2023 Honda Ridgeline Reviews, Pricing & Specs

A couple of years ago, Honda updated the Ridgeline’s styling, adding a new front end with bolder details, giving it LED headlights, LED fog lights, LED taillights, larger dual exhaust outlets, and bolting on more appealing wheels wearing new tires with an aggressive tread design. The changes resulted in a more rugged appearance, but the optional Honda Performance Development (HPD) packages install comically oversized fender flares, so avoid those.

Four versions of the 2023 Ridgeline are available, each equipped with an excellent V6 engine, a nine-speed automatic transmission, and a i-VTM4 torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive (AWD) system. Sport trim is the base model in Canada, and from there you can upgrade to EX-L, Touring, or Black Edition trim. Since some people don’t like black paint, you can also get the Ridgeline Black Edition in white and grey colours.

Prices range from $47,435 to $56,435, not including a destination charges and other fees adding up to just over $2,100. Our Black Edition test vehicle arrived with Platinum White Pearl paint and extra-cost accessory 18-inch black alloy wheels.

If that sounds high, you’re right. You can get a 2023 Toyota Tacoma Limited with four-wheel drive and the Nightshade Package for roughly the same price. But the Tacoma isn’t the same kind of truck as the Ridgeline. Raw, rough, and unrefined, the Toyota is the poster model for a traditional pickup. The Ridgeline adds several layers of refinement and sophistication compared to the Tacoma and other midsize trucks. And that’s because it shares plenty with the Passport crossover SUV.

Yank open the Ridgeline’s door, and you’ll immediately spot the resemblance to Honda’s midsize, two-row sport utility vehicle. From the centre roof pillars forward, the Ridgeline and Passport are essentially the same vehicles, inside and out.

Before you assume this is a bad thing, we can assure you it is not. The Ridgeline Black Edition’s leather-lined interior exudes quality, offers plenty of storage, provides terrific outward visibility, features a sensible layout with properly marked switchgear, and is quite comfortable for all occupants. And though the interior design dates back to the 2016 Honda Pilot in which it first debuted, it still looks more modern, upscale, and technologically advanced than several of its rivals.

Wait. What’s the 2016 Pilot got to do with the 2023 Honda Ridgeline? Let us explain.

Car companies often create a platform and component set and then share it across different makes and models. The Ridgeline’s underlying bits and pieces have plenty in common with the third-generation Acura MDX and Honda Pilot SUVs, as well as the current Honda Odyssey minivan and Honda Passport SUV.

For use under the Ridgeline’s sheet metal, Honda fortified the platform for pickup-truck duty. But the 3.5-litre VTEC V6 engine, with power specs 280 horsepower and 262 lb-ft of torque, nine-speed automatic transmission, and torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system that can put up to 70 percent of the power to a single rear wheel are common to the current Passport.

This isn’t a bad thing because it gives the Ridgeline remarkably sophisticated driving dynamics on pavement, where you’ll spend most of your time anyway. Furthermore, the Ridgeline offers a competitive 694-kilogram (1,530-pound) payload capacity. However, the Ridgeline’s unibody instead of body-on-frame construction limits it to 2,268 kilograms (5,000 pounds) of towing capacity.

That’s one of the only downsides to the 2023 Ridgeline. The other potential issue is its unremarkable 19.4 centimetres of ground clearance, lack of a traditional four-wheel-drive system with low-range gearing, and somewhat shallow approach, breakover, and departure angles. We’ve done some light off-roading in the Ridgeline, and its multi-link rear suspension can tackle moderately challenging desert terrain. But for serious four-wheeling and rock crawling, you’ll need a different truck.

As it happened, we needed to take a 1,200-kilometre road trip during our time with the Ridgeline. Nothing about this truck’s driving character suggests it is a pickup truck. It is quick and refined when accelerating onto a highway, it is comfortable and reasonably quiet on side roads, and it proves nimble when navigating the traffic and tight parking situations of a city.

In addition, the Ridgeline averaged 10.4 litres per 100 kilometres on the trip, landing between its official Natural Resources Canada fuel economy ratings of 11.5 L/100 km in combined driving and 9.9 on the highway. Among midsize pickups with gas-powered V6 engines and four-driven wheels, these numbers are class-leading. However, if you’re willing to go electrified, diesel, or with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, there are more fuel-efficient powertrain choices in a truck.

On our test-driving route, the Ridgeline’s unibody construction, four-wheel independent suspension, and torque-vectoring all-wheel drive demonstrated exceptional ride and handling qualities—for a pickup truck.

In the city, the ride is comparatively supple. On the highway, the Ridgeline drives like an SUV instead of a car. And on twisty, lumpy mountain roads, Honda’s pickup demonstrates remarkable athleticism, with none of the shimmy, shake, or skittishness common to a typical truck. Furthermore, it averaged 11.0 L/100 km on our loop, beating the official rating for combined driving.

If there’s anything here to gripe about, it’s that the steering feels a little too heavy at lower speeds. And that’s more of a nitpick than a complaint.

The 2023 Honda Ridgeline is all about function. From the shelves carved into the front door panels and the giant storage console between the front seats to its dual-action tailgate and in-bed trunk, Honda’s truck makes up for its reduced towing and off-roading capability with daily-driving practicality.

From the centre roof pillars forward, the Ridgeline and Honda Passport SUV are nearly the same vehicles. So, getting in and out of this truck is easy, the seats are exceptionally comfortable power adjustment and excellent leg support, and the look and feel of the interior suggest it would be a bad idea to take a hose to it in order to clean it up. In addition, the test truck had a heated driver’s seat and front passenger seat, and a heated steering wheel.

Open a rear door on the standard crew cab, and you’ll discover that a Ridgeline is not as generous in headroom or legroom for rear-seat passengers as a Passport is. However, the three-person bench sits high for an elevated seating position, the front seatbacks are softly padded and kind to knees, and our test truck provided rear air conditioning vents for the tri-zone automatic climate control and large cupholders molded into the door panel armrests.

The rear seat cushion flips up to create a sizable load floor behind the front seats, and Honda offers a reasonably priced accessory rear underseat storage system to help contain items within the cab. Up front, our Ridgeline had a dashboard slot perfect for smartphones, a separate wireless charging pad that worked intermittently depending on the position of the device resting upon it, and a huge centre console storage bin with a sliding tambour-style cover that doubles as a handy tray.

As practical as the interior is, the Ridgeline’s 1,625 mm (64-inch) truck bed is even more impressive. The dual-action tailgate drops down or swings open from right to left for loading, and the scratch-resistant composite cargo bed’s floor is flat, measuring a minimum of 1,270 mm wide at the wheel wells. It is somewhat shallow, though, offering 960 litres of volume at the sills. You can use the standard tie-down cleats rated at 160 kilograms (350 pounds) each to secure larger loads.

Honda offers numerous accessories for the Ridgeline, from a roof rack with crossbars and various attachments to bed extenders, tonneau covers, a bed tent, and more. In addition, some versions of the Ridgeline have a 150-watt/400-watt power outlet and in-bed stereo speakers. But what sets the Ridgeline apart from all trucks except the smaller Hyundai Santa Cruz is its trunk.

Under the load floor, the Ridgeline offers more cargo space with a lockable, weatherproof, 206-litre trunk with a drain plug in the floor, yet another benefit of the truck’s unique unibody platform. You can use it to carry groceries home from the market, luggage home from the airport, wet or muddy gear after surfing or hiking, or items you need to keep dry and secure but that won’t fit inside the cab. And if you’re hosting a tailgate party, you can plug a TV into the truck’s bed-mounted electrical outlet, fill the trunk with ice and beverages, and then easily drain the water out afterward.

Because the Ridgeline’s engineering dates back to the mid-2010s, it doesn’t have the latest infotainment systems available from Honda. Nevertheless, Bluetooth, wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and a wireless charging pad are standard, along with basic HondaLink services. SiriusXM comes in at the EX-L grade. Most Ridgelines also have satellite radio, but only the Touring and Black Edition include a navigation system, premium audio system, and cargo bed speakers.

Infotainment content loads slowly when you start the truck, and the voice recognition system exhibits delayed response to voice commands. In addition, the 8-inch touchscreen is smaller than expected, and the on-screen graphics don’t reflect modern design standards. However, as we learned during hours spent behind the truck’s steering wheel, if you lower your expectations then it is easy enough to acclimate to the technology.

Fortunately, the user interface is simple enough. The touchscreen display provides touch-sensing Home, Menu, and Back shortcut buttons and a stereo volume knob. You can also swipe between menu panels when necessary.

Frustratingly, there isn’t a way to manually tune between radio stations without tap, tap, tapping on the screen, and the navigation display is cluttered with detail, showing less of the map than is desirable.

Also, Honda does not provide natural or conversational voice recognition, so finding points of interest and programming destinations while driving is distracting because you need to reference the suggested commands shown on the display. However, if you’re willing to follow the step-by-step instructions, you can successfully locate and then navigate to the places you wish to travel, even if the technology regularly seems to be a step or two behind with regard to issuing upcoming directions.

Similarly, if you take the time to program radio station favourites, you can use the steering wheel’s stereo controls to cycle between them. Once you get into the habit of doing so, you won’t miss the Ridgeline’s lack of a tuning knob, and you might not use the volume knob anymore.

As mentioned before, the Ridgeline’s wireless smartphone charger worked haphazardly, seemingly because it is easy for the phone to reposition in a way that is incompatible with the charging pad. We don’t know if vibrations caused a phone to move within the pad or if we imprecisely placed the device on the pad, but using this feature proved dissatisfying.

Overall, the Ridgeline is in desperate need of a technology overhaul, but that likely won’t happen until it gets another refresh or a full redesign.

Similar to its old-school infotainment system, the Ridgeline relies on aging driver-assistance systems that aren’t as smooth, accurate, and refined as what the latest Hondas offer.

Honda Sensing equips every version of the Ridgeline with adaptive cruise control, forward-collision warning, automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning, lane-keeping assist (Road Departure Mitigation in Honda-speak), and lane-centring assist (Lane Keeping Assist). In addition, automatic high-beam headlights are standard.

Blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert are standard driver assistance features in Canada, but it looks like an afterthought because Honda embeds the warning lights on pieces of plastic that cover the lower portion of the truck’s front quarter windows. Instead, the warning indicators should be on the mirror glass or the inner side of the mirror caps.

Aside from the lane-departure warning system’s irritating steering wheel wobble when you allow the truck to drift over lane markings, the technology is effective. However, the adaptive cruise control system can struggle a bit to maintain a safe following distance, noticeably alternating between braking and acceleration in its quest to find and hold the perfect span.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the 2023 Ridgeline earns mostly favourable crash-test and safety ratings. Only the headlights receive a score other than Good or Acceptable. In evaluations performed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Ridgeline gets top marks in all crash tests plus a four-star rollover resistance rating, which is good for the segment.

In Canada, the base price of just over $47,000 for the 2023 Honda Ridgeline Sport is on par for the segment, yet it strikes us as a bargain.

At that price, the 2023 Ridgeline provides a strong V6 engine, standard all-wheel drive with torque vectoring and off-road driving modes, rewarding driving dynamics, a roomy and comfortable interior, practical storage solutions, unique features, and favourable safety ratings. Yes, it needs the next-generation technology Honda provides in several of its other models. And the Ridgeline is undeniably less capable than a typical truck regarding outright towing capacity and off-roading capability.

However, having lived with this Ridgeline Black Edition for a week, adding about 1,600 km to its odometer reading, we can say the pros far outweigh the cons. So, unless you need maximum towing or off-roading talent from a midsize truck, a Honda Ridgeline is an excellent alternative to a traditional pickup.

Note: Images show a US model.