2018 Honda Odyssey Review
The all-new Honda Odyssey MPV for wanna-be airline captains, would-be killers and an occasional eye-full of cleavage
By Shahzad Sheikh
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It’s a bus, it’s a limo, it’s a family room on wheels. Or. It’s a room of responsibility, a stage for murderous intrigue and a den of lustful misdemeanors. The new Honda Odyssey takes over from its predecessor as one of the best quality, techiest, most versatile people carriers out there. And boy do we mean versatile.
And now there’s tons of tech on board as well – we’re not just talking an excellent entertainment system and multiple-vented climate control, but things like an ‘are we there yet feature’! No really. Finally a way to shut-up the bored kids. Tell the sat-nav where you’re going, activate the feature and on the screen in back the passengers can play games timed to end when ‘you’re there yet’.
Extraordinary. But we’re not done yet. There’s a ceiling camera that gives the driver a birds-eye view of the second row of seats – so you can ensure your passengers are belted in and behaving themselves. And I just know the would-be pervs amongst you immediately had an additional thought along the lines of if say you were doing a Friday night Uber service picking up revellers of the breasted kind from parties and clubs. Stop it!
And we’re still not done, because since the rear passengers – yeah even in the third row – get their own headphone jacks and volume dials so they can all be watching the inflight movie together, you as the driver, get to play airline Captain.
Oh yes, at key moments of suspense and tension in the movie you can interrupt with the press of a button and tell everyone the outside temperature, the altitude of the road, and that if you look over to the left you’ll see a man in a Mitsubishi having a right old dig up his left nostril for that evasive bogey. Eww!
The second row of seats are clever too. Leave only two chairs in there, and they not only slide back and forth but also from side to side. So if you want to sidle up to your very friendly friend and lift up the armrests for unfettered access back there, you can (just make sure the driver ain’t got the ceiling camera on!).
Alternatively if you’ve had a tiff, you can slide the seats away from each other: ‘I hate you!’ ‘Well I hate you too! And by the way, I’ve the rear climate control buttons on my side, so prepare to sweat!’ Gosh you can be vindictive can’t you?
Anyway, once you’ve killed the other person dead, don’t worry, even with the third row of seats fully up (and they’re good enough for adults by the way, not just kiddies with kiddie-sized legs) you actually still have a ton of luggage space behind with a deep bin. Perfect to hide the body in. Or more likely carry about 3-4 suitcases even with a full load of bums-on-seats.
You’ll be able to move them along okay too, thanks to a torquey 3.5-litre iVTEC 24V V6 putting out 280bhp through a fuel-sipping 10-speed auto. Prices start at AED140 ($38k) for the LX, then you get the EX-L for AED153k ($42k) and this top line version with all the gizmos goes for AED173k ($47k). Pricey, but you know that if you’re gonna go on a space Odyssey, it’s this one you want!
