While the very cool-looking new Honda Passport is almost inevitably always going to stay on the "nice things we can't have" list for New Zealand (and, indeed, all right-hand-drive markets), Honda is already doing fun things with it's latest mid-size SUV in order to prove its toughness and off-road cred.
By "fun things" we mean they are dangling it from a crane 30 metres in the air. But it wasn't just one Passport - Honda tethered three Passport TrailSports (the most off-road-oriented version) together using their exposed front recovery points and dangled all of them from the crane at its Proving Centre in California to demonstrate the strength of the recovery points and the Passport's chassis.
The Passport TrailSport and TrailSport Elite are the first Honda "light truck" models equipped with exposed and easily accessible heavy-duty front recovery points. The company says the two bright orange cast iron front recovery points were intentionally designed as a "closed loop recovery system" for additional safety and are each capable of supporting twice the Passport's weight.
The Passport shares its underpinnings with the latest Pilot SUV and Ridgeline pickup, with the Passport also using the same 212kW 3.5-litre naturally-aspirated V6, and a 10-speed automatic transmission. Honda says it has extensively reinforced the Passport for more rugged off-road applications, with a 72 percent increase in front lateral rigidity and a 50 percent boost in rear torsion rigidity.
According to Honda the three 2026 Passport TrailSports hung from the crane were built at the company's Alabama Auto Plant, with all fluids drained and transmissions fixed in neutral, and that the recovery points on the highest Passport were holding more than 6300kg.
That's a pretty convincing demonstration and, quite frankly, just makes us wish we could have the Passport here even more. But it did leave us with one question though: how exactly did the get them down again?
