2024 Honda Passport Reviews, Pricing & Specs

Honda began rolling out an updated design language across its lineup starting with the 2022 Civic redesign and extending to the 2023 Accord, CR-V, and Pilot. The 2024 Passport, however, looks much as it always has. Although the Passport (and the Honda Ridgeline) received some tweaks in 2022, notably a more upright grille and some squared-off corners, the overall look still shares a lot with Honda’s previous-generation designs.

Honda keeps things simple with the Passport’s various trim levels. There are three in Canada: Sport, TrailSport, and Black Edition. Some competitors offer a lower-priced, entry-level trim hallmarked by smaller screens or two-wheel drive. That’s not the case with the Passport, which includes a power moonroof, identical touchscreens, and all-wheel drive (AWD) on every trim level. We tested a midlevel TrailSport trim.

The TrailSport is meant to be the most rugged of the three. It comes equipped with genuine all-terrain (A/T) tires, in this case, General Grabber A/T sport tires. They boast the three-peak mountain snowflake emblem, meaning they’re tested and rated for better performance on snowy surfaces. In Canada, roof rails and LED fog lights are standard equipment.

While it looks rugged, the Passport TrailSport is a bit more “show” than “go.” The faux skid plates at the front and rear are plastic rather than metal, there are no recovery points incorporated into the bumpers, and it doesn’t get a lift kit. However, the last may be less of an issue than one might expect: At 21.1 degrees and 24.4 degrees, respectively, the Passport’s approach and departure angles are more aggressive than those on a Subaru Outback Wilderness.

On the inside, the Passport sports old-school physical controls and a relatively diminutive, 8-inch touchscreen. There are no honeycomb-style vents like you’ll find in a new Accord, Civic, or CR-V.

TrailSport trims come equipped with black leather upholstery accented by lots of orange contrast stitching and an orange “TrailSport” emblem stitched into the front headrests. Other than those splashes of colour, the Passport’s interior is simple and unassuming. Plenty of resilient but inexpensive plastic covers the doors and dash, but it’s well integrated with softer and more upscale materials. Large air vents, simple controls, and plenty of storage space underscore the Honda’s utilitarian design direction.

Including Honda, many automakers are swapping traditional, naturally aspirated engines out of their vehicles and either installing smaller, turbocharged powertrains or adding hybrid components to a small, naturally aspirated four-cylinder. However, this is not the case with the 2024 Honda Passport. There are no hybrid Passports, nor are there any turbo Passports. Instead, every 2024 Honda Passport comes equipped with a naturally aspirated 3.5-litre V6 engine. It’s a well-known piece of engineering with a long history and, with 280 horsepower and 262 pound-feet of torque, it matches or surpasses most of the Passport’s competition.

Managed by a nine-speed automatic transmission, the Passport accelerates well enough for a vehicle of its size, and we didn’t notice any irregular behaviour in terms of the drivetrain’s gear selection. In fact, the nine-speed is impressively unobtrusive when shifting. Because Honda has eschewed turbochargers for this car, peak torque doesn’t come on until 4,700 RPM, meaning drivers need to get a bit higher in the rev range when sprinting from a standstill than they would in a turbocharged model. Fuel economy also suffers a bit, with Natural Resources Canada rating the Passport at 12.5 litres per 100 kilometres in the city, 9.8 on the highway, and 11.3 combined.

The TrailSport trim level receives a few mechanical changes to identify it as the off-roading Passport. The front and rear tracks are a skosh wider, the A/T tires come wrapped around 18-inch wheels (rather than 20 inches on the Black Edition), and the suspension has been tuned for off-road driving with more articulation. As noted, all Passports come equipped with Honda’s torque-vectoring iVTM4 all-wheel-drive (AWD) system. In addition, Honda packages a traction-management system with normal, snow, sand, and mud settings. While these inclusions are a definite value-add for the Passport, it’s worth noting that you don’t need to pick the TrailSport trim to get them.

Given its size and the all-terrain tires, we weren’t terribly surprised to notice elevated road and wind noise when driving the Passport at highway speeds, but we were pleased to find that the ruckus died down significantly when driving around town. Additionally, the Passport’s steering is impressively well-balanced and accurate, with very little play off-centre. Cars of this size often have pretty vague steering, but that’s not the case in the Passport.

Finally, towing capacity maxes out at 2,268 kilograms (5,000 pounds), besting the Subaru Outback Wilderness and Hyundai Santa Fe (both 1,587 kg or 3,500 pounds) but falling short of the Jeep Grand Cherokee (2,810 kg or 6,200 pounds). If you need to tow more weight than that, you’ll have to sacrifice the comfort and efficiency offered by those unibody crossover options in favour of a rougher but more capable body-on-frame SUV, such as the Nissan Armada (3,855 kg or 8,500 pounds).

If you need a vehicle with a lot of cargo space but you don’t require three rows of seats, the two-row midsize crossover is for you. And in this relatively small and overlooked segment, the Honda Passport is the cargo capacity king. With 1,430 litres of cargo space behind the rear seats, plus additional underfloor storage in the trunk, the Passport bests the Subaru Outback (920 litres), Hyundai Santa Fe (1,032 litres), Jeep Grand Cherokee (1,067 litres), and the Ford Edge (1,111 litres). Cargo space expands further, to 2,854 litres, courtesy of the 60/40-split folding rear seats. On top of that, the folded rear seats sit flush with the trunk-area floor, making loading long items easy.

The Passport is a big vehicle, comfortable for five fully grown adults. Rear-seat legroom is a bit tighter than that in the Hyundai Santa Fe, but it’s on par with much of the rest of the segment, and a bit better than the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Cupholders abound, with six available in the back seat alone.

In the front, Honda made one very noticeable change for the 2024 model year. The centre console bin has changed from a long and low storage unit with a retracting top to a taller and deeper one with a comfortably padded, flip-up integrated armrest. As a result, the front-seat environment doesn’t feel quite as airy, but there’s quite a bit more storage available. Beyond this major change, the position of the cupholders has shifted ever so slightly to make room for a larger cubby below the dashboard.

Aside from the Nissan Murano, virtually all of the Honda Passport’s direct competitors can be equipped with touchscreen infotainment system displays measuring greater than 10 inches. The Passport, on the other hand, is available with only an 8-inch display. Given the spacious dimensions of the Passport’s cabin, an 8-inch display in today’s market looks and feels a bit dinky. Even the compact Honda Civic can be equipped with a larger screen.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are both included as standard features, as are Bluetooth connectivity and a wireless charging pad. The screen itself offers sharp resolution and impressive response speed, but even beyond its diminutive size, the Passport’s tech shows some faults.

For one, when running either the native navigation software (included on the Black Edition trim only in Canada) or Google Maps courtesy of Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, the system pushes turn-by-turn directions to the driver’s information display, centred within the gauge cluster. In situations where there’s a decent amount of distance between directions, the display will revert to its previous state. However, when driving in a city, the turn-by-turn directions are effectively always present, and you can’t revert to your preferred screen for more than a second. It’s a small annoyance and should be easily fixed with software changes, but we found it irritating nonetheless.

Further, while Honda offers an upgraded 10-speaker audio system on the Black Edition trim level, we found the seven-speaker unit on our TrailSport test vehicle to be a bit thin. Audiophiles in the market will be better served by a Grand Cherokee equipped with a McIntosh sound system, a Subaru Outback with a Harmon Kardon system, or even a Honda Pilot with a Bose system.

Honda equips every Passport with forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking, but these features are all but standard across the industry by now. What’s more impressive is that Honda also includes lane-departure warning, lane-keeping assist, blind-spot monitoring, cross-traffic monitoring, and adaptive cruise control as standard equipment. Partially bundled under the “Honda Sensing” umbrella, these standard features help bring peace of mind, particularly to drivers tasked with shuttling precious cargo.

We’re happy to see such a comprehensive list of active safety features, especially because the Passport hasn’t fared particularly well in crash tests facilitated by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The former knocked the Passport down to an “Acceptable” rating (below the top rating of “Good”) in the passenger-side small overlap crash test, and one rung lower (“Marginal”) in the updated side-impact crash tests. As a result, the Passport was left off the IIHS’s list of Top Safety Picks. The NHTSA, while awarding the Passport five stars overall, gave it four out of five in its frontal and rollover crash tests.

The Honda Passport operates in the no-man’s land between compact crossovers and family-friendly three-row, midsize options. As such, it looks a bit overpriced when compared with a Honda CR-V or a Kia Sportage. However, it also plays in a comparable price bracket as the least-expensive versions of some larger, seven-seater SUVs.

The same holds when looking at the competition. The Subaru Outback (which also comes standard with AWD) and the Hyundai Santa Fe look very inexpensive when compared with the Passport, but the Subaru is a good deal smaller. On the other hand, the Jeep Grand Cherokee costs roughly $10,000 more than a base Passport, giving away its aspiring premium status.

Given these caveats, we’re comfortable suggesting that the Honda Passport does offer decent value for money, with the understanding that it’s a bit more expensive to start than some of its competitors.

Note: Images show a US model.