eBusiness Weekly
Something astonishing has happened over the last few years: Everyone wants an off-road vehicle.
Tax Attorney Guy who’s never gone camping suddenly needs a lifted crossover with trail-rated tyres, even if his miserable work commute doesn’t ever veer off the highway.
And Suburbian Dad (also salesperson of the month at his company) has decided to attach an expensive roof tent to his SUV because, hey, Mother Nature’s calling — even though he’s never actually answered her call.
The 2023 Honda Pilot Trailsport is for these folks. And a few million others who might actually see some dirt on the weekends.
Honda has identified a growing market and rolled out a new product that speaks to it — though off-road-inspired SUVs are nothing new. Other carmakers including Honda have been doing this for a while.
A Trailsport trim was already offered for the outgoing Pilot (and for the current Passport, too), but consisted of nothing more than visual enhancements.
This time it’s for real. The rugged trim doesn’t just talk the talk, it actually walks the walk. And in the snowy, muddy trails I drove it on, it walked a surprisingly confident walk.
The 2023 Honda Pilot Trailsport packs a small repertoire of hardware and software to make it capable of traversing trails with a “Moderate” rating, which according to Honda makes up more than half of all US public land trails.
The most obvious of the enhancements is a one-inch suspension lift over the stock Pilot, which gives the Trailsport 8.3 inches of ground clearance. That’s more than a Ford Explorer Timberline and just 0.2 inches shy of a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Suspension performance is also revised for Trailsport, featuring specific shock and stabiliser bar tuning to maximise traction when venturing off the pavement.
Continental 265/60 All-Terrain tires wrap around trim-specific 18-inch wheels with flared spokes. Two heavy-duty skid plates — one for the engine and one for the fuel tank — were designed with the help of Honda Powersport engineers.
These can reportedly withstand the full weight of the vehicle crashing down on the plate without causing any damage. Lastly, a high-strength steel rear hitch with built-in recovery points is standard, and it can sustain two times the Pilot’s weight.
Tech enhancements include a new Trail driving mode, which allows the Pilot’s newly-tuned i-VTM4 all-wheel-drive system to send the majority of the torque to the wheel with the most traction.
The rear differential is also more powerful than in the regular Pilot, boasting 3 000 Nm of torque compared to 2 500.
A Hill Descent system is also new, but more helpful during my off-roading expedition was Honda’s new Trailwatch System.
It employs the Pilot’s front, rear, and side cameras to provide various angles to aid in malingering through tight spots, or when approaching hills, steep drop-offs, etc.
With the exception of the chonk wheels and tires, the new Trailsport isn’t too much different visually from the Pilot Elite, per se.
Though if you want that cool light blue colour — dubbed Diffused Sky Pearl — you oughta get the Trailsport. It’s not available in other trims.
Off-road chops
It’s not that you expect a Honda SUV to be bad at something, but you don’t really expect a Pilot to excel at off-roading. For three generations over the course of 23 years, the Pilot’s been the ride of choice for countless families, the majority of whom spend all of their time on paved roads.
Admittedly, it was hard for me (and likely you) to even picture one on an off-road trail, which is why Honda set up an expedition on the outskirts of Sedona, Arizona to change my mind.
With temperatures hovering in the low 40s and snow on the ground from an overnight frost, conditions weren’t exactly in the Pilot’s favour.
It would take all of its electronic gizmos and Continental tyres to keep the family hauler hooked on the slippery ground. The bright red mud was especially sticky, too, adhering to the tires (and my boots) like clay ready for the kiln.
I made my way through narrow trails as I felt the SUV sink in the soft mud. With the Trail drive mode engaged, the all-wheel-drive system was able to distribute traction where it was needed most. It can send up to 70 percent of the torque to the rear, and 100 percent of that to either the right or left wheel.
This came in especially handy on our first major obstacle, where the Pilot Trailsport had to manoeuvre a steep climb while turning slightly right.
The tyres chirped as they fought for traction, all while the computer sent most of the power to the rear axle — where there was the most grip.
The Trailwatch system allowed me to keep an eye on the large rock in front of me to my left, something which I couldn’t see with my own eyes as the hood was pointing straight into the sky. After a bit of finagling with the wheel to find a dry spot on the slick red boulder, the tires hooked up enough to push the Pilot over the hill and onto flat ground.
Rated as “Moderate,” that specific trail isn’t the kind of terrain that Jeep owners dream of wheeling. It ain’t easy, but it ain’t exactly challenging for jacked-up suspensions and 35-inch tires.
The Pilot Trailsport has none of that, however, and having completed that first obstacle relatively easily had really shown me just how feisty the three-row family SUV truly was.
But there was more to conquer.
The next few obstacles delivered a beating to the skid plates, especially the front one. For every uphill obstacle, there was a downhill one first.
The front end would have to drag through the mud and rock before the trail pointed up.
The grinding noise heard inside the cabin was awful and made me feel truly bad about doing that to a brand-new car, but that was the whole point — to see just how much of a beating the Trailsport could take without breaking a thing. Should Suburbian Dad ever decide to venture off-road, he won’t be left stranded when his oil pan shatters the first time he snags a rock.
I could see a Jeep coming toward me down a big hill, making me wonder if we were actually meant to climb up that same hill.
Turns out we were. After slipping and sliding through the mud to move over and let some traffic go by, I and a few other Pilots drove to the base of the hill and examined some possible driving lines.
We might as well have not done any of that, because no matter which way we took up the cascading rock wall, we bottomed out several times and spun the tires 50 percent of the time. But boy, it was fun.
It was evident that the Pilot was now on another level in terms of ruggedness—it reminded me of that Aha! moment I once had with a Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk. It’s so much more capable than its looks lead you to believe.
Use your index finger to double-tap the tip of the windshield wiper stalk, and the Trailwatch system cycles through various camera views that can come in handy while off-roading.
I had opted for the side-camera split view, so I could make sure I didn’t get too close to the trees during a very narrow part of the trail.
This, along with the hood camera, was my favourite view to confidently manoeuvre about the trail. They helped me make sure I didn’t pop a tire, rip off a bumper, or worse, fall off a cliff. — thedrive.com
