Areas for improvement: Back-up cam is a gimmick
What I was impressed with most about this SUV is how solid it feels, the doors shut with a nice thud, the interior seems really well put together with almost no hard plastic. The ride is very smooth, which might be bad if this was supposed to be a heavy duty truck-based vehicle, but it's not. The GPS is great (I mean that, it's a very simple well designed system), although if you turn the headlights on, the screen gets very dark which is nice, unless you like to use your headlights in the daytime. Voice activation is nice, but the backup camera is kind of a gimmick, it's nearly impossible to tell how far you are from objects behind you.
Nice comfortable leather seats, the warmers are a definite plus here in the Pacific northwest. Speaking of seating, a nice feature the Pilot has is a single fold-down 3rd row seat (a design similar to the H2), which is great on the occasional occurrence that you have to take more than 5 passengers.
There are some problems however.
The transmission: Honda should be ashamed for still using a 4 speed transmission in a expensive SUV. It shifts smooth, but seems to constantly shifting, I would expect the transmissions are probably problematic in these things, and I don't really know if there's a way to prevent it besides maybe using D3 except on the highway.
The engine: I've never been a fan of putting small high-revving car engines in SUV and now I know why, the engine seems under matched for pulling around this fairly large vehicle. If you actually want to go anywhere and not hold up everybody behind you it seems necessary to rev the engine quite a bit just to get moving! It doesn't feel fast at all.
Supposedly the Pilot is an 'ULEV'-Ultra Low Emmissions Vehicle, so that is probably a good thing...
The running costs for Honda Pilot 3.5L VTEC Automatic are normal
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