2020 Honda Ridgeline Sport
2020 Honda Ridgeline Sport Honda waited years before he brought the Civic Type R to the USA, but now that he is here, our desire and yearning for performance variants of Honda’s remains lonely. This has given us some thought as to what Honda could otherwise “type R-ify “. Considering that high-performance pickups today are all the rage (albeit more for the off-road set), we thought that the Ridgeline is a perfect candidate for a hotter engine, an improved suspension and some strongly amplified racing. Why not?
Okay, we know, – Elon Musk has better chances of landing a Tesla brand rover on Mars when we convinced Honda to build a type-R version of the Ridgeline. Honda purists would be sacrilege at a Ridgeline type R yelling and hater of Honda’s pickup truck would laugh even harder over this “non-pickup”. But that doesn’t matter. We would still like to see a high performance version of the second generation Ridgeline. Maybe it could even rewind the sports truck niche, turn the arm of Ford to bring back the F-150 Lightning, Chevy the Silverado SS and GMC the Syclone. How cool would that be? So what could a Honda Ridgeline type R include? Read on for the speculation.
2020 Honda Ridgeline Sport Exterior
What is a performance model without sporty bling? The Ridgeline Type R would have several aerodynamic and cooling properties that would separate it from other Ridgelinen as well as offer functional advantages. We would expect all intakes, fins and vents to be placed purposefully, just like those on the Civic Type R.
Front, the grid and bumper-sharing design with the Civic Type R, including the three-section lower grill, the darkened top grill and the iconic red Honda badge. The bonnet would have a shovel to cool the rear of the transverse V-6 as it does the shovel with the inline four of the Civic Type R. And just for fun, we threw the fender vents from the previous generation of civic Type R.
Low down, the Ridgeline type R has carbon fiber aero bits. These include the front chin splitter, the side benches and a diffuser back. Of course, the red accent color of type R is found on the aero pieces, the wheels and of course the badges. Speaking of wheels: The Ridgeline Type R comes with lighter alloys, which are likely to be at 19 or 20 inches in size to accommodate the larger disc brakes. And although our rendering doesn’t quite show it, the tires would be low-profile summer rubber.
And because the Ridgeline type R is still a Ridgeline, it would keep its handy cargo space, its two-way tailgate and its in-bed trunk. You have to haul more than just butt if you have a truck.
2020 Honda Ridgeline Sport Interior
The Ridgeline has a pretty nice interior, which we have already praised several times. His place for people and things is unsurpassed in the mid-range pickup category. But the Ridgeline type R would need some spruce. Expect tons of red accents on everything from the seats and door panels to the hyphen and steering wheel. Oh, and Honda would undoubtedly add a shallow unterrad.
Honda could exchange in a more performance-oriented track cluster with a larger speedometer and a pair of auxiliary measuring devices such as oil temperature and pressure. The biggest change that Honda would have to make is the circuit. The Ridgeline Type R cannot come with an automatic – heck no! It would need a proper six-course manual and a clutch pedal. It looks as if the center console has enough space to accommodate the manual gear lever without cutting into the cup holders. And since it is oriented towards the driver, the positioning should feel good.
Expect some strongly strengthened front seats, consisting of suede, stitches and leather. Red seatbelts would also be a nice touch. Like the Citizen R, you expect with the rear seats nothing to change. You get black leather with a red contrast booklet, but otherwise would be unchanged. Of course, that’s not bad. The rear seats of the Ridgeline are impressively comfortable, even for adults over long distances. Believe us, we tried.
2020 Honda Ridgeline Sport Engine
To meat and potatoes. Honda would have to increase the power of the 3.5-liter V-6 of the Ridgeline. In its normal state, this all-aluminum engine makes 280 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 262 pounds-foot torque at 4,700 rpm. This is great for the standard Ridgeline, but the type R needs more. Honda could charge the engine and feed more air while an upgraded fuel system with direct injection injects more 91 octane into the cylinders. An improved VTEC system would go on, (yo), with a more aggressive camshaft grinding for more power in the upper register of the engine.
We bet that Honda could easily get 450 horsepower and 420 pound foot torque out of this setup. How? Well, the 2.0-liter turbo-four of the Civic Type R makes 306 horsepower – that’s 153 hp per liter. Let’s say Honda wanted to be conservative and give the Ridgeline type R’s 3.5-liter V-6 128 ps per liter. This corresponds to 450 horsepower and the same ratio of power to weight as the citizen R of 10 horses per pound. This is a much better ratio than the 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor. Even with its powerful 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6, which provides 450 horsepower and 510 pounds of torque, the crew cab raptor weighs a whopping 5,800 pounds. Compare that to the 4,515 pound weight of the Ridgeline.
And what is a high-horsepower pickup without AWD? Honda could keep the AWD system from Ridgeline and adapt it to the additional power. The system would also be reprogrammed with a rear tilt, so that the Ridgeline type R could have a happy tail when drifting. In addition, the AWD system from Ridgeline already has a computer-controlled wet clutch package that derives the power to each wheel, which means that active torque vectoring is not far away.
2020 Honda Ridgeline Sport
With 450 hp, 420 pounds of torque, AWD and a power-to-weight ratio corresponding to the Civic Type R, the Ridgeline type R was able to easily match with the Civic’s 0 to 60 mph time of 4.9 seconds. However, the maximum speed of the truck could be slightly less than 170 mph, due to the additional drag.
Suspension method, the Ridgeline would use similar adaptive dampers for a ride that corresponds to the driver’s mood. The dampers, which are integrated into the drive modes of type R, would have three settings – comfort, sport and + R. Thicker front and rear vibrating rods, together with stiffer coil springs at each corner, would give the pickup an impressive handling. The braking would be clamped by six-piston Brembo saddles that are on oversized vented-rotors front and four-piston saddles on vented rotors from the back.
2020 Honda Ridgeline Sport Price
In accordance with the proportionality of the bourgeois family, the Ridgeline type R could cost around $6,200 more than the range-topping trim, the Black edition. For 2017, the Black edition starts at $43,120. Add the cost of type R, and the hot-rod Ridgeline could have a MSRP of $49,320.
How would we come with $6,200? Well, the 2017 Civic Type R costs $6,200 more than the top trim civic Hatchback, the sport touring. A MSRP just under $50,000 appears downright sensible for a 450-horsepower, AWD pickup with a Type R badge, especially considering that most full-fledged trucks can easily surpass this price threshold without being anything special. Then again, we hope that Honda will not recognize this and calculate more.
