Overview & Reviews

User Reviews:

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  Auto-Idle is a dud! - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By Jim - November 2 - 12:00 pm

  Purchased 2016 Honda Pilot Elite in September, 2015 and now has 6,700 miles on it. The auto-idle quits working and I have had it in for repair 4 times. The last two times I have been told that the system thinks my battery is low but when the battery is checked I am told it is excellent. They then have to reset it and it then works fine for a short while. Dealer said they cannot do anything about it until Honda does a software upgrade to fix the problem.

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  The interior reminds me of an 86 Blazer - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By JEN - August 22 - 1:24 am

  I mean no disrespect to the 86 Blazer. It was a good value. The cheap seat material, sea of cheap plastic, and lack of features do not equal a $32,000 car, Honda.

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  Terrible radio! - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By Rick G. - June 2 - 5:44 am

  This car has a radio issue that has yet to be addressed by Honda. It crackles, fades, and volume fluctuates. It seems to go in and out of mono and stereo on a radio station that is right down the street from me. The speedometer is too high on the dash and from my seating position I can only view it when I look under the top of the steering wheel.

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  2016 Pilot EX-L Hard Shift Issues - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By Tim L. - April 21 - 1:11 am

  Wait on buying this car. Horrible, frequent, but random hard shifting w/ the 6 speed tranny. Wife will not drive it anymore. New 7/2016, we have 6K miles on it and the hard shifting is damaging the whole drive train.. Horrible new car experience. Car is at the dealer for the 3rd time on this as I post this. Looks like Im not the only one..

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  Concerned About Safety - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By Diane Larkin - April 15 - 3:14 am

  After 6 weeks of driving the Honda Pilot Elite, I have a growing concern that the user interface to the electronics package may be a safety concern for drivers. I am very confident that Honda builds a safe vehicle in terms of physical structure, air bags and collision avoidance technology, but there is a "huge" distraction issue with the center stack of electronics (nav, audio, RES, cell phone). My concern is the drive must spend an inordinate amount of time interacting with the center stack touch screen. Is is very cumbersome and has many layers to accomplish simple tasks. To make it worse, after several touches on the screen, the finger prints show and if the sun hits the screen a certain way, you cannot see or read the information on the screen. I spend way too much time interacting with the screen when voice commands would accomplish the same thing in a more efficient and "safe" manor. The same principle applies to the RES (rear entertainment system). In order to play a DVD for a child, you must put the DVD in the center console, stop the vehicle, get in the back seat and use the rear control remote to start the movie playing. You cannot do this from the "Rear Audio" screen that shows on the center console. How inconvenient and dangerous (stopping on the side of an interstate highway) is this? What little voice activation has been provided by Honda is really useless. It is very slow and you usually end up using the touch screen which is not organized very well. I am really shocked at how little effort was put into the design of the electronics package. Again, this is a very "unsafe" system given the amount of time and effort the drive must expend at the expense of paying attention to the road!

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  Overall just a barely average vehicle - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By Jay - February 7 - 10:41 pm

  The Pilot looks great on paper and in pictures, but dont be fooled. The specs are good and it looks good in photos as most vehicles do however the reality is much different. While fuel economy and engine performance are good, those seem to be the only things that dont disappoint. But to get straight to the point, here are problems that Ive noticed: 1. The infotainment is a really terrible system. It is underpowered, unrefined, unintuitive and cumbersome. It is really slow and unresponsive, probably because of outdated/cheap components used to power the system. Every tap lags, every single one. The interface is also very unintuitive, common features such as playlists, albums, genres are buried multiple menu layers deep. When you plug in your device, it defaults to playing your entire library of songs alphabetically. I get random error messages that cause the audio or navigation to close on a fairly regular basis of about once a week. An error message will just pop up and close the current app. 2. The navigation, probably in part to being underpowered, has been terrible so far. Ive only used it a few times so far but each time is has incorrectly calibrated my location and it would take a few minutes of driving for it to properly recalibrate my location. Ive driven and used many vehicles with navigation and this is honestly the first time its ever happened, on each occasion. 3. The radio is complete junk. It sounds like listening to a 30 year old clock radio because the reception is so bad. Sound is constantly fading, crackling or has static. There has been speculation that this is something that has only impacted a few Pilots however I am convinced this is a design defect. The antennas on the Pilot are similar to the antennas on the iPhone 4 and consist of bands on the rear windows. Whats worse is that despite this being an issue since the release of the 2016 Pilot, there has been no official response or acknowledgment from Honda yet. 4. Because the radio is so bad on the Pilot, most people such as myself will often listen to the music on my device. There is nothing wrong with the sound system itself, just the reception. However, since the infotainment system is so incredibly bad, even trying to listen to the music on my device is a major pain. 5. The footwell heat simply doesnt work well. It seems like a minor issue until you have consecutive single digit degree weather and realize only a very small portion of the area above your ankles are warm. The footwell area never completely warms, no matter how high you set the temperature or how high the fan is. Your lower legs will always be cold, or at least mine have. 6. For the trims below Touring with the 6 speed, the shifter is so poorly and terribly designed, it looks like it came out of a 1990 Corolla. Above all, my impression of the 2016 Pilot is that it was severely rushed and a lot of cost cutting was involved. There really is no excuse for the radio to have such horrible reception in this day and age. The infotainment system is clearly the result of cost cutting as its so terrible. The main benefit of the Pilot is the engine performance. I highly recommend anyone considering the Pilot to take it on an extended test drive and really pay close attention to the radio and tinker with the infotainment. Drive it back to back with any other vehicle and Im certain most will recognize a clear difference in radio quality. However, if literally none of these things matter, than the Pilot may be a good choice, otherwise I would at least hold off until the 2017 models arrive before even considering one.

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  Need new transmission - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By Bill Michaels - September 30 - 3:38 pm

  We had the same issues with the 9 Speed transmission. Honda advised there was a software upgrade to address the problem so we made an appointment. The day before the appointment, the car overheated. Problem was the transmission cooler leaked coolant into the transmission. Honda is now installing a new transmission and flushing the cooling system. According to the mechanic, there have been other instances where coolant was slowly leaking into the transmission. So well see what happens. Honda installed a new transmission under warranty. However, when I asked if the new transmission was improved to eliminate the defects leading to the transmission failure, the Honda service department could not guarantee that the new transmission would not have the same failure in the future. Since the manufacturer warranty on the Pilot is only 60K miles, we purchased an extended warrantee (100K Miles). The new transmission does not shift smoothly and well need to have this diagnosed by Honda during our next service.

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  The 9 speed trans. is the worst Ive driven - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By RJ - July 12 - 7:29 pm

  Stay away, I regret spending my hard earned money on this junk, the 9 speed gear box is dangerous, it shifts randomly jerking everyone around and speeds up on down hills. Acura has lost a lot of respect because of this 9 speed so WHY Honda do you put this in the new pilot???? Consumers Report has info on this issues saying to be careful or youll be sorry. I trusted the Honda name so didnt do my homework before buying. I have 7,000 miles and waiting for the new Highlander, it has the Lexus 8 speed that is smooth as silk, yes Ill take a beating but am forced to make the change, I wont drive it, nor will my Wife drive it. STAY AWAY

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  This SUV might kill you. - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By JeromyW - September 26 - 6:33 pm

  I hope it doesnt. In fact I hope you read this, avoid buying the 2016 (or 17) Honda Pilot, and avoid the same mistake our family made. When my wife and I test drove the 2016 Honda Pilot we were not terribly impressed with its acceleration but that was not why we were looking at a new Honda. We were looking for something reliable and Honda has had a great track record in that regard. So, even though we were not over the moon about the Pilot when we test drove it, we thought this is going to last 10+ years and is, therefore, a wise purchase. Boy, were we wrong! One problem with the Honda Pilot is the 9 speed transmission. My 1972 Chevelle shifts smoother than this. When you drop this Honda in drive first thing in the morning, the first-second gear shift will try to separate a few vertebrae... it is brutal. Once warmed up, this transmission is better, but still not so good. Especially in stop and go traffic where you will experience many times where the transmission seems completely out of touch with the throttle, leading to "rev rev rev... wham!". You *will* need a chiropractor if you have to drive in stop and go traffic with this machine. Also, this transmission has a history of early failure already. However, that transmission wont be the thing that kills you. The Honda Sensing system will. Lets say that you are on a highway going 70 mph when someone going 20 mph slower than you pulls out 3 car lengths in front of you. In that situation our Honda Pilot will SLAM on the brakes HARD causing anyone behind us to weave desperately into the adjoining lane or shoulder to keep from hitting us in the rear. Or lets say that you are going around a bend on a country road, the Honda Sensing system gets confused and again SLAMS on the breaks in the middle of hard bend. Lets say you survive the Honda Sensing system... will you be able to survive the throttle? Lets say you are in stopped trying to turn left across rapidly moving traffic. You need your car to move when you step on the gas. The Honda Pilot will occasionally toss in a 5-7 second delay in response time, just to add to the challenge. Did I mention the $200 oil changes? This is because, in our case, about the time we needed to change the oil, the "B16" code would be thrown on the info system, indicating that the rear diff also needed to be changed. This prompted the service manager at our local Honda shop to exclaim, "what is wrong with these new Pilots?!"

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  Not so great - 2016 Honda Pilot
  By Jenny - September 17 - 8:42 pm

  Our family has leased a new Honda Pilot every 3 years since 2003.Our current lease is up and we went to get a new Pilot. Needless to say, we did not like the redesigned Pilot. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of improvements to the new Pilot, but the overall style is more of a minivan than an SUV. The quality of materials is significantly better than our current 2012 Pilot and we like the captain chairs. The one button to move the middle seats is very easy and the camera in the passenger side mirror is very cool! The ventilated front seats are comfortable. What we did not care for is the minivan style flip down arm rests on the front seats and touch screen audio system. You can see every finger print on the screen. Our Acura also has the touch screen audio and the fingerprints never go away. It drives me crazy! The touch screen is bit more labor intensive to change the station or volume, so you will be more distracted from the road and traffic. There are controls on the steering wheel for some functions though. Our Acura also has push button start and both my husband and I would prefer an actual key. It is very easy to leave the car running, especially how quiet cars are today. The push button transmission selector is in a really bad location. I have visions of a beverage mishap and a very expensive repair to follow. Why the transmission selector is electronic and not mechanical is also a concern. The visibility is very good from the driver’s seat and the ride is awesome. The engine start-stop is something I would have to get used to, although. I really don’t see the saving as the mpg is rated the same as what we get in our 2012 Pilot. The steering and handling on the new Pilot is a huge disappointment. The steering is weak with a weird bottom heavy feel and it is slow to respond. The steering does not feel substantial enough to handle a vehicle of that size and weight. Needless to say it is very unnatural and not something I would want to deal with every day. The new Pilot has significant body roll on right hand turns, but seemed to be Ok turning left. If you take your turns at a snail’s pace, it might not roll as much. I am also not fond of the exterior styling. It screams “Me To” as it looks like an expanded CRV. We have been driving Honda’s and Acura’s for a very long time and have been satisfied and loyal customers, we are now looking at other manufacturers for our next SUV.