| 777 | Date: Thursday, 28 Oct 2010, 16.34 | Message # 1 |
|
Like Sharing
Group: User
User ID: 777
Joined: 18 Oct 2010
Messages: 1035
| An all-new Honda Odyssey goes on sale Sept. 30, and America’s children are about to be seriously spoiled. Starting from $28,580, and shooting all the way to $44,030 for the new Touring Elite model, the Honda is poised to continue its run as the flat-out best minivan on the market -- in handling, interior refinement, passenger space, and now fuel economy as well.
I drove the new Odyssey in suburban New York and listened to Honda engineers tick off all the advances to their favorite family bus. Slightly larger than before, the Honda gets a carryover 3.5-liter V6 engine, with a bump to 248 horsepower, and a standard 5-speed automatic transmission; a new 6-speed comes standard on uplevel models. Variable cylinder management can run the engine on three, four or six cylinders; combined with a host of weight-saving and aerodynamic improvements, the Odyssey’s Touring models are rated at a remarkable 19 mpg city/28 mpg highway -- on the highway, that's 4 mpg better than any minivan on the market.
At higher speeds, the Odyssey is noticeably quieter than before, thanks to big gains in structural rigidity and doors and windows with 30 percent better air sealing. And as the only full-size minivan with an independent rear suspension, the Honda continues to deliver more confident, carlike handling than its main competitors. As for safety, the Honda’s roof is 2.2 times more crush-resistant than before, and its resistance to side intrusion is 3.7 times better. And despite much more content on the new Odyssey, Honda managed to make it nearly 100 pounds lighter.
But it’s the clever features and ergonomics that really separate the Honda from the pack.
Here’s a beauty: In every other minivan I’ve tested, you can’t fit three child seats across the second row. And if you plop a child seat in the center perch – exactly where it should be -- that seat is too wide to allow you to fold the outboard seats and climb into the third row. But the Honda features a new Wide Mode that allows the outboard seats to slide two inches toward the walls. The result? The Honda can indeed fit three child seats across its second row. It allows either outboard seat to fold down even when a child seat is in the middle, and it creates extra shoulder room when adults are sitting in that second row. That center perch also slides forward nearly 6 inches to keep baby within easy reach of the parents up front. The Honda’s third-row seat is also slightly roomier than before, with plenty of space to comfortably fit two tall adults.
As for features, a refrigerated console box can cool a six pack of, um, sodas, or hold four 20-ounce bottles. And in this juice-box-obsessed vehicle category, the Honda has 11 cupholders and four bottle holders for a total of 15. A flip-up trash ring holds a garbage bag to swallow those empty juice boxes and other family detritus.
The coup de grace is the new Touring Elite edition. It features an incredible fold-down, 16-inch VGA screen to watch video, which is mated to a 650-watt 12-speaker surround-sound audio system. My driving partner jumped into the back to watch “Avatar” on the massive screen, and it took everything I had to get him back up front. You can also split the screen to watch two video sources separately (say, one DVD and one plug-in PlayStation game). An HDMI connector is another industry first: Hit a switch, and the two videos switch sides, just in case the siblings decide to trade seats.
Minivan sales began plummeting a few years ago, as Americans flocked to "cooler" SUVs instead. But the fall appears to have bottomed out. And recently redesigned models including the latest Toyota Sienna (known as the "swagger wagon" thanks to Toyota's slick marketing campaign) and now the Odyssey should give sales a modest boost. Art St. Cyr, the Odyssey’s chief engineer, suggested that giant SUVs now face more social stigma than the "Brady Bunch" minivan. “Sure, some people will go to their grave before they ever buy a minivan,” St. Cyr said, “but families aren’t getting any smaller, and those people still need a big vehicle.”
Chrysler, of course, invented the minivan and once dominated the segment, until rivals such as Honda and Toyota began eating its lunch. Ford and GM have stopped even trying to compete there and have abandoned the minivan segment entirely. Today, the Chrysler Town and Country still runs roughly neck-and-neck with the Odyssey as the sales leader, but those figures mask the real story: Virtually every Honda is purchased by an actual retail customer, where nearly 50 percent of all Chrysler minivans are sold at heavy discount into rental fleets. And of course, Chrysler's overreliance on rental fleet sales cheapens their minivans and hammers their resale value. Once those minivans are three to five years old, the used model sells for several thousand dollars less than the used Honda. And that's just one more reason that the Honda is an obvious cut above its Chrysler competitor.
| HTML code to this post |
|
| BB code to this post |
|
| Direct link to this post |
|
|
| |
| |
Member: 5095 
Forum: 2322
News: 27
Blog: 16
Downloads: 18
Comments: 5