Top 5 Reviews and Videos of the Week: Honda Pilot Flies High, Luxury Car of the Year Appears
Among three-row SUVs, few names are as venerable as the Honda Pilot. The perennially popular SUV got a refresh for the 2019 model year, and Cars.com’s Brian Wong recently covered the 2020 version (essentially the same, though now with a new Black Edition trim level) in Cars.com’s most popular review of the past week. The good news? It’s not bad! The bad news? It’s not good enough.
Related: What’s the Best 3-Row SUV for 2020?
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Shop the 2020 Honda Pilot near you
The Pilot remains a great buy for price-conscious shoppers and its storage space is as good as any of its rivals, but as Wong notes, it lags behind the competition in most every other respect — particularly once you get inside.
“This is where the Pilot really shows its age, especially with its styling,” he writes. “The dashboard is awash in black plastics, and combined with the black leather upholstery in our test vehicles, it looked like it was styled by Darth Vader. Interior materials fall behind the best in the class. … Like the transmission, the Pilot’s multimedia system got an upgrade in 2019 — but while it’s improved, it isn’t fixed. The addition of a volume knob removed a major annoyance, but the system is still convoluted and hard to use; simple tasks can feel anything but.”
Despite these (and other) flaws, however, the Pilot was able to knock off the reigning most popular review for the 2020 Toyota Highlander by a slender margin. To read either of those, as well as reviews on the brand-new Mazda CX-30, fresh-faced Audi Q8 and eternally popular Dodge Charger performance variants, click through on the links below.
Bumping our BMW 3 Series comparison — pitting a civilian 330i against the performance-primed M340i at the drag strip — from the week’s most popular videos was the unveiling of our first Best Of award for 2020, Luxury Car of the Year — and it’s a surprise twist. We’ve never handed the award to a pickup truck before, but the 2020 Ram 1500 Laramie Longhorn and Limited trims are worlds apart from other pickups inside, never mind the ride-quality refinements Ram made. If you’re a luxury buyer with an open mind, check out the video to learn more about what makes the Laramie Longhorn and Limited so opulent … but even if you’re not, read on to see the full list, including the only video to rank ahead of our award, below:
Top 5 Reviews
1. 2020 Honda Pilot Review: Showing Its Age
2. 2020 Toyota Highlander Review: More in Some Ways, Not in Others
3. 2020 Mazda CX-30 Review: Stylish Small SUV Right-Sized for U.S.
4. 2019 Audi Q8 Review: A Big SUV With a Big Catch
5. 2020 Dodge Charger Scat Pack and Hellcat Widebody Review: Which to Buy?
Top 5 Videos
1. 2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8: First Impressions
2. Cars.com’s 2020 Luxury Car of the Year
4. 2020 Land Rover Defender: First Impressions
5. 2021 Kia Seltos: First Impressions
Cars.com’s Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with Cars.com’s long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don’t accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of Cars.com’s advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.
