The promise of any off-road vehicle is the ability to go anywhere. Do you want to go to a cabin in the woods? How about deep into the desert? That boxy SUV with plastic fender flares and chunky tires says it’s all possible. Since Honda has just revealed the updated 2027 Passport TrailSport with even more off-road capability than before, it’s leaning into that suggestion with a new ad.
However, Honda, or at least the kid in the commercial, may have let imagination run away with the idea.
See The Honda Mars Colony
Ok, so Honda isn’t really saying the Passport TrailSport could be an interplanetary rover. It’s made quite clear right from the start that what the Passport TrailSport is actually facilitating is a dad and his kid playing space command while the dad gets some firewood for the countryside campsite. They radio back and forth about celestial hazards that line up with different trail obstacles like shallow water crossings and steep descents. It’s sweet and cute by all accounts, and does a nice job illustrating some of the Passport’s capabilities.
It’s also funny seeing any kind of portrayal of this family crossover as a Mars vehicle taking jumps. In fact, we’d be legitimately shocked to see any TrailSport owner jump a Passport here on Earth. And that’s with the advantage of having combustion-critical oxygen.
There’s one other interesting Honda cameo in the commercial, and it’s not the CR-V TrailSport that the Passport parks next to. It’s actually the futuristic-looking trailer. That’s not a computer-generated mock-up, but rather the Honda Base Station trailer prototype the company showed back in January.
The Honda Base Station trailer with the roof up and rear hatch open, hooked up to a Passport.Honda
Honda designed it to sleep four with a pop-up roof, air conditioning, and external shower and cooking area. Perhaps more importantly, it was also designed to do all this while being light enough for something like a CR-V to tow it. Whether Honda will build it, though, is still an open question.
What’s New With The Passport TrailSport?
You’d be hard-pressed to tell that anything about the TrailSport changed besides the extra LED lights in the faux hood scoop. However, Honda made some major revisions to the SUV’s hardware. The suspension is completely new, and so is the front subrame and axle shafts. The result is more than an extra inch of ground clearance for a total of 9.65, along with better approach, breakover, and departure angles. As such, the new Passport TrailSport should be able to go farther than any previous one. Although Mars is probably still a stretch.
2027 Honda Passport TrailSport from the front three-quarter angleHonda
CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters:
We’re giving Honda a bit of a hard time about the space comparisons, but this ad seems laser-focused on whom the likely Passport TrailSport buyer is. The buyer probably has a small, young family that needs space, but not necessarily a minivan or large SUV with three rows. They’re active and like to get out, too, but probably don’t need something as crude, yet capable, as a traditional body-on-frame SUV.
So an ad about that family going camping at the end of a light trail is perfect.
