And we loved every minute of it. Unfortunately it may be the last four hours for a long time. More on this later.
We made our way to Gander on Saturday morning where we met up with John Tobin at Simmons Honda. I usually deal with Mike Lundrigan there but he was out for the day and he made sure that John was available to take care of us. Fist he started to show off some of the features and soon realized that I kenw mroe about the truck then he did. He then basically passed me the keys and said take your time. After about an hour of driving and getting our dinner we stopped back and asked if we could use her for our days activities. He told us that he was working until 4. π
One of the biggest things we noticed about this truck is its actual interior size. Nothing quite showed me the size inside. This thing is just as big as our GMC Sierra Extended Cab we own now. But the Ridgeline feels a lot more comfortable to sit in and drive.
We used the truck for about four hours to run our errands as we live in a small town and this was our chance to pick up some groceries and visit Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart and spend some $$$. Everywhere we went people looked at us trying to figure out what we were driving. Eyeballs popped when I loaded up the in bed truck at Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart. I think the swing out tailgate and trunk lid kinda caught people off guard.
We truly enjoyed the way the truck rode and handled the bumbs. She didn’t bounce across the road like our GMC when hitting potholes and the Rigdeline drove a lot like our 2000 Honda CR-V. The two real flaws we have with the Ridgeline is the box size and the towing capacity. We have a snowmobile and it hangs out a nice bit in our GMC with its extra foot and a half and Siobhan really wants a larger camper and with the Ridgeline we would be struggling to find one that fits our wants and can still be towed safely.
The in bed trunk is huge. We were very impressed with it and I had to jump in to show it’s size.
Finally we got back to the dealership and started looking at the pricing. Looks like it’s gonna be a while before we get one to park in our driveway. Even with a lease we would be looking at over $700 per month. Most of the figures we worked out actually came closer to $800+. Honda Canada’s Finance rate is high on this model at 7.4% to 7.9%. Oh well. we had our four hours of joy at least.
Enjoy the pics, and if you are considering a Ridgeline and can afford it I don’t think you would be disappointed. One missing feature that someone pointed out to the salesman was a cigarette light plug-in in the in bed trunk. It would be very handy for those who might want to add a protable 12 volt fridge. Easy enough to add though. Tap into the 7-pin wiring harness for the trailer hook-up!
Rene