2026 Honda Passport TrailSport

[AKROVER]

We were tentatively planning to go skiing with our neighbor on Friday so on Thursday I finally looked at a project I had been meaning to tackle for a long time. When we bought the truck, the dealer was non-negotiable on the inclusion of numerous Honda accessories. This was their way of padding their profit on this new model. One of those accessories was a nearly $1K roof platform. The roof platform was cool, and I knew I wasn't in a negotiating position on the first of these Passports out the door in Rapid City, so I paid the price. The funny thing is that they didn't have the roof platform in stock and then couldn't even get it. After a few months of trying, they gave me back my thousand dollars, but that left me with roof rails and no crossbars. I have had the same Yakima crossbars for over 25 years, and I have attached those crossbars to at least six different cars in that time. I have bike racks and ski racks that mount on those bars, and they also work great for kayaks, but none of my existing mounts worked with this new vehicle. I can buy simple crossbars from Honda for an exorbitant price, but I could see how Honda built the rails with mounting bolts for the crossbars. It only took a simple setup to adapt parts of my existing crossbar mounts to bolt onto fabricated brackets that then bolt to the rails on the Passport. It took some time and about $17 in hardware to put this together. We didn't end up going skiing on Friday, but I did test drive the setup. There is a little bit of wind noise at 70mph, but that is pretty minor, particularly when I close the cover on the panoramic sunroof which quiets things down a bit. The assembly might be one of the more solid mountings I have had for a roof rack. My brackets are shiny aluminum, so they do stand out against the nearly black rails, but they are mounted on the inside so this actually all looks pretty good from the side of the vehicle. Below is the view from inside the rails with one of my ski racks mounted on the crossbars with a set of skis in the rack for the test drive. I have a second set of wider crossbars that I can put on which will overhang the side of the vehicle. Those longer bars are useful for putting two kayaks side-by-side on the roof, but they can be a slight hazard with their overhang. This vehicle is tall enough that I shouldn't be banging my head on the longer bars if I use them, but taller people might accidently slam into them.

[AKROVER]

The Passport mileage jumped up dramatically since January's oil change at 8792 miles. Right now, the odometer reads 15859, a gain of over 7000 miles in just a couple months. Our first road trip was a southwestern road trip in which we met GMJohnny et al in Las Vegas. Kris and I then continued on with a desert exploration through California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Unfortunately, we got hit with a stone at high speed and chipped the windshield in Arizona. A few weeks after our return, we found ourselves rushing across the country for a funeral. While in Ohio, I lucked into a morning temperature last weekend within the acceptable range and a little bit of sunshine for UV curing my third use of one of these Permatex windshield repair kits. I still don't know if these things really work, but much like my experience with the VW a couple years ago, the chip looks much better after using the kit. The VW chip never ran, but that experiment ended when it took a huge hit that truly destroyed the windshield elsewhere. The Jaguar has a chip that I suspect was picked up in transport and that hasn't run at all after using one of these kits, but that doesn't mean much since I have had numerous chips in my life that were untreated and never ran. Still, for $15, it was worth a try. The good news is that this chip on the Honda is low on the passenger side so even if it runs a little, it won't likely be a problem. I have a before picture of the chip so I will see if I can get a good after picture with similar lighting and from a similar angle to compare.

The Passport is a very comfortable road trip car, although nothing is truly comfortable when trying to knock off 20 hours of driving in two days. The suspension and the seat are very comfortable. The more upright seating position seems to work better for me than the VW and the ability to physically move around in the driver's seat prevents me from cramping up in a fixed position. Gas mileage for both trips which involved a lot of high-speed driving averaged right at 22 mpg which is much better than I ever got in the Xterra, but still pretty abysmal by today's standards.

[AKROVER]

On 3/31 (exactly one year after purchase), the Passport went in for its second oil change at 15,937. I had the dealer rotate the tires, too. Their multi-point inspection didn't identify any issues.