Honda Is Finally Getting Serious About the Passport TrailSport’s Off-Road Chops
When it first arrived in 2022, Honda’s TrailSport sub-brand was little more than a thin veneer of off-roading garnish atop an otherwise very street-oriented Passport SUV. Folks were skeptical of the Passport TrailSport‘s actual off-road capability, owing to the fact that it lacked a lot of the fixings one would expect of a real dirt scrambler. There were no real skidplates, just a front-end “skid garnish,” no special off-road calibration for the all-wheel-drive system, and no noticeable lift to the suspension.
While the Pilot TrailSport, which followed in 2023, remedied these shortcomings, we figured Honda would press even harder into the off-road space, which seems all the rage these days for mainstream SUVs. Those suspicions were confirmed yesterday when Honda released a video showing the 2026 Passport TrailSport undergoing some offroad testing.
The 2026 Passport TrailSport will, according to Honda, get a new, more powerful 3.5-liter DOHC V-6, a high-strength 10-speed automatic transmission (the current Passport uses a nine-speed unit), and an updated, second-generation version of the company’s i-VTM4 all-wheel-drive system.
The 10-speed and all-wheel-drive system comes directly from the 2024 Pilot. As part of that new all-wheel-drive system, the Passport Trailsport will get a stronger rear differential that Honda says can handle 40% more torque and provide 30% quicker response times to shuffle the grunt to the wheel that needs it most.
Based on what we can see in the video, the Passport TrailSport certainly looks like it will be an even more capable evolution of a sub-brand that started on what we’d argue was a rather conservative foot. Will it be able to hold a candle to the venerable mainstays of the scene, such as the new Toyota 4Runner? The hardcore enthusiast will probably still prefer the true 4×4 system in the Toyota over the front-wheel-drive-based AWD system of the Passport, but then again, we know that the dirty little secret of this whole scene is that few of these mountain goats actually spend more time on the trail than they do on the road. Perhaps Honda’s better-behaved Passport TrailSport will hold enough of an edge there to convince the fence-sitters.
These FWD based CUV models will never rise to the ability of a full size Blazer or Land Rover.
GMC my brand even tried to butch up a Acadia but it’s just not that kind of vehicle.
It’s an interesting suburban mall crawler but it might find some love in places like Colorado where Subarus are popular. We’ll see.