Is Our Yearlong 2026 Honda Passport Trailsport Elite Good Off-Road?

Going into my year behind the wheel of our yearlong review 2026 Honda Passport TrailSport Elite, the number one question I am hoping to answer is: With the Passport, did Honda finally build a vehicle that will live up to the TrailSport name? While I will no doubt continue to amass more experiences throughout the year, I figured, why wait on forming an initial answer to the question?

Any good experiment needs a control variable, a benchmark to measure the comparative effect or ability of what you are testing. (At least I think so—I am a photographer, what do I know about science?) Lucky for me, our yearlong review 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser is still gracing the MotorTrend garage. Our Land Cruiser is a vehicle I know well; in the summer of 2025, I drove it from MotorTrend’s home base in Los Angeles, all the way to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and back. Not only is it one of my favorite currently produced vehicles, but I also know how supremely capable it is off-road.

The Land Cruiser is also not a one-trick pony. Sure, I could use a Jeep Wrangler or Ford Bronco as a benchmark, but those are different animals. Like the Honda Passport, the Land Cruiser is comfortable and civilized on the road, a more road-focused vehicle than the uber-capable off-roaders from Detroit. With the Land Cruiser’s year winding down, features editor Scott Evans and I hatched a plan to spend a day off-roading with both the Land Cruiser and Passport in the mountains outside of Los Angeles.

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After arriving at our favorite local Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) area and airing our tires down (25 psi for the Passport seemed about right), we hit the trail. The trail we decided to tackle starts at the final OHV staging area and connects to a paved road on the opposite side of a nearly 5,000-foot ridge. Dirt and rocks coated in decomposed granite make for a slow, dusty, slippery climb up the rutted route. After descending and crossing a creek at the bottom of a narrow ravine, the trail quickly starts to climb steeply skyward.

Unlike the Land Cruiser, the Passport TrailSport does not have four-wheel drive (4WD). Instead, it uses Honda’s torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system (AWD) to reroute power to whatever wheel or wheels have traction. The process, while quicker than earlier versions of the system, is not instantaneous; you can feel the system moving torque around to help continue forward motion as you drive. This initial climb instantly gave me a new appreciation for the Passport’s 31-inch General Grabber tires. Considering the tires’ aggressive tread pattern, they have so far provided comfortable and quiet on-road performance. Now off-road, the deep tread, especially when aired down a little, provided good grip on the loose surface.

With a layer of fast-moving clouds obscuring the top of the ridge, I followed the Land Cruiser higher up the hill. I’d love to tell you the Passport tackled all of the same terrain as the Land Cruiser, but this particular trail features a “choose your own adventure” approach. At times, it offers two, sometimes three parallel routes of varying difficulty. The Land Cruiser, which punches in a higher off-roading weight class, did on occasion tackle the harder routes. That is not to say that the route I took in the Passport was in any way easy—just less hard.

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At one point, having passed the Land Cruiser, I led Evans up a particularly rough section of alternating divots and ruts. “You’ve had a wheel in the air almost the entire time!” he called over our handheld radios. This was the first but not the last time the Passport’s underbody skidplates came in handy. Over the years, I have tackled this trail in many vehicles, but California’s recent winter rains meant that the ruts were deeper than I’d ever seen them. The Passport TrailSport offers 8.3 inches of ground clearance—the same as the Land Cruiser, coincidentally—which was not quite enough on occasion.

One particularly rough section of divot-filled, silt-covered rock had us concerned that the Passport had run out of capability. Wanting to document the struggles, I grabbed my camera and handed over control of the Honda to Evans to give it a go. With a combination of speed and some aggressive sawing at the steering wheel, the Passport finally triumphed as it cleared the obstacle in a cloud of dust shooting off the rear wheels.

With Evans having regained the lead in the Toyota, the Land Cruiser disappeared into a torrent of fast-moving clouds as we reached the summit. With the winds gusting and the chilly, moist air making for unpleasant conditions, we didn’t stick around the summit for long. The cloud bank also meant the normally impressive view from the top of the hill was completely obscured. Having crested the top and heading down the back side, it was now time to test the Passport’s hill descent control (HDC) feature.

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Activated by pushing the button on the center console near the shifter, HDC allows you to set a speed up to 12 mph. The Passport then controls the throttle and braking to manage tire speed and slip, allowing the driver to concentrate on picking the correct line down the hill. At the top of one particularly steep section, I engaged the system with a speed set to 2 mph, took my foot off the brake, and let the Passport do its thing. I’ve used HDC on multiple vehicles, and it is always a little unnerving when you finally start down a steep section without having your foot on the brake pedal. Luckily, the anxiety passes quickly as the computer does everything it can to keep things under control. The Passport’s system worked as advertised, and I reached the bottom of the section without incident. As a side note, it also works in reverse. That’s pretty neat.

With only a few miles left until we hit pavement, Evans and I rolled to a stop at the top of an extremely rutted and rocky section of washed-out trail. Not only were the rocks bigger and the ruts deeper than anything we had encountered up until this point, but the trail also narrowed between two tall banks on each side. This was going to be tricky.

With Evans acting as spotter, I slowly started my controlled descent. “You’re going to slide a little ... slow ... a little more to your right ... SLOWER!”

Crunch.

Oops.

I’d like to say that crunching noise was just the skidplate hitting a rock, but it was really the very lowest part of the lower valence making contact with a protruding boulder sticking out from the side of the washout. Luckily, after I readjusted my wheels, the plastic popped back into place, leaving only a small scar that is unnoticeable unless you are looking at it from an ant’s perspective. The thing is, I could sort of see the boulder I hit.

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The Passport TrailSport Elite comes standard with Honda’s TrailWatch camera system, which allows the driver to see a 360-degree view of their surroundings. While extremely helpful for picking your line when cresting steep inclines, the camera system unfortunately lacks the necessary resolution to see fine details, especially if the rocks are all the same color as the dirt. Better than not having it? Yes. But higher-definition cameras would make it more useful.

Having survived the “Rocky Gulch of Doom,” we stopped at the exit gate for the trail and reinflated our tires. We had made it without major incident. Yes, the Land Cruiser had flexed on the Passport by taking some more extreme routes, but overall, I was supremely impressed.

Did the Passport earn its TrailSport badge? Hell yeah, it did.

More On Our Long-Term 2026 Honda passport Trailsport Elite:

• Is Honda Finally Serious About the TrailSport Name?