2021 Honda Odyssey Elite Review

Ferrar i fantasies fade fast in a minivan, containers of the auto industr y.

Who has time in a van for 8,000-r pm rever ies? You’ll be too busy dodging half-eaten Twinkies hurled by some kid way in the back .

OK , OK , minivans muddy soccer balls.

But, really, no one ever gets lathered up over a minivan. ey’re just transpor tation devices with lots of seats.

Which makes the 0 onda Odyssey di cult to e plain par ticularly for a rev-happy, road-loving , hard-core car-guy.

But, gulp, I actually liked the silver Odyssey Elite I had recently.

So do lots of people, apparently. Honda says the Odyssey claims a stout 40 percent share of the minivan market.

ese are not just aging boomers like me. et this Honda says the median age of Odyssey buyers is 45, they have average family incomes of more than $115,000 a year and 70 percent have some college.

oreover, Honda e pects the fading minivan segment battered by the consumer shi to crossovers and S s to recover steadily over the ne t si years.

Heck , my Odyssey even spor ted a little air. What’s ne t a Presidential Minivan?

Still a bit too long , tall and bo y for my taste, the Odyssey nonetheless bene ts considerably from sculpting that tightens its vast , at sides.

Like all new Hondas, the big minivan greets the world with a clean, hor i ontal gr ille anked by contemporar y headlamps and topped by a relatively shor t, sloping hood.

As you may recall, Odysseys looked pretty strange pr ior to don’t just haul the dowdy cargo sugar-fueled kids and 2018, with awkward back doors that appeared to have been li ed from another vehicle and forced junkyard-style to t the rest of the body.

Cur ving character lines high and low have smoothed those lumps out considerably and my now-sleeker Odyssey Elite settled comfor tably on 1 -inch gray and alloy wheels tted with 235/55 tires.

Also helping , I thought, were nicely stylized rear roof pillars that eased the van’s square dimensions.

However, aside from the seven-passenger Odyssey’s immense practicality, the best par t about the new minivan was its polished 3.5-liter - and equally sophisticated 10-speed automatic.

While not quite as muscular as the engines in some S s, the Odyssey’s silky - handles its 4, 00 pounds handily, hitting 0 mph in a quick .5 seconds and achieving overall fuel economy of 22 miles per gallon.

I par ticularly liked the Odyssey’s overall balance. It accelerated nicely, provided great visibility, felt fairly agile in tra c and turned cleanly into corners with decent stability.

Step into the accelerator and the - delivers a smooth, polished little wave of torque, making merging with freeway tra c pretty e or tless.

Most buyers, though, will likely be more attracted to the van’s smooth, highly composed r ide.

As you probably know, minivans are built on car platforms with car-like suspensions, while big S s r ide on heavy tr uck chassis.

Parking can still be a challenge because of the Odyssey’s 205 inches of length, but other wise, this is a smar t bus that’s easy to live with.

For the most par t, minivans are built from inside out, meaning pr ior ity is given to inter ior space, utility and convenience, and that was evident in the dark-gray inter ior in my $49,000 Odyssey.

e deep dark gray dashboard in the vehicle, for e ample, was cast from a at-tone, semi-pliable plastic that reduced glare from the giant windshield.

Most of the audio and climate controls were clustered in the center of the mid-dash around a tablet-shaped touchscreen tr immed in piano-black .

Although the stereo had to be tuned through the screen de nitely not a family-fr iendly feature the system o ered Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration.

Honda also compensates with loads of safety features, including vehicle-stability assist , collision-mitigation braking , lane-keeping assist and a blind-spot information system.

As a top-of-the-line Elite model, the Odyssey also had rear bucket seats that could slide side to side for space, as well as fore and a , and, of course, automatic sliding rear doors.

In addition, the vehicle’s deep console up front provided a wireless phone-charger, while the fold-down third-row benchseat had enough leg- and head-room for real adults.

e seats, incidentally, were stitched in dark-gray leather and complemented by switch-gear that clicked e pensively.

Not too sur pr ising , my well-equipped, near-$50,000 Odyssey had no options.

It didn’t really need them, though. Don’t tell my hot-rod buddies, but if I were looking for a big people- and stu - hauling vehicle, I might actually give the Odyssey some ser ious consideration over an S .

I wonder if it comes in Ferrar i Red?