2026 Honda Passport First Drive Review: The 4Runner for Normal People

A short adventure in the 2026 Honda Passport TrailSport left me impressed. I loved the design as soon as the covers came off last year and it looks even better (and bigger) in person. It drives well and packs a good bundle of features. Off-road, it performs better than you might expect. But more importantly, the tools it uses to get over severe terrain can also help you out on slippery streets, which is not something you can say about every 4×4.

I put the new Passport TS through its paces on rutted paved roads, jungle dirt tracks, scampered over some dirt mounds, and made a quick pass through deeper sand on a beach in Puerto Rico. The keystone of the Passport’s off-road capability, as with any other vehicle, is its tires. Nice, knobby 31-inch General Grabbers help it bite soft terrain and keep you moving forward when the ground gets sloppy. But a very impressive traction control system and power-distributing powertrain make progress through rough conditions much easier, too. It goes a long way in augmenting this relatively low-sitting SUV’s abilities, and since it’s always running in the background, drivers will benefit from it to some degree every time they drive the car.

The Basics

You’re looking at a medium-sized five-seat SUV assembled with an interesting combination of new and old-school sensibilities. Interior appointments and material choices are upper-middle class; not opulent, but more than respectable and certainly comfortable. Like pretty much all modern crossovers, it uses a unibody construction with independent suspension. Less modern, though, is its non-turbo, non-hybrid V6 engine, which means simplicity and serviceability—two factors that typically translate to reliability and low ownership costs.

The TrailSport models range from $50,000 to $55,000, with the base non-TrailSport RTL coming in just a little lower. It’s a lot of money, but based on what I’ve seen and studied in the current market, the value here at-sticker is solid. The TrailSport is worth stepping up to for the color options alone—Sunset Orange and Ash Green Metallic are both awesome.

It has two rows of seating, not three, but the rear passenger area is more than generous enough for adults or two big baby seats. The rear cargo area is also quite horizontally deep. Two overpacking couples could go on vacation in this thing no problem, and there’s a great panoramic roof that makes the big cabin feel even breezier when it’s open.

I love the Passport’s giant sunroof and general interior material choices. Honda’s been great about continuing to offer plastics and soft surfaces that feel really robust and high-quality throughout its cabins where some other brands have disappointed me. The Elite’s seat vent option is nice, but I actually preferred the look of the cloth on the regular TrailSport.

Honda says the 3.5-liter DOHC engine is good for 285 horsepower and 262 lb-ft of torque. That makes its way to the road through a 10-speed automatic transmission (paddle-shiftable if you want) and full-time all-wheel drive. There’s no dedicated low-range or differential locker, but there is Honda’s Intelligent Variable Torque Management (i-VTM4). That’s a mechanical torque-vectoring system that uses a combination of power distribution and braking to maximize traction—we’ll talk about how it works in the next section of this review.

A towing capacity of 5,000 pounds is enough to let you comfortably pull small watercraft, dirt bikes, a small camp trailer, a UTV, or a compact utility trailer but (generally) not horses, a powerboat, or another car.

Driving Experience

With good visibility, solid seating, and a fairly traditional human-machine interface, the cockpit of the new Passport is a great place to be. I’d still take analog needles over a digital gauge cluster, but Honda’s current setup is easy to read and fine-looking. Fun features like a progressive elevation gauge and multiple gauge layouts allow for some personalization. The main infotainment screen is wide but short, feeding you a lot of information without obstructing your vision or being overly distracting. Meanwhile, climate controls are all packed into a convenient strip of large buttons you’ll soon be able to hit without looking as you get to know the car. It’s always relieving to find them there instead of buried in a digital menu.

The driving experience at town speeds is unremarkable but inoffensive. If you’re looking for an emotional experience or engaging steering feel, you need to get yourself an older vehicle. Acceleration and braking seemed fine; I had a pretty hard time feeling any differences between drive modes in my hour of cruising through Puerto Rican neighborhoods in the Passport. As far as getting from a stop to town speeds and back again for another traffic light, the engine left nothing to be desired. It sure as heck doesn’t feel like a truck—the relatively low ride height and well-engineered chassis provide nice road manners.

One thing I did get to appreciate was noise, vibration, and harshness—or lack thereof. Despite the TrailSport’s General Grabber all-terrain tires and the fact that it’s pretty much shaped like a brick, it does a darn good job resisting road and wind noise with the windows up. Honda has active noise-canceling provisions that reduce unwanted engine sounds and enhance others through the speakers. It’s good enough that I didn’t realize this until I re-read the spec sheet after driving the car. Higher TrailSport Elite models also receive some extra insulation.

With the windows down (the rears do retract all the way into the doors) and the giant sunroof open, the Passport is still pretty quiet inside at about 45 mph. Don’t sleep on that—I keep riding in new cars that get annoyingly windy when you want to drive al fresco; a car that minimizes windows-down buffeting is great.

Off-road, it’s easier to appreciate the TrailSport’s “Trail” mode and i-VTM4 system. The Passport’s new rear drive unit has a computer-controlled setup of pumps and solenoids that can add and reduce pressure to a pair of clutch packs, tactically distributing power to your left and right side. As a driver, you experience this as consistent progression through slippery conditions—just keep a steady but gentle foot on the throttle, and the car does the thinking.

Where a less-featured vehicle would require a more tactical application of throttle and maybe a little left-foot brake dragging, the Passport can largely manage the process with simple, consistent gas pedal pressure. Like I’ve been saying, this is not about democratizing off-road driving; it’s about having a traction management system working in the background when you’re trying to get home through a blizzard or downpour.

That said, it did work pretty handily even over big loam lumps and through soft sand, and all that without reducing tire pressure from 34 psi as you run on the road. Front and rear overhangs are not so long as to make trail navigation cumbersome, with front and side-view cameras togglable with a button on the wiper stalk. Putting the transmission into “S” lets you hold lower gears manually with the paddle shifters, providing good control on steep climbs and through sand.

On your way downhill, you can activate hill descent control with a center console button that uses a combination of engine braking and regular braking to maintain a set speed between 2 and 12 mph. Unlike some hill systems that are run with cruise control buttons, Honda’s is simply managed with the gas and brake pedals.

The Passport’s off-road weak spots are going to be ground clearance and suspension travel. It’s only about 8.5 inches off the Earth—in most driving scenarios, that’s actually good, lending itself to superior on-road and high-speed driving dynamics. But it doesn’t give you huge margins off-piste. Skid plates cover the fuel tank and the area directly under the engine, and there are also pretty cool slider rails you can get mounted under the door sills, but the whole front bumper is plastic and the exhaust is still exposed.

TrailSport Passports do get unique suspension tuning from RTL models, but the vehicle won’t be happy carrying much speed through rough stuff. In my short road test, I got some pretty big bottom-out bangs from the rear just from driving carelessly over speed bumps.

Honda Passport Features, Options, and Competition — There’s a Table!

The 2026 Honda Passport starts at $46,200 for the RTL, but a TrailSport will cost $49,900, including destination. For $425, you can spec a cargo-bay bisecting shelf that pops out and turns into a table, like you might remember from second-gen Honda CR-Vs. This one is far sturdier and cooler, though. I would even go so far as to say it’s not terribly overpriced—four bills is a lot for a plastic table, but the way this locks in, folds out, and acts as such a perfectly shaped loading surface when it’s in the car is pretty sweet. A few other things, like a fire extinguisher, full-size spare, cool wheels, and a roof rack, are also going to make the options catalog worth peeking at as you spec your Passport.

The new Passport may look like a Ford Bronco Sport rival in photos, but it’s much larger and more premium. Honda’s people named the Toyota 4Runner and Jeep Grand Cherokee as Passport’s direct market rivals, which should make for some interesting future comparisons because those vehicles feel quite different from this one.

Scroll through this slide show to see some interior details:

I don’t mean to sneak a hot take into the end of this review, but I think a lot of people driving 4Runners would be happier in a Passport. The Honda simply makes better use of its interior space and has much better road manners. The Passport’s rear seat is far more comfortable and easier to access, too. The Toyota is a truck, while this is really more of a car on taller tires—ultimately, they will appeal to different people. I personally would be in a previous-gen (fifth-gen) 4Runner, but cross-shopping new for new? Tougher call.

The 4Runner’s ceiling of off-road capability is going to be higher, thanks mostly to its ride height and huge aftermarket. But I think the Passport’s advanced traction control system and various drive modes will better translate to daily driving than the off-road toys on many other machines out there. The TrailSport’s ability to redirect power with impressive efficiency and seamlessness is going to be very well-suited to tackle common situations like snow, rain-soaked roads, and other places where you don’t need crazy clearance but you do need traction.

The Subaru Outback Wilderness and Land Rover Defender aren’t technically in the same categories as this Honda, but if you’re looking at either of those, I think the TrailSport is worth a test drive. The Rover is, as you would hope, much fancier and faster. But the town-speed driving dynamics are pretty similar. And I bet a Passport could follow a Defender on plenty of trails that don’t require high clearance.

And not for nothing, the Passport is made in Alabama—with import tariffs going the way they are as I’m writing this, that might make this car a lot easier to acquire and own than something assembled in Japan or Europe.

Fuel Economy

Automakers have managed to make medium-sized SUVs faster, safer, more powerful, and more computerized in the last few decades. But to my chagrin, they haven’t bothered making them any better on gas. The Passport TrailSport claims 20 mpg in combined-conditions driving, which you can get in a well-maintained ’90s 4Runner if you run sensible tires and don’t drive like a jerk.

Full EPA ratings for this vehicle are 18 city, 23 highway, and 20 combined. The non-TrailSport Passport rates slightly better (19, 25, and 21). It’s crazy to me that we’re still daily driving vehicles with mpgs in the teens in 2025.

I moaned about this to Honda’s people, and I was told that fuel economy is not in the top three, five, or even 10 highest priorities for their target customers on this model. If that’s true, you guys answering these surveys are nuts. Off-road capable SUVs have been around forever, and there are millions on the road at this point. An innovation that might actually get me out of my 1998 Montero and into a new-car showroom would be cheaper fuel costs, but I guess I’m alone on that one!

The Early Verdict

This is a cool-looking SUV with an exceptional traction-management system and a powertrain that—as a tradeoff for that mid efficiency—should be nothing less than dead reliable. Combine all that with comfortable seating for four adults, loads of cargo space, and a decent catalog of fun accessories (like the table), and I think Honda has a winner here. It’s also not outrageously expensive by current new-car standards, especially when you compare it to some of the other vehicles I’ve mentioned in this post.

As far as its real off-road capability goes, it’s not so much that the TrailSport can do things other similar vehicles can’t … it’s that it can do light wheeling a lot more easily for the inexperienced pilot. And critically, the tools it uses to get through a trail are also portable to more common rough-weather scenarios, thanks to the way they’re executed.

If you’ve got a truck with a solid rear axle and a locking diff, heck yeah you’re going to be able to take a really hard hit and power yourself through all kinds of crud. But that setup won’t do you any favors driving through rain or sleet. Meanwhile, the Passport’s i-VTM4 system is constantly working to keep you moving forward no matter when or where you are. The combination of capable and practical here is a good one.

Quick Take

A great example of off-road innovations applied logically to a daily driver, but how it holds up to repeated abuse remains to be seen.

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