated 12v port charger, even enabled the Kid to jam out on a toy synthesizer en route (gotta nurture my budding Norah Jones and early retirement ticket here).
Nav system: really came to appreciate Honda's navi on this trip. Map Guide and Dest Route buttons were invaluable. Scope the map, switch to turn-by-turn text, back to map. Zoom in, out. All without my elbow leaving the armrest. Big win for long-distance travel.
Conversation mirror: "Hey look over there, babe. We're on the east side of Yosemite. Sweet, huh? We should camp there next year. Hey, there's Manzanar, where our government detained its own people of Japane...hey, are you guys awake? Hello? I'm talking history here."
D4-Push to Pass: this made the transmission usable and less of a deal-breaker than I believe it is, for me at least. In its normal six-speed operation, I find it an eager upshifter and a rough one at that. One of the rare cases where I think the old five-speed is better. I was on D4 a lot on this trip, anytime I needed quick highway acceleration. Found it more fluid and responsive than simply dipping into the throttle and waiting for a downshift (and the inevitable quick upshift that follows when you ease off).
It was engaged continuously into and on the way out of urban San Francisco, and around the short, winding Reno roads where we stayed a few days later. A must-have. How did it affect fuel economy? Don't know, haven't done the numbers yet. Coming up.
Rear seat entertainment: ironically, the feature that made me lobby for the Odyssey over the Sienna, the one I thought crucial for my long-term sanity, was the one we used least. I figured the kid would like it and it'd get her through the longest stretches. In fact, she used it only once to watch a movie for about an hour.
Which is ultimately a good thing, I think. We also learned that the system would not play Region 2 DVDs, or discs from Japan at least. No Doraemon was a minor disappointment; can always use a magic cat on a road trip.
Yes, this was my parking job. I fully admit that it was a pretty crappy one. I probably should have repositioned or picked a different spot — the (not pictured) car to my right had started it off by being too far to its left in its space. But I had parked just for a quick stop (picking up dry cleaning) and I was rather lazy. More to the point, though, the photo does effectively represent a tight ("compact car") parking space, which is all too common these days if you're driving a big vehicle.
This is what's so great about minivans and their power sliding rear doors. No door dings (ones that are your fault, anyway). No awkward manuvering around a conventional door that's partially ajar. No problem getting your stuff or kids out of the back. Just press a button and — presto! — Bob's your uncle.
It's the ultimate advantage over anything labeled "crossover."
I spent the last half of December driving our Sienna and then the first half of this month driving our Odyssey. It was 30 days of both bliss and malaise.
The bliss part is simple. The minivan is the hands-down, ultimate family vehicle. It kicks ass like Schwarzenegger kicked ass in Commando. There's space for everything. The power sliding doors and power liftgate are super convenient. The seating is highly configurable. There's comfortable room for adults in the third row. There's loads of storage space. If you have kids (like I do), it truly is a luxury to own and drive a minivan. Life is just easier this way.
Malaise is harder to pin down. But it seeps into your soul after days and weeks of constant minivan-ness. The minivan is big. It's boxy. It will have kid safety seats permanently installed. All of your crap will be floating and rolling around inside because you're too tired to clean it out and, well, there's still space to sit, right? It can become like a redneck front lawn inside.
A minivan is the least sexy thing on wheels. It's the equivalent of going grocery shopping and seeing this guy. Automakers can call their minivans Swagger Wagons or Man Vans or style them so that they have a lightning bolt on the side. No difference, though — the things will still look like they smell like diapers. With a minivan, your life gets one more level of domestication added to it.
In the end, I'm OK with the latter. I'd buy a minivan. Their strengths are totally worth whatever downgrades in image (real or imagined) occur.
But I understand the suckiness, too. Just let me keep my Corvette, too, OK?
As you'd expect, the 2011 Honda Odyssey has a nice, functional, analog gauge pack (plus a digital trip computer) that provides all the information you really need to know while you're driving. There's nothing overdone about its design, but these partial gray gauge faces add a dash of style — a subtle touch to keep you from from falling completely into the minivan abyss of Uggs and elasticized waists.
And then, at night, when the headlights come on, you get another dash of flair with these blue gauge rings. Usually, I don't like blue on gauges, but this is a subtle application: The primary gauge face is still black with white markings, and thus, very readable. The blue is just around the perimeter, and it's really not as blue in real life as it appears in this photo — it's more of an indigo. And I like it.
Our 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring just reached the 20,000-mile mark. To-date we've had the minivan in for service only when it requested as much. We went in once about 10,000 miles and again about 17,000 miles. Our running cost to own the Odysssey is $156.88. And the only issue out of the ordinary is a pair of ever-so-slightly warped front rotors, which we've seen no reason to replace just yet.
By comparison, our Toyota Sienna cost us $0 for regular maintenance after 23,000 miles of long-term fleet duty.
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Our 2011 Honda Odyssey has a lot of cargo capacity. And on a rainy day its cargo area beats any open bed truck on the road. It fit all of my boxes in one load and kept them dry, making my job a little easier today....
When I climbed into our 2011 Honda Odyssey earlier this week the rearview camera was set to the 'wide' angle you see above. I didn't think much of it until I tried to back up.
In a car with as big a rear blindspot as a minivan, I typically utilize the mirrors and camera rather than relying solely on the over-the-shoulder technique. In my opinion, this wide angle view is more disorienting than helpful when the car is moving. I prefer the other options...
The 'normal' view above is the best option for me. If neither of these two work for you, there is another, the 'overhead' view.
I wasn't planning to make an appearance at yesterday's local elementary Career Day, or I would have tried to dig up something a little more inspirational than a minivan.
Not that the Honda Odyssey isn't a great vehicle, but when you're trying to earn the respect of three rooms of waaaay underclassmen, it's best to keep the mommy car to the side.
This guy greeted me as I fired up our 2011 Honda Odyssey Monday morning. Did I mention it was 5am and a crisp 48 degrees (hey, that's cold for us)? Anyhow, it wasn't fun.
A check of the tires showed Odyssey's right-front down 5psi as compared to the others. This is typically evidence of a leak. Fifty cents at the gas station compressor bought me 15psi, which gave me 10psi over spec were the issue significant.
I drove 40 miles to the office and rechecked the pressures. No air lost. So I dropped the tire back down another 5psi, keeping it 5psi over the recommendation for the sake of monitoring. This morning the right-front was 5psi over-filled, right where I left it. I dropped it back down to the correct amount and we'll continue to watch it.
There I stood at the gas station, daydreaming in the general direction of our 2011 Honda Odyssey. This is what I was seeing. From nowhere an idea snuck into my head. Hey, what would happen if I opened the sliding door right now?
I took precautions to control this experiment as much as possible. Primarily, I returned the nozzle back to the pump. This would at least limit the property damage. Then I yanked the sliding door handle.
Nothing happened. I confirmed it was unlocked and tried again. Nothing. I used the remote and pressed the button inside the cabin, both with the same result. I closed the fuel door and all methods to open the sliding door worked as designed. Open the fuel door again. No slider.
Just when I thought I'd outsmarted Honda, somebody beat me to it. Well, it's nice to know the car has this feature.
Our 2011 Honda Odyssey definitely does not want to run out of gasoline. When the fuel level gets to that magic point you won't miss it. A yellow light illuminates near the fuel gauge. Another warning "i" above the speedometer directs your attention to the information display. There you get a "fuel low" picture warning.
So at what point does this become excessive?
Our long-term 2011 Honda Odyssey joined our fleet about one year ago. You know what that means. Her time is up...
Naturally, we sent our Odyssey on one last trip to Home Depot for the requisite sheets of half-inch plywood 4x8s. Why not, right? One thing we noticed when reinstalling the second-row seats this time was the spacing between them. Take a look.
The picure quality is sub-par but you get the point. Those gaps between the 40/20/40 make seat installation easier. There is plenty of room to slide them into the floor brackets. Is there a functional benefit once they're in place? You decide. We're talking a total of 6 inches gap, maximum, 3 on each side. I can't figure it out.
Oh yeah, the plywood. Eat your hearts out.
Before our Honda Odyssey minivan left the fleet, Senior Editor Erin Riches shot a video review covering the Odyssey line-up. The video features footage of our Touring model.
See the video after the jump...
Building My Bar
When I moved last June, I had to abandon by beloved bar. I had made it with a friend after college and it was a clutch performer at any get together big or small. It was the place people convened as much as the place I stored the booze. Yet sadly, the old bar was too wide for my new man cave and too unwieldy to get into my basement without something being destroyed.
A new bar was needed, so with the guidance of general foreman Mark Takahashi (pictured) and sky-high expectations for what we could achieve, the bar build commenced. Naturally, quite a few long-term cars were used in the process.
The Plan
The requirements were to build something deep enough to hold a mini fridge, but only be 4-feet wide to fit in the space in my man cave. Beyond that, we had a blank slate. Mark and I were chatting and we both came up with the zany, hairbrained idea of making the bar resemble a Star Trek computer console. Specifically, one from The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine (Voyager too I suppose, but let's not talk about that). Mark came up with the blueprints in Adobe Illustrator and decided we should build a relatively simple three-side box on the bottom with the top appearing to float above it. I added the idea that the surface of the bottom should be glossy white to minimize its mass within in the room and to be reflective of the light beaming down from above. The top, I figured, would probably look like an iPhone, so maybe it could be glossy black. A pair of metal-look supports would shore up the Starfleet bridge vibe, not to mention the LCARS graphic I personalized in Photoshop.
It was an ambitious plan to say the least. Possibly a recipe for a more-than-we-can-chew disaster.
Part 1: Building the Bottom
Like any build, we started at Home Depot. Correction, we actually started at Mark's parents house where we picked up his dad's table saw. For this, we needed our Honda Odyssey. We lowered the third row and pushed the second all the way forward to allow the saw to sit on its side. When we returned it, we actually placed it upright with the table portioned lowered in a Grand Caravan's third-row pit.
Now, onto Home Depot. First we built the basic frame (pictured with Mark above) from redwood 2x2s, which fit easily in Odyssey. The gigantic sheet of melamine particle board to cover the outside of the frame was a different story. The idea was that we would lacquer its white surface to create the reflective surface. Our original idea was to cover it in 3M's Scotchprint 1080 Gloss White vinyl wrap, but I deemed that a needless expense.
The bigger concern at the moment was Home Depot's table saw was broken, requiring us to fit the whole damn melamine sheet in the Odyssey. I'm not exagerating when I said it barely fit. It was poking at my shoulder in the driver seat (moved as forward as was possible for me to drive). It was at guillotine level at Mark's neck behind me. We had to remove the second row seat (surprisingly not a difficult procedure) and put it atop the third row.
After returning home with Mark's head still intact, we finished up construction of the bottom and used the Odyssey to transport it to my house from Mark's backyard. Thankfully it just barely fit upright.
I'll now keep this short: the lacquer idea was a dismal failure. Lots of money, effort, hazardous fumes, sanding, time and a whole crap-ton of annoyance led to the conclusion that you just can't lacquer something that big with cans of lacquer. We went back to Plan A, and I purchased a large sheet of the gloss white Scotchprint from AutoVinylSolutions.com. It was incredibly easy to apply and it looks absolutely incredible.
Part 2: Building the Top
We essentially were building a display case one might hang on the wall to show off a signed jersey. The Star Trek graphic would be printed using the same material as back-lit movie posters, then be placed in between a thick sheet of tempered glass and a thin sheet of very breakable picture frame glass. With the dimensions of that glass set, we built the display "box" out of a wood that shall remain unknown yet Mark was very impressed by its quality. To transport this wood along with the sheets of glass we used the Acura TSX, which Mark blogged about back in December.
With the top completed, Mark set about lacquering it black. This was done at the same time as my attempt on the bottom, but A) his greater skill and B) the top's much smaller size made lacquering the top a smashing success. The thing looks like a piano.
Part 3: Transporting the Top and Joining the Pieces
To transport the completed box top and glass, we called in our then-new Nissan Quest. Lowering the rear seat was tremendously easy, and the second row's fold-flat design made transporting the large box top much easier and safer than in a traditional minivan layout. Plus, the bins behind the folded third row meant we could secure a saw and Mark's tool kit. In this case, the Quest's cargo area seemed to actually be more useful than the larger one found in the Odyssey. It would've been useless had we had it for the melamine or transporting the completed bottom.
At my house, the two parts went together without a hitch, and we placed two strands of LED rope lights underneath the glass/graphic sandwich. We then added the metal supports. They are completely cosmetic, though, as they don't actually support anything. They also aren't metal at all. Mark cut two pieces of wood and we called in AutoVinylSolutions again, this time going with 3M's Scotchprint 1080 brushed titanium wrap. Not only does it look like metal, it feels like it too. There is an actual brushed metal feel to it, unlike just about every car with a similar look.
The Finished Product
So there you have it, my new Star Trek bar and man is it cool. Yes, it was more expensive than I had planned on (+/- $700), but we were ambitious and we definitely pulled it off. And by "we," I mean "entirely Mark with me helping out when I could, but mostly being a Gilligan-like figure of uselessness." Nevertheless, there is a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue in the bar with Mark's name on it. Plus I bought him a Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca.
In total, it took us several weekends from November through February to get it done. The long-term cars we used were ...
Honda Odyssey
Acura TSX Wagon
Ford Mustang (multiple lacquer runs to OSH)
Mazda 3 (I don't actually remember, but we were definitely in it at some point)
Mini Cooper Countryman (a trip to Anawalt hardware, plus a taco run with Magrath)
Nissan Quest
Porsche 911 (Mark's default car, he used it multiple times for Anawalt runs)
The S-Class of Minivans?
There are two rather pricey houses on my street and they both happen to have current generation Mercedes-Benz S550s parked in their driveways. One is white, the other is black.
Funny thing is, both houses also have Honda Odysseys parked in front of the house. One is a matching white, the other matching black, both are of the highest trim level. While two does not make a trend, I suppose that these well-healed car buyers identified the Honda Odyssey as the minivan most synomous with their S-Class automotive expectations. Sure, these two dramatically different vehicles aren't remotely in the same ballpark, but in lieu of actual luxury-brand minivans (I suppose these car buyers correctly identified the R-Class as not an actual minivan), I'd certainly say the Odyssey would've been the most luxurious and best engineered minivan. You know, S-Class-like.
Well, at least until the Nissan Quest came along. Its interior is streets ahead of the Odyssey in terms of materials quality and general luxurious ambiance. I'd also offer that its driving experience is more isolating and refined. You know, even more S-Class-like. Should the time come for them to trade in their S550-paired vans, I'd suggest they check out the Quest instead.
Wrap-Up
What We Got
Our decision to add a 2011 Honda Odyssey to the long-term test fleet was as easy as they come. It's been the gold standard in the segment for years and it was fully redesigned for 2011. It's also an easy van to buy, as its options are bundled together into defined trim levels. This gave us five variants of Odyssey from which to choose, and we opted for the Odyssey Touring.
All 2011 Odysseys came equipped with a 3.5-liter V6 generating 248 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque, along with front-wheel drive and eight-passenger capability. A six-speed automatic transmission separated our Touring and the top-level Touring Elite from lesser trims, which utilized five-speeds. The price tag on our Odyssey Touring was $41,535. In the world of minivans, this ranks it among the most expensive.
As with all long-term tests, our goal was to reach 20,000 miles during our first year of ownership, and after 12 months we had covered 20,640 miles. The miles racked up quickly as the Odyssey found itself on interstate road trips, moving numerous couches and even shuttling mother and child to the delivery room. With all those trips under its belt, there were plenty of useful impressions.
Our Impressions
"Our new Odyssey has already established itself as the Oldham family's go-to ride. In its first month of service the Odyssey has hauled my clan to a taping of American Idol (I think J. Lo just winked at me), a long weekend at Grandma's, tennis lessons, a matinee of Gnomeo and Juliet and the mall. It has also done school drop-off duty and has taken three adult couples to an overpriced, overrated Italian restaurant by the beach." — Scott Oldham
"Had to take the Odyssey on a 700-mile round trip this weekend. Not the most exciting vehicle to rack up the miles in, but like most minivans it's a great cruiser. The good: solid power from the V6; never has trouble keeping up with traffic even on uphill grades; overdrive toggle switch is nice to have; quiet at speed; the ratcheting armrest makes it easy to find the perfect seating position. The bad: suspension is soft, even for a minivan; on some rougher parts of the interstate, the Odyssey bounces and jitters too much; it feels sloppy." — Ed Hellwig
"Now I'm that guy. That guy with a real reason to own a minivan, that is. So it's been a few days since you've heard anything about the Odyssey, and for good reason. It spent a few nights parked at the hospital while my little one was entering the world. And now I've got good excuse to fill this rig with every plastic baby apparatus the army of grandmas can throw my way." — Josh Jacquot
"The Odyssey's front seat is just one more reason why I like minivans more and more lately. I love the adjustable seat armrests. You can easily find that perfect position. And the seat doesn't have the harsh amount of lumbar support found in some Hondas." — Mike Monticello
"From the driver seat the Odyssey is pretty great. I felt as fresh after 90 minutes of driving as I did after 9 minutes." — Mike Magrath
"Only Honda and Toyota build vans with eight-passenger seating, so if you need that second-row center seat, you're going to end up with an Odyssey or Sienna — and only the Honda can fit an adult derriere in that seat." — Erin Riches, from our 2011 Minivan Comparison, where the Odyssey EX tied for 2nd place among vans under $40,000.
"Second-row seat removal in the Odyssey is not easy, but it's also not the hardest in this class. The seats pull out at an awkward angle and they're heavy. Yet each has convenient handles mounted to its underside to simplify the process. I'd consider its three-piece configuration easier to manage than the bulky two-piece design of our Sienna. And the seats themselves are more comfortable than competitive minivans opting for a stow approach over removable seats." — Mike Schmidt
"Good-sized ventilated rotors and big-looking sliding calipers handle the stopping chores up front. Our stopping distance, feel and fade tests of the new 2011 Honda Odyssey came out much better than expected compared to our test of a last-gen 2010 Odyssey. Did Honda finally raise its internal brake performance standards? It would seem so." — Dan Edmunds, during the 2011 Honda Odyssey suspension walkaround.
"Easily the biggest difference when it comes to driving (the Sienna and Odyssey) is what happens when the driver opens the throttle. The Sienna is, dare I say it, snappy. It's eager to move out, and acceleration more readily follows the driver's right foot. By comparison, the Odyssey lags. It's less anxious to get moving, and downshifts at speed demand a large throttle opening and plenty of waiting." — Josh Jacquot
"Driver controls and chassis feedback make the Odyssey feel more capable than it truly is. It's easy to overdrive this van because you can, but the tires cannot cash the check written by the sensations the chassis writes." — Chris Walton, following instrumented testing.
"I'm not totally happy with the steering. It's great around town, where it's precise and communicative to an extent that nobody expects in a minivan. But I wish the effort was a little higher at highway speeds.... Wouldn't mind a little more weight to it on-center, either." — Erin Riches
Maintenance & Repairs
Regular Maintenance: When it came to routine maintenance, we structured our dealer visits according to the Odyssey's onboard warning system. The Honda requested its first service (A1) with just over 7,900 miles on the odometer. Honda of Santa Monica handled this basic service in about 30 minutes for $34. That was without an appointment. And it was one of the more notable, and positive, service visits we've had in awhile.
As we crested the 16,000-mile mark, our 2011 Honda Odyssey came due for its second service (B1). It was back to Honda of Santa Monica, but this time we didn't get out quite so clean. An oil and filter change, tire rotation and bevy of inspections set us back $122. There were extra items on our list, requiring the van sit in their garage several hours. We requested a brake inspection to confirm the severity of our warped front rotors. They weren't that bad, so we did nothing at the time. Also on our mind were two open service campaigns of which, it turned out, only one applied to our vehicle.
Service Campaigns: Both active recall campaigns were performed under warranty. The first recall pertained to wiper blades and affected 34,341 units. NHTSA wrote, "If the front windshield blades become frozen to the windshield and the wiper motor is switched on, one of the front windshield wiper linkage rods may bend or separate from the motor due to insufficient stiffness of the rod." Honda replaced the wiper rod arm to remedy the potential issue.
The second recall was smaller, affecting 2,800 units. In some vehicles both driver and front passenger side windows were susceptible to falling off their track, at which point pressure applied by the window motor could shatter the glass. Our van was not affected by this recall.
Fuel Economy and Resale Value
Observed Fuel Economy: After 12 months and over 20,000 miles we averaged 20.8 mpg in the 2011 Honda Odyssey. Our best single tank was nearly 31.5 mpg and covered a range of 495 miles. On the other end of the spectrum, our worst single tank was 13 mpg. For comparison, our long-term 2011 Toyota Sienna (19.6 mpg) and 2012 Nissan Quest (19.2 mpg) averaged slightly worse.
Resale and Depreciation: At the end of every long-term test we calculate the resale value of each vehicle using Edmunds' TMV® Calculator. Based on a private-party sale, the 2011 Honda Odyssey depreciated just 18 percent, which was quite good. The aforementioned 2011 Toyota Sienna dropped 22 percent in value under similar circumstances.
Summing Up
Pros: Minivan versatility hard to beat; ranks among the best in its segment for fuel economy; flexibility of an eight-passenger seating configuration; strong resale value.
Cons: Fully equipped, the Odyssey is the most expensive minivan money can buy. Some would rather have a folding, stowable second row than the removable seats; steering not as precise as previous Odysseys.
Bottom Line: The 2011 Honda Odyssey is still one of the top minivans in the segment. The initial cost is slightly higher than most, but it comes back in the form of high resale value. A must-drive contender if you're shopping for a minivan.
| Total Body Repair Costs: | None |
| Total Routine Maintenance Costs: | $156.88 (over 12 months) |
| Additional Maintenance Costs: | None |
| Warranty Repairs: | Windshield wiper recall and recall for driver/passenger side window |
| Non-Warranty Repairs: | None |
| Scheduled Dealer Visits: | 2 |
| Unscheduled Dealer Visits: | None |
| Days Out of Service: | None |
| Breakdowns Stranding Driver: | None |
| Best Fuel Economy: | 31.5 mpg |
| Worst Fuel Economy: | 13.2 mpg |
| Average Fuel Economy: | 20.8 mpg |
| True Market Value at service end: | $34,039 (private-party sale) |
| Depreciation: | $7,496 (18% of original MSRP) |
| Final Odometer Reading: | 20,640 miles |
The manufacturer provided Edmunds this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.