While preserving the Honda Odyssey status as the perkiest-driving minivan, Honda has improved seating and interior space, made more provisions for child and booster seats, and added new connectivity and entertainment options that make this minivan a better place for busy parents and kids
The Odyssey's look is evolutionary, for sure, but its new lightning-bolt beltline is a bit controversial. The 2011 Honda Odyssey carries over the same 3.5-liter i-VTEC V-6 engine, here making 247 hp; top Touring and Touring Elite models of the new Odyssey get a new six-speed automatic transmission, while the rest of the line does just fine with a five-speed. Handling is top-notch, and you can drive an Odyssey on tight, twisty roads with the same verve as you would a sporty sedan.
The Honda Odyssey is absolutely loaded with thoughtful touches. In typical Honda fashion, some of the top features, such as a blind-spot system, auto-leveling HIS headlamps, and a new hard-drive-based music system, are the exclusive domain of top 2010 Honda Odyssey Touring and Touring Elite models.
While we shouldn't be shocked by anything coming out of Madison Avenue, part of me is incensed to hear Honda using Judas Priest to advertise its new Odyssey. The biggest changes in the redesigned Odyssey are obvious at first glance, as it no longer looks so much like a conventional minivan. Honda's ideas on styling have been polarizing as of late (read: the Accord Crosstour is ugly as sin), so it's smart that the company chose the Civic as the donor of the new minivan's face. The venerable compact is still the most complete and fluid execution of modern Honda design language, and what it lends to the Odyssey works to make Honda's largest vehicle appear smaller and sleeker. It helps that the Odyssey has a lower and much wider stance, having been stretched over two inches across. Honda is calling the quirky jog in the beltline at the Odyssey's C-pillar a "lightning bolt," and it's more than just a clever device to give the vehicle a dynamic, moving-forward look.
The second row is interesting in that Honda has decided not to follow Chrysler into its folly of designing seats to fold into the floor like those in the third row. Understanding that it's the rare day when you want to use your minivan like a pickup truck, Honda instead designed a system that allows the second-row seats to be moved laterally to make more room for passengers or car seats, while improving third-row access through the center in the process. Up front, the cockpit is functional and the controls are similar to any number of other Honda or Acura vehicles (save for a dash-mounted shift lever). If the Odyssey drives more like a minivan than a station wagon now, it certainly doesn't accelerate like one. Honda's 3.5-liter V6 makes 248 horsepower in the 2011 Odyssey, along with 250 pound-feet of torque. It revs quickly and has great throttle response, and Honda has done a masterful job of matching the gear ratios of the new, optional six-speed automatic transmission to make the Odyssey move.
Honda has also included its Variable Cylinder Management (VCM) system as standard equipment. This and some other measures, including a 50-to-100 pound weight reduction, have helped the Honda Odyssey boast some impressive EPA numbers for a roughly 4,400-pound vehicle. No minivan these days would be complete without some sort of video screen for the kids, and Honda has gone big in this department with an optional 16.2-inch widescreen that folds down from the headliner in the second row. Before you get too excited about having a display larger than a MacBook Pro in the Odyssey, however, understand this is really just two normal-sized displays mated into a single, wide LCD panel. The screen in the Odyssey is still pretty small, making most modern video games designed for widescreen, high-definition displays difficult. I'm trusting the tester was merely defective, and that this isn't a widespread problem with Honda's Active Noise Cancellation system, which uses the audio system to make the interior of the vehicle quieter.
The second issue is an aesthetic one: Why can't Honda hide the Odyssey's door track? Why is the six-speed transmission bundled with a nav system and DVD player?
So begins another meeting of Minivans Anonymous. Members love fast cars, race cars, open roadsters, vintage automobiles...and minivans. Now minivans are all so well done—some even luxo wagons—which gets us to the new Honda Odyssey.
This is the fourth-generation minivan from Honda. The shape also prevents Honda from hiding each side’s sliding door track in a window’s lower edge.
Add, too, the Odyssey’s easy flexibility: one-latch drop-and-fold seats, easy-adjust seats and consoles...a design form at which most minivan-makers seem to excel. Sorry.
On the matter of minivan interiors, Honda Odysseys have been toting so many growing families for so many years, it makes one wonder just how many Cheerios, Corn Flakes and Lucky Charms are hiding under the seats, crushed in cupholders and wedged in the seat rails of the tens of thousands of this country’s Honda minivans.
Far more important to parents, Honda has paid much attention the safety structure of the Odyssey and its safety ratings, plus the number of LATCH points to anchor little kid car seats.
Honda’s proven 3.5-liter V-6 with variable displacement is on duty under the hood, and it propels the Odyssey to 60 mph in 8.8 seconds and provides EPA mileage of 18 mpg city/27 mpg hwy (5-speed automatic) or 19 mpg city/28 mpg hwy (6-speed automatic).