I pulled up to a Moab, Utah overlook in a 2026 Honda Passport Trailsport prototype and hopped out into the red sand. My group of six Passports, all in orange camouflage, was about 5,000 feet above sea level, parked alongside Jeep Wranglers, Ford Broncos, and side-by-sides that slithered over rocks like their wheels were tentacles. 

Those hardcore, purpose-built off-roaders are what most people imagine in Moab, conquering the world’s terrain with no phone signal, shade trees, or access to plumbing. They don’t expect a cushy, unibody Passport. But to my surprise, we fit right in. 

The Passport is all-new for the 2026 model year, marking the start of the SUV’s fourth generation. “Trailsport” is a trim across the Honda lineup used for off-road-ready versions of models like the Passport, Pilot, and Ridgeline. 

The car I drove was a prototype, so there isn’t a full spec sheet yet. We only drove the prototype off-road, and only had access to the infotainment and driver-instrument displays inside. Other features had a black tarp over them because Honda wanted to focus on the off-road stuff for now. Everything else comes later. 

Honda says the new Passport Trailsport will have a 3.5-liter V-6 engine that’s “more powerful” than the current car, but there are no numbers yet. (For context, the current Passport has 280 horsepower and 262 pound-feet of torque.) The new car will also have a 10-speed automatic transmission compared to the current nine-speed auto, as well as torque-vectoring all-wheel drive.

The Passport Trailsport will also offer all kinds of other off-road features, such as steel skid plates to protect the underbody and stainless-steel rock sliders to protect the sides. It will have a factory rear hitch that acts as the first point of contact while off-roading, so you don’t slam the rear fascia into a rock—and for towing, of course.

There will also be hidden exhaust tips (again, so you don’t slam them into a rock), off-road cameras to help you angle your wheels, cast-iron loop recovery points, sunken valve stems, and 31-inch off-road tires—the largest in the entire Honda lineup.

Honda says the recovery loops are rated for two times the gross vehicle weight and they’re designed to hold strong when pulled, but collapse when pushed. That way, if you hit someone or something, you won’t impale them with cast iron. 

Pros: Way More Capable, Still Comfortable

We drove the Passport Trailsport in Moab for about six hours, through various elevation changes and rock formations. It was challenging—How should I approach this rock? What’s a good speed? When will the elevation drop out from under me?—but physically comfortable. The Passport Trailsport crawled over rocks calmly enough to lull passengers into a trance, as opposed to inducing headaches or dizziness from a rough ride.

The Passport Trailsport’s torque vectoring also allows the car to send different amounts of torque to each wheel for better traction, which is useful on road and off (especially while rock crawling). In Trail mode, the Passport’s new “torque logic” system will detect if one side of the rear axle loses contact with the ground and send torque to the wheel that still has traction, allowing the car to drive over rocks and uneven terrain. Once the wheel without traction hits the ground, the car smoothly increases torque again. 

The only abruptness I noticed throughout the day was when I misjudged an approach or departure angle and hit the body protection on a boulder. The hits were solid, metallic thunks, assuring me that in a battle of me versus this rocky terrain, I’d win. Two women who worked on the Passport at Honda were in the car with me, and each time I mistakenly hit a slider or skid plate on a rock, they interrupted my apologies. 

“No!” they said. “That’s what they’re for!”

In Trail mode, the Passport has two fun screen displays: elevation and car angle. The elevation display reset each time we turned the car off and on, setting our baseline at the elevation where we started the ignition. Then, every tenth of a mile, the display would update with our height above sea level and track our up-and-down trajectory with a line graph. 

The elevation display is like graphing out your steps with a smartwatch. You don’t need to do it, but it’s satisfying to see just how much you’ve done.  

Cons: Dude, Where’s My Off-Road Angle?

Car angle is another popular display in modern off-roaders. The Passport had circular, compass-like displays for pitch (up-and-down angle) and roll (side-to-side angle). The displays rotated as the Passport did—again, showing me how much I actually did in the car.

The only thing missing was a numerical degree; the Bronco Sport Sasquatch typed out angle numbers, and I still tell people how I drove it 22 degrees sideways at the launch. I can’t tell you what degree I drove the Passport at because the display was too small and too much like an analog clock to read consistently.

We drove through Moab in a convoy of eight, including two lead-follow cars. We weren’t particularly fast across the terrain, and we pulled over regularly for Broncos, Wranglers, Toyota 4Runners, and side-by-sides. There are two reasons for that: Big lines are usually slower, and in the Passport, we’re off-road-lite compared to those vehicles. 

The Passport, like other SUVs-turned-off-roaders, blends on-road comfort with off-road capability. The Ford Broncos of the world are hardcore, body-on-frame vehicles with interiors designed to be dirtied up and washed out with each trip. They’re more flexible for traversing the terrain, but famously less comfortable in highway driving. 

The Passport’s unibody construction blends body and frame for weight savings, efficiency, and safety. It’s more car-like and comfortable on the road, but it lacks the flexibility of body-on-frame, making cars like the Passport less malleable on trails. 

But the Passport is perfect for the moment. Companies develop cars for years before they arrive on the market, and we’re in an era of automakers going all-in on practical ruggedness in America.

Recently, the thought hit me: The “rugged” era is in full swing four years after we fled our cities and homes for adventure (and physical space) during the pandemic. Unibody off-roaders like the Passport are the perfect response to that trend: They allow for adventure off the road and comfort on it, but not the extreme end of either. 

We’ve spent decades on the democratization of speed, making “normal” cars way faster than the performance cars of the past. Cars like the Passport feel like the democratization of off-roading, letting the normal folks join the Wranglers and Broncos on the cliffs of Moab. 

Just give us a few extra minutes to get up there, will you?

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