What would Honda have to do to Snag Tacoma Buyers

What's the ground clearance?

A Ridgeline made the first water crossing as Azusa before the mud flow happened.

 

Will the base Ridgeline have height adjustable seats manual or power???
Power for both passenger and driver?
Heated Mirrors???
Power Folding mirrors???
Smart Link???
Etc, Etc... for any modern $35-40,000.00 vehicle...
540 Watt in bed sound system???
5 Foot wide bed???
Lockable trunk big enough for a 70 quart cooler or just fill it with ice and drain it out with the drain plug???
Rear seat big enough for adults???

Yes, it is a Pilot with a bed, not a full frame off road truck, but many don't hardcore off road so is there a market, yes.

The Tacoma is great, but it is too expensive for the features is does NOT offer, basically Toyota itself admits the Tacoma is over priced when they sell a truck called the Tundra that is superior in its offered features for basically the same price. Especially, when real selling prices are compared.

Taco, Tundra, Ridgeline they will all have there place in the market... time will tell...

 

The more I come back to this thread and look at the Ridgeline, the more I like it. For how I use my truck, I could work with this platform. I'm hopefully three years plus from buying another truck, but if the reviews come back good on this, I'd give it strong consideration.

Honestly, I like that it has a midsize appearance, similar to the Hilux. If Toyota brought the Hilux to the North American market, I'd probably choose it over the latest Tacoma.

 

Ban worthy post or we sell Alaska back to Russia...

 

Ok, guess I'm gone.

 

Simple answer: they would have to make a truck that is better than the Tacoma. Brand loyalty be damned. I am not paying extra for the Toyota name, I'm paying more for their superior product.

I have read literally ZERO posts since the first one but here's my take. Honda makes extremely reliable vehicles (not unlike Toyota) but their vehicles are generally a little more refined, stylish, and fun to drive than Toyota. Accord / Camry, Civic / Corolla.

If I were looking for a new truck - which I will be in 18 years - I would look at Honda if they made a proper pickup truck you would be happy to throw a suspension kit in and toss a gutted elk in the back. They would need to make the truck bed a truck bed instead of that avalanche/slanted angle shit they had in the last design. I want to be able to throw on a lumber rack, or a camper, or whatever happens to appeal to me at the time.

All this said, of all the AWD or 4WD systems I have used before... I liked the Honda Pilot's the least. Very nice-handling, smooth comfortable SUV's to drive but I wasn't impressed with their AWD systems compared to Subaru or Toyota. I would be wary of their transfer case situation.

 

I agree Handa makes some vehicles that are better driving than comparable Toyota products. I've owned several Acura & Honda vehicles and I've always had good luck & enjoyed them.

That said, any number of respected sources now indicate that Acura & Honda brands are relying on their hard earned reputation where reliability is concerned. Several of their current products rate "average" and some rank "much worse than average". It's unfortunate that the brand has evolved into, IMO, a brand that produced unattractive cars & light trucks with average to less than average reliability. And now without some of the design that used to make the cool.

 

yeah, but Dodge Ram also won the truck of the year a couple years back. All that shit has to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

So true.. If I'm not mistaken even Toyota has had issues with the Siennas and Camrys that were equipped with the V6 engines in the past. Transmissions were failing if I'm not mistaken. Not sure what year models these were though. I've had an Integra, CRV, and Pilot in the past and all were excellent vehicles. The CRV and Pilot now belong to my 2 sons. CRV is a tad over 200K and the Pilot is right at 165K. I'll buy what is reliable. Toyota, Honda, Subaru, GM, Nissan, and Ford have all been on my driveway and the only one I've had repeated issues with have been the 2 Nissans I've owned. But I've always owned at least one Toyota..

 

For all you with bed depth woes...

Compared to Tacoma bed depth:
1st gen 16" deep
2nd gen 18" deep
3rd gen 19.5" deep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbmOYTMirrw

 

The fact of being unibody doesn't cause it to "handle like a car". Fact is that even as unibody, it will probably handle more like a truck than as a car. Truck handling is caused by having a higher center of gravity, and a weight distribution that puts more of the vehicle's weight at the front. If you are referring to cushyness, that is purely a function of springs and shock absorbers. Cars aren't set up for payload, so they can have a spring rate that is more linear, and shock absorbers that are balanced for the vehicle's weight, rather than somewhere between the vehicle's weight and what it would be with maximum payload.

If Honda wants to snag Tacoma buyers (aka "TRUCK" buyers rather than over-20 street race punks), then they need a FRAME, and a suspension that can handle payload. End of story.

 

Could be but, it's different things tho...

Those "truck of the year" & "car of the year" type ratings typically rely on some pretty subjective rating methods & reliabilty carries little, if any, weight in any of those awards that I've ever read. Which "xxx of the year" test do include reliability as part of the test criteria?

The empirical data is what I'm referring to... I guess by questioning that data, than by default, I'd also need to question the accuracy of Toyotas generally being highly ranked regarding reliability.

 

But that would be a similar comparison as between a Tacoma and a 4runner, when the question was how a ridgeline compares against a car (i.e. Civic).

My Tacoma says 1490. Its more complex than a sticker with a number on it though. For instance, what happens if you drive over a speed bump with a ridgeline with 1500 pounds on its back? What happens if you go over that sticker? I know that with a Tacoma, you can go over the printed numbers, over speed bumps, etc., without it collapsing.

 

I'd love to know how anyone can claim to know about a vehicle's reliability when nobody even owns one yet. IMO, it takes at least a few years before you can really judge reliability.

 

Agree with this...

But Honda as a brand has moved lower in recent years...not a good trajectory.

 

Well if you want to get extreme, suzuki vitara used to be BOF, but you certainly couldn't give it 1500 pounds and expect not to break it. So obviously you are correct in that.

You would be amazed at how the vast majority of people who frequent this site seem to have the idea that if you go one ounce over the printed limits, bad things will happen. The rest of us do, of course, understand about safety margins. But of course, part of the rating, determination of the safety margin, is determining the PROBABILITY and PROPORTION of owners who will carry a payload at or near that limit, and the proportion of time that they will do so. So you can imagine, that ridgeline and tacoma will carry different assumptions. I would bet that ridgeline will be rated a heck of a lot closer to its absolute limit, just because it will be less likely to carry payload, and the likely payload will be lower. Consider a ridgeline would be more likely to carry a few bags of mulch carefully home from whatever the owner's preferred big box store is, or appliances, bulky electronics, etc. Tacoma will be more likely full to the brim with cement, or bricks, or drywall, or fire wood and running speed bumps down like they aren't even there. Which of course means that Tacoma would require a much greater safety margin.

I will give one example of an application that will *immediately* cross ridgeline off the list, margin or not: snow plowing. If you don't have a frame, you definitely don't push a plow.

 

Agreed. Have you read The Toyota Way? Just in time sourcing isn't real new for them and Honda has produced a certain number of some models (as opposed to all of a certain model destined to be sold in the US) in the US and had higher quality at least in relative terms in the past.

I think you hit the nail on the head where a push to improve production efficiency (and cheapening the product) in the name of short term profit is Hondas problem. IMO, it will only work for the short term though. As soon as they've used up their reputation it'll be over. Unlike some other manufactures who offer prestige or real performance Honda will have nothing to peddle without durability & reliability.

I think Toyota for the most part has done better...

Of course the other part of the story is the other manufactures are improving which exposes a position that may have been good at one time but, without improvement begins to only be average at some point.

Either way I hope Honda gets their mojo back.

 

I live in NH, and can honestly say that I can't recall ever seeing a Tacoma with a plow (other than the light duty plastic ones). Putting a plow on a midsize truck is asking a lot of it. If you plan to plow more than just your driveway, you probably need a full size, and more likely, a 3/4 or 1 ton.

 

No one mentioned "handling" I expect the Ridgeline to drive like an SUV not a car. Like the Pilot. I should have been clearer. I have no doubt the Honda will handle the payload listed,

I think a pick up that drives like an SUV would be exactly what I would like. I drove a Pilot and it is much smoother than my Tacoma. If the ridgeline is that smooth, I may make the switch. There are a lot of advantages in addition to what I have, My only reservation will be price. I won't pay over $33K for any pick up truck. That may be the deal breaker knowing Honda (although we were able to snag a $2500 Cap reduction on the wife's 2014 CRV EXL Nav).

I am a tad disappointed with Toyota and the way they are handling early issues. If I don;t get over it by then, the Honda will be a great alternative.

 

Minus tank of gas (100 pounds), minus driver (200 pounds), minus passenger (200 pounds), and you are already down to 500. Throw a couple of kids in the back seat and you're down to 200 pounds LEFT.

Also, the towing capacity on those was 1500 pounds, but yeah, they certainly could handle more than that.

5 foot plow won't work on a vehicle that is 6.5 feet wide.

Not safely and without damaging the vehicle.
Also, a "full size" truck is TERRIBLE for plowing. Problem is that the wider the truck, the wider the plow, and the wider the plow, the harder it is to push. If you look at the plowing that full sized trucks are used for, they are typically used for small parking lots by commercial operators on a 1.5 inch trigger. Means that they don't ever plow more than a couple of inches of snow at a time. Try taking a full sized plow truck through a gravel road and you'll quickly find yourself in a major problem. I've been dealing with multiple kilometers of single lane gravel road for 20 years, doable with smaller trucks, one guy tried one year to take on the rest of the road (past us) with a full sized truck, and couldn't handle it. And a contractor doing a reno next door a few years ago tried to keep the driveway open with some big chevrolet diesel, I ended up pulling him out once, and he gave up trying to keep going through the winter.

And yet somehow I still manage with a '91 YJ and a Tacoma.

Well... guess that some plow vendors are trying their hardest to make a buck. Doesn't make it a good idea.