2018 Honda Odyssey

Test Drive & Review

The all-new 2018 Honda Odyssey is like a human transportation Swiss Army Knife – it has you covered in almost any situation! We connected with our partners at Rock Honda in Fontana, CA for a test drive that left Tom sold! Hear the complete details in this iDriveSoCal Podcast.

[xyz-ihs snippet="rockhonda"]

***Transcript***

Recording date – May 15, 2018 in Los Angeles, CA

Tom Smith: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States – Southern California.

I’m Tom Smith and today we’re talking family transportation by way of the all new 2018 Honda Odyssey from our great friends in the Los Angeles suburb of Fontana, California, Rock Honda!

As you know I’m a new Dad… at least I think I can still call myself “new”. My son is 7-months old… so maybe I’m technically no longer “new”. But parenting is definitely still “new” to me so I’m going to stick with calling myself a “new” Dad. Probably forever, quite honestly… but that’s another topic and podcast entirely – maybe an entire series.

Anyway, as a new Dad I’m looking at everything differently. Thinking differently – thinking transportation in terms of multiple bodies and stuff necessary for whatever those multiple bodies are up to.

And when it comes to transportation involving a multi-night stay – I recently was given a bit of a wakeup call. This, when I took my wife and son on our first road trip a few months back.

We drove the new mid-size SUV that we had purchased, while my wife was pregnant, with just these kinds of trips in mind. At the time we bought that mid-sized SUV my wife thought we were getting too big of a vehicle for what we’d need.

But wow, did I have to bust out my Tetris skills in order to pack that mid-size SUV for a simple three night-stay. We immediately realized that, when we grow our family, we’ll definitely need an even bigger vehicle – without a doubt.

So I was excited when my buddy David Latif, who’s the general manager of Rock Honda, hooked me up with one of his Honda Odyssey experts, Eddie Latigo.

Eddie and I cruised the Inland Empire and grabbed lunch while he got me acquainted with the immense number of features and all the versatile functionality that comes with the newest generation of the Honda Odyssey.

Now I got to drive the tippity-top-of-the-line which is the Elite. But here are all the trim levels of the 2018 Honda Odyssey:

It starts with the base LX @ about $30-thousand.

Then you step up to the EX @ about $34-thousand.

Next is the EX-L @ about $37-thousand-six-hundred.

And then the Touring @ $44-thousand-six-hundred.

And finally, the fully loaded Elite – which again, is what I drove, @ about $46-thousand-nine-hundred.

Now, as always in our podcasts, the prices we quote are approximates. You need to find and equip your vehicle as desired and that will obviously impact the price.

But in this case I highly recommend you go to our friends at Rock Honda in Fontana to do so.

So, again, I drove the Elite with all the bells and whistles and man there’s plenty.

When Eddie started showing me the Odyssey all I could think was that this thing is a human transportation Swiss Army knife. It’s just got everything – no stone unturned. Every family activity considered. Form and functionality throughout.

The all new 2018 Odyssey is still unmistakably a Honda. One of the coolest exterior changes makes a really big difference to the look of the vehicle.

They took the tracks that the side sliding doors operate on and tucked them into the seam between the rear side windows and quarter panels.